Nicolas Collins, Alvin Lucier, Arnold Dreyblatt & The Orchestra of Excited Strings

Experimental electronics, acoustic resonances, unusual instruments and extended tunes are the focus of the three-part concert at Berghain.

Nicolas Collins, one of the pioneers of “Handmade Electronics”, will acoustically explore the concert hall of the gutted former power plant at Berghain with his piece and perform together with Reinhold Friedl on the piano. In “Roomtone”, the natural frequencies of the hall will be mapped in real time from a computer using acoustic feedback and projected as graphic notation. The musician begins to play variations via spatial frequencies transformed into notes, moving step by step through a place-specific, or architecturally influenced, tone series.

Together with Volker Straebel, Nicolas Collins then realizes “The Bird of Bremen Flies Through the Houses of the Burghers”, a computer-controlled sound environment which Alvin Lucier conceived in 1972 – as one of the protagonists of the then sensational Sonic Arts Union – for Pro Musica Nova in Bremen.

In the third part of the concert, the “Orchestra of Excited Strings” ensemble established by Berlin-based American Arnold Dreyblatt is a crossover of Minimal, Krautrock and experimental electronics with its self-made instruments and extended playing techniques. At MaerzMusik, four musicians forming the ensemble take to the stage: Dreyblatt himself plays his Excited Strings Bass, Jörg Hiller introduces his digitally controlled motor-guitar, Joachim Schütz can be heard on the modified electric guitar and musician and composer Robin Hayward on his unique microtonal tuba. They perform new as well as early experimental solo and ensemble works.

Nicolas Collins
Roomtone Variations
for computer and instrumentalists (2013)
Version for piano at Berghain (2014) WP

Alvin Lucier
The Bird of Bremen Flies Through the Houses of the Burghers (1972)
Realisation for fixed media by Nicolas Collins and Volker Straebel (2014) WP
Commissioned work by Elektronic Studio of the TU Berlin, Audio Communication Group, with the support of the DAAD

Arnold Dreyblatt & The Orchestra of Excited Strings

Konrad Sprenger (Jörg Hiller)
Litotes (2012)

Arnold Dreyblatt
Nodal Excitation (1979)

Ensemble Compositions
Spedition
Fast in Place
Odd Shuffle
Sustain
Name Game

Reinhold Friedl, piano (Roomtone Variations)

Arnold Dreyblatt & The Orchestra of Excited Strings:
Arnold Dreyblatt, “excited string bass” / electronics
Konrad Sprenger (Jörg Hiller), percussion / digitally controlled electric guitar
Joachim Schütz, modified electric guitar
Robin Hayward, microtonal tuba