impuls . Academy 2019

impuls . 11th International Ensemble and Composers Academy for Contemporary Music 2019 (10. - 22.2.)

Summary 2019

Tutors, Ensembles, Lectures ... 2019

Participants 2019

Besides composers´ and instrumental classes, chamber music and ensemble work the impuls Academy always offers various special programs to its participants. Check a short summary here.

amongst others:

For the impuls Academy 2019 Simon Løffler offered a Special Workshop not only for composers, but also musicians, performers, sound- and multimedia-artists, organized as Workshop and Laboratory for experimentation as well as realization of individual (and partly also group-) projects. Artistic approaches integrating aspects such as visual, performative, installative, … , or also electronically driven ones, were paid particular attention and opened up new perspectives also for the core of the composition-process itself. Besides the role-model of a composer in a traditional sense were questioned and composers found themselves again as part of a collegue´s work and its realization. Thus, also the topic of collaboration and teamworking was touched, last but not least by sharing time, space, infrastructure, ideas and know-how amongst others.

Co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.

"Another Stage" thematized music beyond classical mainstream production, discussed questions of distribution, presentation and interaction, questioned the potential and specifics of "other" spaces (such as galleries and clubs, radio and online-platforms, public and private space just to name a few) and hereby also explored the comprehensive impact, that arises by the inner musical fields opening up to f.e. intermedia works, new and mixed media, sound art, performance, improvisation – all of that also to be seen as a potential philosophical or political statement as well. "Another Stage" thwarted the rituals of classical music life, questioned well-established expectations and habitutes, and met the challenge of new audiences, new spaces, new locations, new artistic approaches.

The Workshop circled around the central question, how percussion could be defined in the 21st century and which current forms and materials coin composition for percussion instruments nowadays. Does the function of percussionists change in the 21st century? There have been quite some new ideas about sound that developed during the last decades, which of course also lead to new demands in respect of percussion techniques and technical skills in general. How could different percussion music thus look beyond the organization of percussive selective sounds? At the same time, the "extension" suggested in the title should not be so much aimed at the expansion into the performative or multimedia, but rather at the concrete handling of materials and forms in the tonal and the associated formal processes.

Co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.

Algorithms That Matter (ALMAT) focused on the experimentation with algorithms and their embedding in live performances. Rather than conceiving algorithms as established building blocks (“live electronics”) or the formalisation of a compositional idea (“algorithmic composition”), the workshop looked at them as performing entities whose consequences are irreducible to models. Algorithms “matter” in the sense that matter and meaning cannot be distinguished, neither can artists and their computational tools. Algorithms actively produce spaces and temporalities which become entangled with their physical embeddings.

The 2019 edition of the workshop focused on the development of a site-specific sound installation. The installation explored the interactions of algorithmic and physical spaces and their dynamic and mutable properties. Participants worked on the premise that spaces and our perception of them change depending on presence, absence, the movement of visitors, the time of the day, the rhythm of the surroundings as well as the sonic and algorithmic interventions we bring into them.

This special program offered an active collaboration between musicians and composers, in which specifically a close communication between these two partners was explored and developed on several levels. Composer participants of impuls 2019 were invited to hand in new or already existing works, sketches or concepts for accordion solo to accordion quartet as well as duets to quartet for accordion in combination with clarinet, flute, saxophone and/or oboe. Selected pieces were analyzed and worked on in close collaboration with the musicians and under the coaching of Bernhard Gander and Krassimir Sterev, questions on general composition, notation, sonority, instrumental techniques respectively specifics as well as interpretation amongst others were discussed. The pieces were also rehearsed and presented during the Academy

Guitarist Mats Scheidegger and composer Dmitri Kourliandski proposed to all composition students to compose micro-pieces (from extremely short to very short pieces / one or more) for guitar solo (classical and/or e-guitar) directly during the Academy. Mats Scheidegger gave a special lecture / master class for composers to introduce guitar techniques and Dmitri Kourliandski introduced the concept of the Micro-music lab beforehand. Composers were then asked to start composing their micro-pieces, met again for feedback and first prima vista readings, continued to work and hereby developed the pieces together with the guitarists under the guidance of the tutors where needed, and came together again for a final meeting with everyone involved. The micro-pieces were then presented at a special concert occasion by the guitar participants. At this performance the micro-pieces hereby formed a composite- (macro-) piece.

Klangforum Wien and conductor Ilan Volkov worked on and discussed pieces with and by selected participants of the composition classes of the impuls Academy 2019.

Singers have their own position in the world of musicians. Compared to all others they have some advantages which enhance them in this prominent position: they can transport wonderful texts, the unity of instrument and musician is constitutional, their voices offer an endless palette of colours from pure beauty to crazy ugliness, they can shout, cry, scream, whistle, whine, laugh and jubilate. And all this without an instrument in our hands. What practically means that they have two free hands! Many composers take this chance to equip them with a lot of extra stuff, instruments, toys and other props to expand the possibilities of sound.

Composer participants of impuls 2019 were invited to write for maximum 6 female or unisex voices including special instruments, toys or other devices to be used by singers. At impuls 2019 they created a beautiful concert setting, in which a set of (new) pieces for different casts of voices happened: duos, trios, quartets… up to six voices with extra "instruments".

Anna D´Errico, pianist of Ensemble Interface, made a call for works written by participants of impuls 2019. Both pieces for piano solo and piano plus up to 3 additional instruments were welcome. The selected pieces were worked on together with the composers during the Academy and partly presented at the Festival.

In addition, Mrs. D´Errico also offered a Workshop-Forum open to all participants of impuls – both instrumentalists and composers – to discuss the pieces worked on, highlighting aspects of piano writing (such as sound possibilities, extended techniques, notation, strategies to communicate musical ideas in the score) and approaching issues of contemporary piano playing.

Composer participants of impuls 2019 were invited to hand in scores either for two violas or viola plus one more string instrument. Selected pieces were discussed, and rehearsed by Dimitrios Polisoidis and Geneviève Strosser as viola duo respectively one of them together with another string participant of the Academy and presented during the Academy.

Several pieces selected through a Call for Scores were included in reading-sessions respectively more extensive rehearsals by IEMA-Ensemble 2018/19 in close collaboration with the composers present during the Academy.

Co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.

For this program impuls set up a Call for Scores amongst impuls composer participants. Selected pieces were rehearsed by zone expérimentale basel already for a concert set up in Basel, before the project travelled to impuls, composers met up with the instrumentalists once more for further exchange and a final presentation was set up at the impuls Festival.

Commedia dell'ascolto is part of "Commedia delle arti" performance, composed for the Russian Pavilion of the Venice Biennale 2017.

All participants of the impuls Academy were invited to join the open performance of "Commedia dell’ascolto". Performers were given performance instructions and asked to perform in a specified or unspecified time in a specified or unspecified place. Performers could fix a certain time and place to join for a collective performance, or spread in time and space for individual ones. Short sounds/excerpts/gestures appearing time to time here and there during the Academy indoors or outdoors (throughout the city), created a rhythmisized field of hidden mental performance.