Pioneers of the Factory of Sound are opening the 4th edition od Showroom!
Showroom of Contemporary Sound, an international festival of contemporary music will, in its 4th edition, gather almost 100 artists from 12 countries: France, Holland, Sweden, Poland, UK, Croatia, Austria, Mexico, Norway, USA, Portugal and Hungary. From 4th to 7th of May, musicians, music researchers, sound artists, composers and performers will present themselves and their work to Showroom’s audience in almost 30 performances. Spring musical gathering in Student centre has invited leading names of contemporary music scene and the ones you will hear about more in the future! Showroom is a research, process and a development; it gives advantage to music community rather than the laws and rules of music industry.
“Showroom is a common energy and hard work, and endeavor we share with friends and partners in stimulation, collaboration and dialogue. Showroom is an attempt of ignoring genre boundaries, stimulating creativity and critical but open approach that is inclusive” said art director of the festival Davorka Begović while announcing this year’s program.
4th Showroom is opening in the best way possible: by performance of its youngest performers – attendees of a 4 month long workshop led by musician and composer Nenad Sinkauz. Pioniri Tvornice zvuka (Pioneers of the Factory of Sound), that is a little future musicians in age from 7 to 10, will lead us into the works of electronics and improvisation. See you at 7pm at MM centre.
Pioneers of the Factory of Sound
And what have electronics engineers Gideon Kiers, Lucas van der Velden, normally members of Telcosystems and the leaders of Sonic Acts festival, and Swedish sound artist BJ Nielsen created during a 5 days long residency at French pavilion, we will find out on the opening day at 9pm.
And for the first day’s finish, at &TD’s Semicircular hall, there is a concert dedicated to tragically deceased drummer Daniel Buess. His colleagues and friends will play at it: Sebastian Smolyn (trombone) and Artur Smolyn (electronics), the band Defibrillator with Maxime Häsenberger on the drums. Smolyn brothers often shared the stage with jazz legend Peter Brötzmann, and in their powerful performances you can hear noise, hardcore and free jazz influence.
Old school of improvisators is coming to this year’s Showroom! Multi-instrumentalist Fred Frith, clarinetist Tim Hodgkinson and the drummer Chris Cutler, all former member of Henry Cow, a well-known English avant-garde rock band. In two musically different evenings, and in combination with trumpeter, improvisator and composer Susana Santos Silva and video-artist Heika Liss, Fred Frith – a master of unconventional approach to music, will give us some astonishing impro performances rarely seen in Zagreb. Also, on the third day of the festival, Tim Hodkinson will have a talk about his first book Music and the Myth of Wholeness with the journalist and music critic Robert Barry.
Austrian ensemble for radical and uncompromising music or the Black Page Orchestra often use electronics, video and different technologies in their performances, and theire stage incarnations often have a performative character and numerous visitors/listeners.
Stian Westerhaus is a lead name of the Norwegian contemporary scene, well known in the circles of avant-garde jazz and more, and a guitarist in a permanent search for new challenges. He is uncompromising and hard, and he is coming to Showroom to French pavilion to present his newest solo album.
Stian Westerhus
Ensemble for contemporary music S/UMAS, consisting of students from Academy of Arts in Split, under the leadership of Goran Tudor, a musician and composer, will perform their version of Peaches En Pegalia, the song of legendary Frank Zappa; they will also perform new work from young composer Ana Horvat and Goran Tudor.
In collaboration with Nicole Hewitt and Ana Hušman, Showroom is a host to animated film and new media department OZAFIN ALU from Academy of Fine Artst in Zagreb. Karlo Pavičić Pavlić will present his work Medijski telefon, Roko Crnić will present his performance Stolac, stol i stolica, and a group of students from OZAFIN will perform one of the key pieces by Alvin Lucier – Vespers from 1969.
Memorable by their growing membership and experimenting with the sound, Mmessy Oscillators are coming at this year’s Showroom with a new, hybrid sound and approach, named as Mmessy Oscillators 2.0. They are recognizable by using DIY and BIO instruments.
Rendez-vous, festival of France in Croatia, will present the catalogue of happenings from festival’s 6 month period in 2015, in collaboration with the Showroom and Music Academy Zagreb; French art duo Scenocsme will present four interactive sound installations. If you have never heard plants doing music, you will at our festival!
A surprise for the end of Showroom! This year Showroom is taking you to a fieldtrip! After four days of enjoying the contemporary sound together at Student centre, a day later, on Sunday 8th of May, we are taking you to space and sound institute in Budapest, new centre for research and development in the field of spatial sound. It is open and permanently set in Budapest few months back and it has been founded by a collective of engineers, researchers and artists 4DSOUND, which since 2008 continuously work on the development of space and sound technology.
To visit Spatial Sound Institute in Budapest we have organized a bus transportation from Zagreb to Budapest. To travel with us you have to participate in travel costs in the amount of 100,00kn. You can buy the tickets at Theatre &TD’s box office (phone: +385 1 4593510) – working hours are Mon-Fri from 11am to 1pm and according to the Showroom’s schedule: Thursday (28th of April) from 7:30pm to 9:30pm, and on every evening during the festival from 7pm to 9:30pm.
There is NO additional entrance fee. Number of bus seats on the bus is limited, so hurry up to ensure your seat for this spatial-sound adventure!
Information about the trip are available here, and if you have any more questions, ask danijela.andrijasevic@sczg.hr to help you.
More info in general find at izlog.sczg.hr and on our Facebook page.