S/UMAS

THURSDAY, May 5

9pm – S/UMAS Ensemble for Contemporary Music of the Academy of Arts of the University of Split @ Theatre &TD semicircular hall (50′)

Students of the Art Academy in Split have formed the Ensemble for contemporary music S/UMAS last year, on the initiative of assistant professor Gordan Tudor, saxophone player and composer, who is also their artistic leader. That is just one among many ways Tudor acts continually on the field of education and promotion of contemporary music, not only in Split, but much wider. In this specific case his role is that of a motivator and a mentor and the main roles belong to the students. Their focus in on the 20^th and 21^st century music, but it is not limited in regards to style or genre, but it is rather adjusted to technical possibilities and need or desire to enjoy making music together with the intent to further develop performing skills and widening their poetic experience. One of the important goals of S/UMAS is working with live composers. That way the musicians gain precious experience that is unfortunately very often missing in study programs. That is why the Music Showroom of the Student Centre together with S/UMAS have commissioned a new piece by a young composer Ana Horvat for their concert at the Showroom. She will prepare the piece working together with the students in Split.

The Ensemble for contemporary music was created for the students and that is not my ensemble, but their ensemble. Gordan Tudor, artistic director

S/UMAS are:

voice: Franjo Đaković
flutes: Lucija Butina, Marija Jelavić, Valentina Martić
clarinets: Ivana Bandalo, Roko Radeljak, Ivan Bašić, Igor Ivanović
saxophones: Erna Čizmić Rebić, Marija Vukšić, Mate Šumanović, Marko Gerbus, Deni Pjanić, Nereo Arbula
violins: Luka Jadrić, Barbara Udovčić, Matea Beotić
violas: Vera Kamenšek, Kristina Knežević
cellos: Mirna Lazić, Danijela Kos, Matej Ilčić
piano: Ivana Barišić, Josip Tomasović
drums: Jakov Salečić

Programme:

John Adams: American Standard (1973)

John Philip Sousa

Sentimentals

Marc Mellits: Canonada (2001)

Ana Horvat: S/UMAS Summarum (2016) *premiere

I –II – III – IV

Frank Zappa: Echidna’s Arf (Of You) (1973) – arr. G. Tudor

Dubravko Detoni: Zaboravljene muzike (1981)

Gordan Tudor: Re/Ce/Si(ja) (2016.) *premiere

Frank Zappa: Peaches en Regalia (1969.) – arr. G. Tudor

MMessy Oscillators 2.0: Soundtrack for Deep Space

SATURDAY, May 7

11,59pm – MMessy Oscillators 2.0 @ Theatre &TD semicircular hall (45′)

MMessy Oscillators 2.0

After having performed for years in a large ensemble and experimenting with sound, MMessy Oscillators come back to the Showroom of Contemporary Sound with a new hybrid sound and approach, as MMessy Oscillators 2.0. Lately they have been working extensively with dancers and performing during film screenings, something that resulted in studying the structure of musical composition, whilst not giving up on previous experimental and improvisational components, as well as electroacoustic sounds.

In Soundtrack for Deep Space they combine elements of abstract ambiental sound, electroacoustic moments, post-rock elements that are a result of a granular synthesis expressed through subtle minimalism. Drone as the main artery slowly enters the hearing focus and remains as a massive soundscape in the background, providing with its deep pulse a continuity for an eruption of noise electronics.

Soundtrack for Deep Space is inspired by a parallel piece for the exhibition Science Fiction: New Synthetic Worlds of Radiona.org that will be displayed at the Technical Museum during 2016. Together with the engineers of electronics, members of the group have designed and invented new digital, analogue and acoustic instruments, as well as visuals and installations. Part of these instruments and installations will be used at the performance.

MMessy Oscillators 2.0 are: Ana Horvat, Deborah Hustić, Layla Munitić on sound and Dražen Hižak on visuals.

www.facebook.com/MMessyOscillators, radiona.org/activities/mmessy-oscillators

MMessy Oscillators 2.0

Ivan Marusic Klif: Everything starts somewhere…

THURSDAY, May 5

6pm – Ivan Marušić Klif: Everything starts somewhere… – lecture @ SEK hall (60′)

FRIDAY, May 6

7,30pm – Ivan Marušić Klif: Everything starts somewhere… – audiovisual performance @ SEK hall (45′)

Ivan Marušić Klif

Motivation for this work comes from two sides: on the one side, the fascination with texture of the image created on analogue oscilloscope, and on the other hand, a strong inner need to create material using the space on the scene, my body and voice. This fact has, during my work, literally materialized in the way that the performance is split in two isolated wholes: lecture about the image’s projection on the oscilloscope, and the second part where this same mechanism is used for an AV performance. During the first part, in a form of a lecture I explain how the image on the oscilloscope is formed; the notion of electronic signal that has no definition in itself, but can be an image and sound at the same time; the way the Rutt/Etra video synthesizer functions; written vector shapes and their manipulation. In the second part these same principles are implemented in the performance where the image and sound are formed live on the scene, using parts of the text from the lecture and observations of a very wide spectrum. Ivan Marušić Klif

Ivan Marušić Klif

Ivan Marušić Klif is one of the most intriguing Croatian multimedia artists who lays the grounds of his artistic expression on implementation of technology for artistic purposes. During the past 20 year he presented a number of performances, multimedia installations and improvised music concerts. Aside from long term work on the field of fine arts and new media, Klif is also active as a musician and music producer, making film music and music for performances, theatre and dance productions. He was awarded Vladimir Nazor Award for his site specific installation Lambda.

i.m.klif.tv

www.vimeo.com/imklif

https://www.flickr.com/photos/13766531@N05/

Chris Cutler | Fred Frith | Tim Hodgkinson | Heike Liss | Susana Santos Silva

THURSDAY, May 5

10,30pm – Chris Cutler & Fred Frith & Heike Liss & Susana Santos Silva @ Theatre &TD big hall (70′)

FRIDAY, May 6

6pm – Tim Hodgkinson: Music and the Myth of Wholeness – talk led by Robert Barry @ Theatre &TD caffe bar (50′)

11,30pm – Fred Frith & Tim Hodgkinson @ French Pavilion (50′)

Fred Frith

As soon as I set foot in the French Pavilion in 2015 I knew I wanted to do something in that space and my choice of Tim Hodgkinson to join me in the endeavor was probably inevitable. Almost 50 years ago, after a chance encounter in a blues club, we found ourselves improvising together with a dancer on the theme of Hiroshima. I often felt afterwards as if in that moment we had invented improvisation! Of course that’s nonsense, but the feeling of INVENTING something every time we play has remained very strong, and inspiring. Fred Frith

Fred Frith has been living and breathing music since taking violin lessons at the age of 5, singing in the church choir, and parking himself under the piano to listen to his father play Debussy. Since then he has maintained an uninterrupted passion for song-writing, composing, performing, and improvising in many contexts and in many countries.

Music for me is never about showing, it’s about being. I identify most with musicians not because of what they are able to do, but by what they choose to do. Fred Frith

Tim Hodgkinson

Tim Hodgkinson is a composer, and also an improviser specializing in clarinets and lap steel guitar. After studying anthropology, he taught himself music by being in bands. His latest book, Music and the Myth of Wholeness, has just been published by MIT Press, and he will present it during the Showroom in the conversation with Robert Barry.

When I compose I write for sounds and then for instruments. I try to make something that is adequately eventful for our crazy time. I think I am writing for our time and the listeners who must authentically inhabit it. Real music happens when ideas are outrun by events. Tim Hodgkinson

Chris Cutler

Apart from Tim Hodgkinson, my longest running improvisation duo has been with another Henry Cow colleague, Chris Cutler, with whom I’ve been performing regularly since 1976. I’m always struck by how little resemblance each of our encounters has to any of the others, and how delightful that is. This time we are joined by the extraordinary trumpeter Susana Santos Silva, whose playing has touched me deeply since the first time I heard her, and Heike Liss, who has invented a completely personal, spontaneous visual world quite unlike anything else I know. Fred Frith

Since co-founding the 22–piece Ottawa Music Company in 1971, Chris Cutler has been at the beating heart of some of rock music’s most compelling and radical recording and touring bands. He works with all the usual suspects in all the usual improvising contexts and has performed just about everywhere as a soloist with his extended electrified kit. He also writes and presents the monthly radio/lecture series Probes for the Museum of Modern Art in Barcelona.

Heike Liss

Heike Liss works in a variety of traditional and new media, including video, photography, drawing, sculpture, site-specific installation and public intervention. An anthropologist by training, her biggest inspiration is everyday life — the world and the people around her. She collaborates with creative artists of all persuasions, and since 2014 has performed live visuals with her long time co-conspirator and travelling companion Fred Frith.

Susana Santos Silva by Christer Männikus

Susana Santos Silva is a trumpeter, improviser and composer from Porto (Portugal) and one of the strongest emerging voices in contemporary jazz and improvisation. She has been traveling, recording and performing with many amazing musicians for the last several years and is very happy with her life!

I hardly distinguish my professional life from my personal life. Everything is mixed up. I feel a great desire to keep doing new things, trying new things. We are always looking at the edge of an abyss. It can always go wrong, but that also gives us some adrenaline. Susana Santos Silva

www.ccutler.com

www.fredfrith.com

www.timhodgkinson.co.uk

www.susanasantossilva.com

Diego Espinosa

FRIDAY, May 6

10pm – Diego Espinosa: Items, Machines and the Performing Body as Instruments (program: Applebaum, Espinosa, Lach, Morales Murguia, Schwitters, Veličković) @ Theatre &TD semicircular hall (60′)

Diego Espinosa ©Tokyo Wonder Site photo by Toshiya Tsuda

Diego Espinosa Cruz González is a multi-percussionist/sound artist dedicated to expand the boundaries of contemporary performance practice through sound exploration. His works and experiments with a wide range of visual artists, music technologists and theatrical/physical percussion repertoire has led him to focus a great deal of energy on projects wherein the visual component of a composition is as important or even equal partner to the music. Espinosa has performed in all five continents collaborating with contrasting artists such as Pierre Boulez, John Zorn, Steve Reich and John Luther Adams. He has received international awards such as Performance Grand Prize at the Tokyo Experimental Festival Vol. 8 (playing music by Hugo Morales Murguia) and 2nd Prize at the International Gaudeamus Interpreters Competition. Espinosa founded, among other groups, The Electronic Hammer computer-percussion trio and Ear Massage percussion quartet. He was a steady member of cutting edge Dutch ensembles Slagwerk Den Haag, Atlas Ensemble, Ziggurat, SOIL, and Amsterdam Percussion Group.

Espinosa holds a Doctorate in Musical Arts (DMus) from McGill University, Montreal and a Masters from the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. He is a member of Liminar ensemble and the theater company Todas las fiestas de Mañana acting, playing and composing. Currently he is the musical director and performer of UNDERLINE, a new music-theatre coproduction of Oper Berlin and Munich Biennale with music by Hugo Morales Murguia to be presented in July 2016. He has recorded CDs and DVDs for Mode Records, Tzadik, Cantalloupe, Col legno, EMF, ENCORA, Karnatic Lab, Artek, EtCetera, and Navona Records.

Diego Espinosa

I constantly explore the boundaries of my practice. This implies challenging who I am by changing how I do things. In essence I use the performing body to explore the limits between categories and stereotypes, for example choreography and music, improvisation and fixed composition, poetry and music, invented instruments and the human body. In this concert the only conventional instrument used is the human body, these are some of the thoughts that spin around this program:

Running the risk of being electrocuted on stage is not a joke… However, the schizophrenic idea of living in constant danger may be ironized by approaching self-security devices musically.

As a multi-percussionist I am interested in the invention and modification of objects and instruments for musical purposes. In this sense, conventional musical instruments may be approached in different ways in order to produce new music and, in the same way, invented or modified instruments might lead to innovative ways of music performance where the player’s body is divided in acoustic and electronic tasks split between mouth, fingers, hands and feet respectively. Guajex, sUn and Modes of Assisted Ventillation use this platform in different ways.

How may a piece, where no sound is physically produced, be considered both a live music performance and a dance performance? Applebaum’s Aphasia was written ironically for a singer. It critics both, any famous pop-singer doing playback for an audience, as well as, the academic cult of high-tech-sensor-based music. This musically written choreography is polemic. Diego Espinosa

Diego Espinosa ©Tokyo Wonder Site photo by Toshiya Tsuda

Programme:

Diego Espinosa: Electro-cute (2016)

for stun guns

Kurt Schwitters: Ursonate (1928-32)

for voice, 1^st mov.

Hugo Morales Murguia: Modes of Assisted Ventilation (2014)

for intubated flute and white noise

Juan Sebastian Lach and Diego Espinosa: Guajex (2013)

for custom electronic instrument

Jasna Veličković and Diego Espinosa: sUn (2013)

for magnets and coils

Mark Applebaum: Aphasia-Dialogue (2010)

for a singer (custom choreography by Diego Espinosa)

Black Page Orchestra

FRIDAY, May 6

8,30pm – Black Page Orchestra (program: Glojnarić, Ivičević, Kranebitter, Muntendorf, Schubert) @ MM Centre (60′)

Black Page Orchestra

The Black Page Orchestra, founded 2014 in Vienna, is an ensemble for radical and uncompromising music of current times. The name derives from Frank Zappa’s composition The Black Page, a piece which score is due to the high density of notes and musical events nearly a black paper. Beside this clear aesthetical approach the ensemble focuses on compositions using electronics, video and different technologies in an artistic context as well as pieces with performative character.

The presented works are all compositions by composers which work extensively with technology as part of their aesthetic. The multimedia aspect of this works reflect the technological confrontation as well as the hyper-medialisation of the modern world. The use of cameras depict the coexistence of different realities as well of the simultaneity of actions. The extremely dense, fragmented, hyper-dense sounds emphasize the speed and fragmentation of the perceived reality. The connected world allows us to be part of many different layers of actions at once, but at the same time this possibility creates a void; a solitude.

Black Page Orchestra

Programme:

Brigitta Muntendorfer: Public Privacy #1: Flute Cover (2013)
Mirela Ivičević: RELAX! You’re going to die. (Nihilist Summer) (2015)
Sara Glojnarić: Indispensable Ms. Jones (2016) *premiere | commissioned by the Showroom of Contemporary Sound
Matthias Kranebitter: Top 10 (form as neurosis) (2012)
Alexander Schubert: HELLO (2014)

Black Page Orchestra: Alessandro Baticci (flutes), Maiken Beer (cello), Kaja Farszky (percussion), Matthias Kranebitter (electronics), Peter Mayer (electric guitar), Alfredo Ovalles (piano/keyboard)

www.blackpageorchestra.org

Black Page Orchestra

4DSOUND/ Spatial Sound Institute in Budapest

For the 4th edition of its festival, Showroom of Contemporary Sound in Zagreb hosts a special programme in collaboration with 4DSOUND at the Spatial Sound Institute in Budapest.

The Spatial Sound Institute is a new centre for research and development in the fields of spatial sound and immersive sonic environments. The Institute has been established by 4DSOUND, a collective that has been pushing the boundaries of spatial sound technology since 2008. 4DSOUND has developed a fully omnidirectional sound environment where sound can move infinitely distant or intimately close: it moves around, as well as above, beneath, in between or right through the listener.

Spatial Sound Institute in Budapest

As one of the highlights of the programme features the presentation of Persepolis (1971) by Iannis Xenakis, in a new spatial interpretation for 4DSOUND by French composer and multimedia artist Eric Raynaud a.k.a. Fraction. Xenakis’s original setting of Persepolis for the castle of Darius in Iran took the listeners on a journey along different rooms of the castle. Xenakis wanted to literally ‘fill’ the spaces with sound, overwhelm the listeners in a sounding ritual where one would lose conscious perception of time and space. Raynaud works as a sculptor with the sounds, experiments with rhythm deconstruction, timbral chaos and apparent disorder, exploring state-of-the-art spatial sound techniques to bring out the animality and brutal immersion of the original work.

Iannis Xenakis

Commissioned by Showroom of Contemporary Sound, Croatian multimedia artist Davor Sanvincenti premieres a new work created during a 3-week residency at the Spatial Sound Institute. Sanvincenti is interested in the field of audiovisual phenomenology, particularly focused on the conditions and forms of human senses. He plays with the concept of illusion, exploring the possible boundaries of perception and the construction of experience.

Davor Sanvincenti

Gábor Lázár is a composer and performer of electronic music from Budapest that has caught the attention of international press and audiences the past years, with his singular and abstract approach to sound. Lázár’s work Omnidirectional Synthesis establishes a close connection between pure sound synthesis and our perception of space.

Gabor Lazar

Judit Emese Konopás got in touch with the meaning of space during her studies as an architect. Her further interests widely spreads into the conceptual connections between different genres such as architecture, art, music, photography and contemporary dance. In her recent work Earnest Endeavour, created during her recent residency at the Spatial Sound Institute, she collects, connects and layers shreds of memory captured in sound, allowing them to form a new spatial identity. While moving through them, we are invited to discover those spaces that are hidden within the sounds themselves.

Judit Emese Konopás

In 2013, composer and 4DSOUND founder Paul Oomen created a series of spatial reinterpretations of classical compositions with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra. The work Pathetique transforms the rich orchestral sound palette of Tchaikovsky’s 6th Symphony into an organically evolving, generative sound landscape.

Paul Oomen

As a preparation to the programme, Oomen will give an introductory lecture about the 4DSOUND system, the internal workings of space and sound, and the importance of spatial listening in our everyday perceptions and interactions.

In order to visit Spatial Sound Institute in Budapest we have organized bus from Zagreb to Budapest. To travel with us you have to participate in travel costs with the amount of 100,00kn. You can buy tickets at Theatre &TD’s box office (phone: +385 1 4593510), Student Centre, address: Savska cesta 25, 10 000 Zagreb, from 11am-1 pm, in the evening hours according to schedule: April 28th ( Thursday) from 7.30-9.30 pm and every night during the festival: from 7 -10,30pm.

The departure is set for 8th of May at 9am from Student centre (Savska 25), and planned return to Zagreb is around 10pm the same day.

No additional entrance fee.

All info: danijela.andrijasevic@sczg.hr

No additional entrance fee.

Prostorno zvučni institut u Budimpešti!

4dsound.net
gaborlazar.com
messmatik.net/
http://www.fractionmusic.com/
http://www.4dsound.net/ssi-events/2016/2/1/earnest-endeavour-judit-emese-konopas
http://www.4dsound.net/artist/paul-oomen

Robert Barry – lectures & workshop

Robert Barry

Robert Barry – lectures and workshop

Monday, May 2, at 7pm

Lecture: How To Write About Contemporary Music (Without Boring Your Readers) @ Academy of Music, Stančić hall (4^th floor, room no. 439)

Since getting a review published in a magazine called Making Music at the age of 16, Robert Barry has been writing about music for almost twenty years. How to write a pitch, how to get published, how to structure a review, an interview, or an opinion piece, and most important of all, how to make people want to read what you’ve written. These and other questions will be addressed with examples and practical advice.

Tuesday, May 3, at 6pm

Lecture: The Future Of Music: How Criticism Changed Music – And Why It Needs To Change It Again @ Academy of Music, Huml hall (4^th floor, room no. 438)

It is often presumed that critics merely comment from the sidelines without ever really changing music itself. History proves otherwise. Drawing on two forthcoming books, his own The Music of the Future and The Digital Critic: Literary Culture Online, a volume of essays which he will be editing with Houman Barekat, Robert Barry will discuss the changing role of music criticism from the 18^th century to the present, with a focus on the transformative powers of the printed word and the drive to produce new sounds and new ways of making music.

Robert Barry is a freelance writer and composer based in London. He is a regular contributor to Frieze, The Wire, Art Review, Fact and Thump. Since 2015 he has edited the contemporary art section of The Quietus. His first book, Music in Text, a collection of prose scores for mixed ensembles, was released in 2014 by the Swedish small press publisher BCNVT. His second book, The Music of the Future, will be forthcoming from Repeater Books in 2017. He is also working on an edited volume of essays about criticism in the digital age for O/R Books, expected towards the end of 2016. Since spring 2015 he has also curated a series of experimental music and live art events under the name Zero Wave.

Along with the lectures that will be held before the official start of the Showroom, that are organized in collaboration with the Musicology department of the Academy of Music in Zagreb, this year’s festival guest Robert Barry will lead the active part of the workshop: feedback session for interested writers about music. We invite you to follow the Festival program and choose what you want to write about and in which form. It could be one or several concerts, the entire festival, artistic work of one of this year’s guests, Croatian contemporary music scene, … Robert Barry will give each of the participants a separate feedback on their text(s) at the closing feedback session that will take place on Monday, May 9, from 11am till 2pm at the SEK hall of the Theatre &TD. The workshop is open and intended equally for experienced music writers and critics, as well as to those who would like to try writing about contemporary music. If you would like to take part actively, please apply by writing to danijela.andrijasevic@sczg.hr latest until May 4.
Entrance to the lectures is free for everyone, regardless whether you take part in the active program.

Programme in collaboration with Musicology Department of the Academy of Music in Zagreb.