Orgel Park, Amsterdam
29/10/2022
for Amsterdam Wandelweiser Festival 2022 curated by Dante Boon
Performed by Antoine Beuger (voice), Dante Boon (piano), Joep Dorren (voice, accordion), Michel Duijves (bass clarinet), Jürg Frey (melodica), Rene Holtkamp (guitar), Eva-Maria Houben (organ), Marcus Kaiser (cello), Bin Li (xun), Christoph Nicolaus (stone harp), Rasha Ragab (percussive objects), Sylvia Alexandra Schimag (voice), Germaine Sijstermans (bass clarinet), Sytske van der Ster (voice), Sophie Stone (clarinet), Samuel Vriezen (voice, jaw harp), Emmanuelle Waeckerlé (voice).
Images by Kevin Leomo and Co Broerse
"Sudden pandemonium to begin with...... Recurring occasionally as we attempt to attune ourselves to the swirling flows of our inner and outer surroundings... Until we feel or sound indistinguishable from what is there."
World Premiére of a text score for voices and instruments inspired by lockdown experience during the pandemic and my readings at the time: Franco Berardi’s description of chaos, Timothy Morton’s provocative question: what is left if we aren’t the world? And Luce Irigaray’s invitation of being in the cosmos, one towards the other… sustained by an ideal.
The text score was itself inspired by a short recording of my voice playing with the wind on a stormy lockdown night (2020) for a work released on a CD compilation Sounds of Absence | Various artists (Gruen 209, Gruenrecorder, 2022).
“ I listened on headphones to the recording today, a couple of times. Even if the recording doesn't capture all the detail--hard for me to tell not having heard it live--there are lots of lovely individual moments to catch hold of--the sudden gentle twanging of the jaw harp around twelve minutes in, the way the organ comes in and out, flickers of sustained tones fading in and out from the edges of perception, the gentle whisperings and murmurings, on the edge of language and song. And the recording definitely captures the movement, the trajectory, the overall shape of it, which is what stands out--the compelling framework it offers for the individual sounds, the way it conceptualises a way of being in a group and in a space: by the end the entire room seems to be at once breathing and holding its breath.” David Grundy
All text scores are available from Edition Wandelweiser
what is left if we aren’t the world bandcamp album (29/08/2023)