Untitled #20


for choir in five groups

2017/2018

32 minutes

World Premiere
May 12, 2018
maulwerker performing music
VOKALE RÄUME [VOCAL SPACES]

Ballhaus Ost Berlin



MAULWERKER & CHOIR Zoé Alibert, Dorothea Braun, Audrey Chen, Fernanda Farah, María Ferrara, Heather Frasch, Annie Gårlid, Katia Guedes, Ariane Jessulat, Henrik Kairies, Zoe Knights, Alexey Kokhanov, Olga Kozmanidze, Rebecca Lane, Renata Sachs, Heike Schmidt, Hanna Schörken, Ela Spalding, Tilmann Walzer, Steffi Weismann; conducted by Christian Kesten

[The composition was made possible 2015 through a grant by the Berlin Senate for Culture and Europe, the project was funded by musikfonds and initiative neue musik berlin.]

The analogy to electronic music was perhaps most evident in Christian Kesten's "Untitled #20". […] An ensemble expanded to twenty people performed, initially lining up. First, long monotonous breathings of quiet "hissing" were heard, each note taking on a new hue through changes in the formation of the mouth. Gradually the mouths "choreographed" each other in different movements so that several frequency spectrums were played against each other. The sonic expansiveness was further emphasised as the musicians moved around the stage in different formations. To draw the analogy with electronic music even further, this was like a human body version of a multi-channel speaker system.
[…] The choreography determined the sound, the human mimicked the machine […] Human intelligence made the artificial redundant.
Andreas Engström, Magasin Opulens, opulens.se

Showing of the pre-version on 4 June, 2017, at 3AM – Filaments and Voids, Kunstfabrik am Flutgraben, Berlin-Treptow

MAULWERKER & CHOIR Zoé Alibert, Dorothea Braun, Audrey Chen, María Ferrara, Jule Flierl, Heather Frasch, Katia Guedes, Ariane Jessulat, Yan Jun, Henrik Kairies, Alexey Kokhanov, Olga Kozmanidze, Rebecca Lane, Barbara Lazara, Karin Matussek, Casey Moir, Katarina Rasinski, Renata Sachs, Hanna Schörken; conducted by Christian Kesten


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