Luka Juhart

May 10th, Saturday

19h – Luka Juhart (programme: Globokar, Juhart, Demetz, Fuentes, Šaljić Podešva) @ &TD semicircular (60′)

Accordionist Luka Juhart (1982) studied at the Trossingen Music Academy and the Würzburg University of Music in Germany (Hugo Noth and Stefan Hussong). He regularly records for various radio stations and performs across Europe. He has appeared with ensembles such as Camerata Zuerich, Windkraft Ensemble, Avanture Ensemble, Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra etc. Juhart attaches great importance to working with contemporary composers. He collaborates with many composers (Rojko, Globokar, Larcher, Huber, Demetz, Mahnkopf).

Program:

Luka Juhart: hrUP (2013.), za Vinka

Bojana Šaljić Podešva: Abstinenca 3 (2014.) *praizvedba

Arturo Fuentes: Getmove (2011., obr. 2014.) *praizvedba

Eduard Demetz: 4 Tracks (2013.) *praizvedba

Vinko Globokar: Dialog o zraku (1994.)

The basic mean of expression in the work of composer Bojana Šaljić Podešva (1978) is electroacoustic music, regarding fixed-recorded 2- or more channel compositions, as well as real-time treatment of instrumental or vocal sound and music installation. Another important domain of her work represents music in relation to contemporary visual and performing.

Arturo Fuentes (Mexico, 1975) arrived in Europe in 1997; his musical path led him from Milan, Paris and Vienna to his current home in Innsbruck. He has studied with Franco Donatoni in Milan and Horacio Vaggione in Paris. He composes instrumental and electronic music, and conceives new musical theater projects that combine dance, video and electronics.

The feature of Getmove is quickness. I am interested in creating a shifting texture containing several sound dimensions: we hear the noise of the keys that are mixed with the air and the real sound. I am also interested in the accordion dark color projection in the lower register; for me, it is like a line of sonic color that takes off upward. Regularity and irregularity, density and lightness, are at the center of this piece. (Arturo Fuentes)

Eduard Demetz studied piano and orchestra-conducting at the Mozarteum. He has also worked on several movie, theatre and tv productions. His pieces have been performed by acclaimed ensmbles and orchestras. He is Artistic Director of the “valgardenamusica“ festival and vice president of the “Transart“ festival of contemporary culture.

The 4 Tracks are dedicated to Luka Juhart whose quest for the instrumental perfection, refined feeling for the sound, as well as his openness to experimentation have inspired me for composing these four tracks. Tracks is a piece characterized by fragmentation, living out of the player’s desire to „grab the keys“. Music is created in real time through electronic manipulation of the fragments of the accordion part.

Afroditi Psarra: Noisy Textiles Workshop

May 10-11, from 2pm to 8pm at the SC Club

Organizers: Radiona.org, Kontejner & Gallery Močvara, Music Showroom of the Culture of Change, SC

Noisy Textiles Workshop is an introduction to the world of soft, textile electronic sets with the use of programmable Arduino microcontrolers, digital electronics and  conductive materials. During the workshop the participants will take part in creating prototypes and they will explore the process of application of electronics to textile, creating wearable synthesisers/controlers with an 8-byte sound, that is, playing on clothes.

Afroditi Psarra (GR) is a multidisciplinary artist and a PhD student in the field of image, technology and design. Her work explores limits between tradition and handcraft, creative coding and sonic experimenting with movement and dance. Psarra’s work includes several medias, from electronic knitting to wearable technology and smart clothes for interactive installations and audio performances. Until now she has presented her work at some of the prominent new media festivals such as Amber in Istanbul, PIKSEL in Bergen, Transmediale and CTM in Berlin, Electropixel in Nantes, MakerFaire in Rome, etc. She is currently doing her practical training in the Disney center in Zürich. She is mostly known for her embroidered Korg synthesiser named LilyKorg and the interactive wearable object for the Idoru performers.

John Chantler

May 10th, Saturday

23.30h, – John Chantler @ &TD semicircular (30′)

Originally from Australia but now a long-time UK resident after a stint in Japan, Chantler will release his third solo LP for the ROOM40 label in May 2014. ‘Even Clean Hands Damage the Work’ (recorded for the most part at the hallowed EMS studios in Stockholm) follows ‘The Luminous Ground’ – released in 2011 and included in The WIRE magazine’s top releases of that year. That was his first LP release focusing on the analog/digital modular synth system he first explored as part of the trio LP with Lawrence English and Tujiko Noriko – 2009′s ‘U’. The second volume in his Automatic Music series was released in January 2014 via The Tapeworm. Live, he patches a versatile system capable of self-generated, shifting patterns of sliding arpeggios and visceral noise, pointillist interjections and infinitely variable texture.

John Chantler from Gianmarco Del Re on Vimeo.

Links: http://www.inventingzero.net | www.room40.org

Artist talk:Hilary Jeffery

May 9th, Friday

20.30h– Artist talk: Hilary Jeffery, moderated by Petar Milat (30′) @ &TD semicircular hall

Artist talk: John Tilbury

There is an Artist talk after Tilbury’s performance by academician Nikša Gligo.

Hommage to Dragan Pajic Pajo

May 7th, wednesday

22.15h – Hommage to Dragan Pajić – Paj0 @ &TD big hall (75′)

More than 15 Croatian musicians and multimedia artists will perform on the first night of the Festival in the honour of the early deceased experimental music guitar player, Dragan Pajić – Pajo, founder of the cult group Cul-de-Sac and the inevitable member, frequently also the initiator, of Zagreb’s experimental and improvisation music scene. Together with the members of the Eclectic Expressionism Project, he also took part at the last year’s Showroom. Members of this project are Pajo’s close friends, musicians with whom he collaborated during the past 30 years of a very active and interesting music career. Formally, the concert has several parts, starting from the early line-up of Cul-de-Sac, followed by a performance of Pajo’s collaborators from his electronic and electroacoustic phase, and finally his Orchestra for an Accelerated  Evolution, and it also includes video screening of an animated film by Nicole Hewitt and a slideshow by Nikola Vincelj Jinx.

Ivan Marušić Klif, Mario Barišin, Darko Rundek, Andreja Košavić, Damir Prica Kafka, Igor Pavlica, Miro Manojlović, Sven Buić, Franjo Glušac, Snježana Ghallo, Luka Persić, Bruno Vorberger, Višeslav Laboš and Vedran Peternel are just the core of the group of musicians who will perform in honour of a dear friend and colleague, Dragan Pajić – Pajo.

http://radio.hrt.hr/treci-program/ep/eksperimentalna-muzikografija-1-povijest/64534/

2 OF HALF IN 1: Goran Jurković and Danijel Detoni

 May 7th, wednesday

21h – 2 OF HALF IN 1: Goran Jurković and Danijel Detoni(program: Gamisch, Lauba, Detoni, Rzewski,

Glojnarić, Dedić, Kranebitter) @ MM Centre (60′)

Goran Jurković is a musician who pays equal attention to all the instruments in the saxophone family. He often gets lost looking for his own musical expression, so he turns to his colleagues from the sax quartets Papandopulo and Mobilis for help. He is happy to take advices, but wether it reaches him or not, you can conclude for yourself listening to his concert.

Danijel Detoni, also known as Dis (D sharp in Croatian), Danči or Danula, tortures people with his play and does the same to the younger generation in his pedagogical monologues. He likes to cook and read and is a passionate FC Barcelona supporter.

Pianist Danijel Detoni (master’s degree at the Liszt Ferenc University in Budapest) is a remarkable soloist, but also a passionate chamber musician, with numerous awards to support that claim (State competition Leó Weiner in Budapest in 2003; Award by the Israeli Isman Foundation for exceptional interpretation of music by György Ligeti, in 2006; he was awarded Best Young Musician Award in 2008, by Jeunesse Musicales Croatia, etc.). Since 2009 he has been teaching at the Music Academy in Zagreb.

Julian Gamisch: unten! (2010), performed by: Goran Jurković

Natural harmonics as an inspiration or a composition. A single tone inspired the composer to the extent that he devoted the entire piece to it.

Christian Lauba: Hard (1988), performed by: Goran Jurković

Tenor saxophone in its full power, from deafening fortissimo to rhythmic piano dynamics, and all throughout inspired by Bach and r’n'b? Perhaps not, but it doesn’t matter. Each piece is a universe for itself and each interpretation a mere part of this universe.

Dubravko Detoni: 22 per 2 in 2 (1983), performed ba: Goran Jurković and Danijel Detoni

Saxophone and piano finally united in 22 musical images.

Frederic Rzewski: Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues (1979), performed by: Danijel Detoni

American composer and pianist Frederic Rzewski (1938)uses the melody of this industrial folk song as the basis for the last of his Four North American Ballads for solo piano, which he completed in 1979. In the cycle Rzewski sets four American folk songs that are linked with activist movements in American history. He is known for making political content explicit in his music, and his choices of songs to set reflect a stance of solidarity with the working class. The origins for Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues are traced to the 1930s when workers at plant in Winnsboro, South Carolina first began coining verses.

When I die don’t bury me at all
Just hang me up on the spoolroom wall.
Place a knotter in my hand
So I can keep on spoolin’ in the Promised Land.

I got the Blues, I got the Blues,
I got the Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues.
Lordy, Lordy, spoolin’s hard.
You know and I know, I don’t have to tell
Work for Tom Watson, got to work like hell

I got the Blues, I got the Blues,
I got the Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues.
—“Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues”

The lyrics are intended to provoke sympathy for the hardship of factory labour and promote solidarity among the workers. Although Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues, as a solo piano piece, does not state the lyrics explicitly, Rzewski conveys their subtle meanings through compositional techniques, situating the pianist as the song’s protagonist.

Sara Glojnarić: Movie Script Endings (2010), performed by: Danijel Detoni

Sara Glojnarić is finishing her studies in composition with Davorin Kempf at the Music Academy in Zagreb, but her music was already widely performed by a number of musicians, it is on several records and has been presented at a number of significant music festivals. She is organizing the students’ concert series Code:new, as a part of the HR Project, that focuses on the collaboration between the composition students and the other Music Academy students. Sara is the Croatian representative at the International Rostrum of Composers, in the cathegory of composers under 30. She was also chosen to write pieces for the International Young Flute Players Competition Flauta Aurea. Since 2014 she holds a scholarship of the Rudolf and Margita Matz Foundation of the Croatian Composers’ Society. She is currently studying composition at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Stuttgart, with Michael Reudenbach, as a part of the International Students Exchange Programme ERASMUS.

Movie Script Endings is one of my earlier pieces, from the begining of my composition studies. It has two contrast movements and deals with the question of a possible ending of a story. I wanted to present a sort of a director’s cut – if only a thing in the story goes in different direction, the entire story (and it’s end) changes completely.

Srđan Dedić: All that Blues (2000), performed by: Danijel Detoni

After graduating composition at the Music Academy in Zagreb with Stanko Horvat, Srđan Dedić continued his studies at the Strasbourg University(François-Bernard Mâche), at the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam (Geert van Keulen) and in Tokio (Joji Yuas).

His pieces were performed by renowed orchestras and performers like: The Bruxelles Philharmonic, Louisville Simphony Orchestra, Prague Simphony Orchestra, Korean Chamber Orchestra, Zagreb Philharmonic, simphony orchestras of the Croatian and of Slovenian Radiotelevision, Cantus Ensemble, Penderecki String Quartet, Monika Leskovar and others. He won a number of prizes and awards: first prizes at the International Composers Tribine of the UNESCO in Paris (1988), MBZ festival Award for student orchestral pieces (1989), HGZ Award (1990), first prize at the 29th Contemporary Music Festival in Indiana (1995), Jury’s Award of the International Society for Contemporary Music (1997 and 2012), Josip Štolcer Slavenski Award (213) etc. Since 2005 he has been teaching at the Composition and Music Theory Section of the Music Academy of the Uniersity in Zagreb.

A fascinating 12-bar harmonic progression has been the foundation of musical improvisation for over a century now to musicians from blues, jazz and other music genres. In the piece All That Blues this progression has become a harmonic base for 5 variations that use elements of my experience of contemporary music, and they also contain a certain kind of blues sound. The variations are separated by the contemplative motive in the bass register. The piece was composed for the Dutch pianist Marcel Worms, who recorded the piece on an album of contemporary music inspired by blues, titled New Blues For Piano, while the score was published by the American.German publisher Peermusic. (S.D.)

Matthias Kranebitter: Nihilistic Studies 4-6 (2013), performed by: Danijel Detoni

Austrian composer Matthias Kranebitter studied electroacoustic composition in Vienna with Dieter Kaufmann, German Toro-Perez, media composition with Klaus Peter Sattler and piano with Chriastiana Karaeva. He did his postgraduate study on Contemporary music through non-western techniques at the Conservatory in Amsterdam with Rafael Reina, while he studied composition with Fabio Neider. Returning to Austria in 2009, he took classes with Alexander Stanovski and Beat Furrer at the University of Music in Graz.

The title of the piece, Nihilistic studies 4-6 (piano as neurosis) is a contradiction with intent. Whereas the form of a study pretends to be an academic investigation, the term “nihilism” points to the complete opposite direction, the disengagement of any kind of dogmatic concepts, the liberati on and negation of rules, even of common sense.

MIRELA IVIČEVIĆ: PLANET 8

May 11th, Sunday

20h – M. Ivičević: Planet 8 @ &TD  semicircular(50′)

20.50h– Artist talk: Mirela Ivičević, moderated by Ingrid Pustijanac @ polukružna dvorana Teatra

Scenic suite Planet 8 by Mirela Ivičević won her the “Josip Štolcer Slavenski” Prize awarded by the City of Čakovec for the best achievement in music in the year 2013.

“Among the pieces of the Croatian composers that had their first performance in 2013, Mirela Ivičević’s Planet 8 stands out from the rest, with its innovative character and authenticity… Although Planet 8 is primary music for the stage, the musical segment of the piece functions as an autonomous whole. In its “building up a new sound world of ruins of the real and existing musical elements”, Ivičević doesn’t limit herself only to “conventional” sounds of a soprano, violin, saxophone and percussion, but, through a process of ceaselessly curious and playful exploring, adds sounds of the electroacoustic provenience, as well as those of “unconventional” sources – the performers’ bodies. Musicality of these sounds (noises and even “silences”) in the context of the performance is often in the function of the scene, but this “scenicity” ultimately goes back to music itself, as the basis for all the other elements of this masterly written piece, comprising all art forms, emerge.”

Planet 8 alias Operation Neptune: theatre suite for ensemble and (self-) reflection. A child of mixed marriage of critical and sound experience of the world. Close relative of Mauricio Kagel’s instrumental theatre and archetypal Neptune, sound as a means of expression is most commonly associated with. Recycling fellow, it uses everything it sees and hears, it is tolerant and does not censor. It does not save, it questions everything that it gets hold of, even the one in whose mental galaxy it was born. It is a natural habitat of musicians who are not afraid of reality, but who, in search of subversive power of music, use the fragments of reality and existing musical instruments to build a new audio-visual world. That world is confusing, upsetting, encouraging and it makes us laugh: at the same time it is a mirror of a not-always-ideal reality, but also of the inexhaustible source of possibilities of its transformation.

Concept, music and text: Mirela Ivičević

Stage Movement Advisor: Petra Hrašćanec

Lighting design: Bojan Gagić

Stage manager & dramaturgical advisor: Vedran Hleb

Producer: Davorka Begović

Performers: Kaja Farszky (percussion), Goran Jurković (saxophone), Dunja Delač (violin, voice), Marija Lešaja (soprano)

Production: Student Centre Zagreb (University of Zagreb) – Culture of Change – Music Showroom

“Four young musicians take part in the performance: by some – excellent, in our opinion – genious, sensational and exhilarating.” Branimir Pofuk, Večernji List

The composer Mirela Ivičević (Split, 1980) graduated Composition from the Academy of Music in Zagreb and she finished her postgraduate studies at Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Wien. She is the author of acoustic, electroacoustic and intermedia works, sound installations, music for film and theatre, and two operas (The Threefairlady Opera, MBZ 2007 and Karussell, ISCM/WienModern 2013). The majority of her works are conceptual and interdisciplinary works, dealing primarily with the role of sound in social and political context, in which she often uses acoustic side effects of modern society.

Her works have been performed all over Europe, North and South America. She won University of Zagreb’s Rector’s Prize (Phantom no.3, 2004), Theodor Körner Prize (Ace of diamonds, 2010), Rudolf Matz Prize (2010), as well as ISCM Prize for her Vocaltheater Composition (Gender)Bender 9,99 (2011). In collaboration with Gordan Tudor, she has been organizing the international festival of contemporary music Dani Nove Glazbe Split since 2010.