29th Edition of Tage Neuer Musik in Weimar: Global – Local

Klang Projekte Weimar e.V., Weimar, Germany

Once again supported by the EvS Music Foundation in 2016 the New Music festival Tage Neuer Musik in Weimar has been dedicated to a special theme every year since its inception in 1988. This year the theme is: Global – Local. In focus here will be world-spanning development perspectives in contemporary music as well as questions about the meaning of composition in the digital age. These aspects will be examined in seven programs.
The Minguet Quartet will juxtapose compositions by Wolfgang Rihm, Roberto Rusconi, Konstantia Gourzi and Peter Ruzicka. The program of Berlin pianist Frank Gutschmidt will focalize the extension of piano sound and he will perform a new work by Hans Tutschku alongside solo versions from Karlheinz Stockhausen’s LICHT cycle.
Stuttgart’s OPEN_MUSIC QUARTETT will be presenting a work by Indian-German composer Sandeep Bhagwa as well as another piece by Hans Tutschku.
Picking up on the festival theme there will also be an improvisation project that draws horizontal and vertical links around the globe by dovetailing cultural origins and improvisation approaches. The two musicians Geoff Gersh and Joss Turnbull are familiar with both the western and Asian or oriental music tradition. Both strike a balance between tradition and experimentation via instruments such as the Japanese samisen lute and the Iranian tombak cup drum. Ludger Hennig and Stefan Schultze explore electroacoustic or analog transformation of the instrumental sounds and thereby pursue approaches to improvisation strategies. The result is cross pollination and dovetailing between differing playing techniques, linking these into a simultaneous sound. Founded 35 years ago as the “Ensemble für Intuitive Musik Weimar” (EFIM), and hosted since then in 30 countries, the ensemble brought back numerous soundscapes from its travels that are characteristic of the acoustic identity of each of these places. From this pool of local and global soundscapes a multi-strand sound composition is formed in real time where live electronic treatment plays a considerable role.
The good collaboration between the Studio für elektroakustische Musik (SEAM) at Weimar’s music academy Hochschule für Musik and the city’s Bauhaus University will be continued with two concerts by the Lautsprecherorchester at Coudraystraße 13A. The 90^th birthday of Francis Dhomont, a founding father of acoustic music, will be celebrated here who, alongside Karlheinz Stockhausen, Henry Pousseur and Christian Wolff, is among the festival’s honorary patrons. In addition to this there will be a program where current works by composition students from Harvard University Studio for Electroacoustic Composition (HUSEAC) and the Studio für elektroakustische Musik Weimar (SEAM) will be presented.

10/26-29/2016
Jugend- und Kulturzentrum mon ami, Weimar

10/28-29/2016
Studio für elektroakustische Musik SEAM, Weimar

Further Information:
www.neue-musik-thueringen.de