MaerzMusik – Festival of Contemporary Music
3 to 13 March 2005
MaerzMusik – international festival for present-day music under the roof of Berliner Festspiele – sees itself as a platform presenting the multifaceted currents within the spectrum of Contemporary Music in a contrastive as well as dialogic exchange. Committed to the various positions, forms, discourses and developments that nowadays condition composing and the processing of musical material, the focus of MaerzMusik encompasses at times intermedial but also non-European and historical forms. In the comparatively short time since its foundation, the festival has been able to paint a complex and vivid picture of present-day musical creation; another of its achievements has been the attraction of an ever increasing audience to the realms of Contemporary Music.
In 2005, about 40 different projects will be staged, including a number of world premieres, commissioned works, and German first performances. Also this year’s programme will be divided up into several thematic strands, spinning between them a web of manifold artistic and discursive references. MUSIC - VOICE - TEXT - a subject matter that like a red thread will link numerous works that leave the beaten track of composition on the look-out for extraordinary ways of a masked or overt transcription of text modules and vocal articulation into musical structures. Closely linked to this topic is also INSTITUTE FOR LIVING VOICE, initiated by David Moss; concerts and performances, but also lectures, workshops and discussions with the audience will reveal the inexhaustible potential of the human voice in a most ingenious as well as articulate fashion. Dealing with the voice are also the musicians that have been invited under the regionally orientated motto MUSICA BRASILEIRA DESCOMPOSTA. Their forte is the manipulation of popular as well as traditional forms of Brazilian music in an approach characterized by allusions, deconstruction and wit. The graphic production of sound in space is at the centre of MUSIC AND SPACE. The new major work by Carsten Nicolai, syn chron - an architectonic body as an interface for light and sound - will be shown in the upper hall of Neue Nationalgalerie. Two works linking the two major themes of the festival - Text/Voice and Space - are Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf’s Hommage à Thomas Pynchon, a gradual transformation from concert to musical installation, and INSIDE A NATIVE LAND by Sandeep Bhagwati, a piece based on an anagrammatic poem consisting of 9 letters. A breathtaking performance will be Benedict Mason’s felt | ebb | thus | brink | here | array | telling, where visual as well as sculptural music is played by 48 musicians on more than 600 (!) self-designed instruments; venue will be the old factory workshop at Oberschöneweide. At the beginning of the festival we will meet again with one of the most outstanding ensembles of New Music. In compensation for its 15-years absence, the LONDON SINFONIETTA is going to present a double programme. The opening concert will show the ensemble as sprightly as ever, presenting a well-designed concert combining newly arranged digital music and video images by renowned artists of the London Warp label with classics of Contemporary Music. The end of the festival will be marked by a musical celebration in honour of DIETER SCHNEBEL: the world premiere of his Sinfonie X in its extended and completed version on the eve of his 75th birthday - a utopian work, pushing back the boundaries of everything ordinary.
In 2005, about 40 different projects will be staged, including a number of world premieres, commissioned works, and German first performances. Also this year’s programme will be divided up into several thematic strands, spinning between them a web of manifold artistic and discursive references. MUSIC - VOICE - TEXT - a subject matter that like a red thread will link numerous works that leave the beaten track of composition on the look-out for extraordinary ways of a masked or overt transcription of text modules and vocal articulation into musical structures. Closely linked to this topic is also INSTITUTE FOR LIVING VOICE, initiated by David Moss; concerts and performances, but also lectures, workshops and discussions with the audience will reveal the inexhaustible potential of the human voice in a most ingenious as well as articulate fashion. Dealing with the voice are also the musicians that have been invited under the regionally orientated motto MUSICA BRASILEIRA DESCOMPOSTA. Their forte is the manipulation of popular as well as traditional forms of Brazilian music in an approach characterized by allusions, deconstruction and wit. The graphic production of sound in space is at the centre of MUSIC AND SPACE. The new major work by Carsten Nicolai, syn chron - an architectonic body as an interface for light and sound - will be shown in the upper hall of Neue Nationalgalerie. Two works linking the two major themes of the festival - Text/Voice and Space - are Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf’s Hommage à Thomas Pynchon, a gradual transformation from concert to musical installation, and INSIDE A NATIVE LAND by Sandeep Bhagwati, a piece based on an anagrammatic poem consisting of 9 letters. A breathtaking performance will be Benedict Mason’s felt | ebb | thus | brink | here | array | telling, where visual as well as sculptural music is played by 48 musicians on more than 600 (!) self-designed instruments; venue will be the old factory workshop at Oberschöneweide. At the beginning of the festival we will meet again with one of the most outstanding ensembles of New Music. In compensation for its 15-years absence, the LONDON SINFONIETTA is going to present a double programme. The opening concert will show the ensemble as sprightly as ever, presenting a well-designed concert combining newly arranged digital music and video images by renowned artists of the London Warp label with classics of Contemporary Music. The end of the festival will be marked by a musical celebration in honour of DIETER SCHNEBEL: the world premiere of his Sinfonie X in its extended and completed version on the eve of his 75th birthday - a utopian work, pushing back the boundaries of everything ordinary.
