The fourth edition of DARA String Festival will present again a wide variety of innovative multi-genre music for string instruments. This year we include for the first time
the cimbalom, and the multi-disciplinary work Kontrapunkt for three violins and visuals. The program will include more original compositions, improvisations and
works by György Kurtág, Heather Frasch (WP), Georges Aperghis, Malika Kishino, Rainer Rubbert, Gabriel Iranyi, Salvador Torré (WP) and Norbert Fröhlich.
You are warmly invited!
Artists
Anna Lindal violin
Katt Hernandez violin
Biliana Voutchkova violin
Megumi Kasakawa viola
Enikö Ginzery cimbalom
Nick Dunston bass
With special guest Lisskulla Moltke-Hoff / visuals
September 10 & 11, KM28, Karl-Marx Str. 28
Doors open at 18:30
Concerts start at 19:00
In connection to our three Swedish guests and the project Kontrapunkt, the Swedish embassy
will host an artist talk and presentation of the work on September 8, 18:00.
More information here
The festival is part of the Month of Contemporary Music Berlin
Entrance at the door, sliding scale donation based in support of our fundraiser.
Program
September 10
Set 1
Solo improvisation - Hernandez
Solo improvisation - Dunston
Set 2
Gabriel Iranyi Contours, Présences III - Voutchkova, Ginzery
1. Moderato, un poco flessibile
2. Con motto e con leggerezza
3. Largo, molto strascinato
4. Allegro
György Kurtág Auswahl Erbittert-Antiphone in Fis-Sternmusik-Hommage a J.S.B.- Zank-Blumen die Menschen - Ginzery
Malika Kishino Monochrome Garten VI - Kassakawa
Quartet improvisation - Lindal, Hernandez, Kasakawa, Dunston
Set 3
Kontrapunkt - collaborative project of violinists Anna Lindal, Katt Hernandez, Biliana Voutchkova, and visual artist Lisskulla Moltke-Hoff.
Kontrapunkt (Countrepont) is a musical technique, used to create polyphony by combining several independent voices. It is often grounded in each part or voice having its own line of expression. In this artistic project, the visual art also forms its own "voice", offering resistance, and giving rise to the musical parts to form a
multi-voiced whole. The musicians improvise their respective parts and create distinct voices of their own, while listening to the whole - improvising with each other, the images and the room. The visuals by Lisskulla Moltke-Hoff have been created based on layers of film, images and performances from Lisskulla's previous works, including Hexagrams - scores, Sulphur - film and Estela - a playable sculpture.The musicians relate to the images as a spatial score which, in an improvisational act, replaces traditional notation.
September 11
Set 1
Rainer Rubbert Regenbogen - Ginzery
Norbert Fröhlich Klanggedichte / Poetic solo's for cimbalom - Ginzery
(Please, find the full German text at the end of the program)
Duo improvisation - Dunston, Voutchkova
Set 2
Georges Aperghis Volte-face pour alto - Kasakawa
Salvador Torré DifferAnce (WP) - Lindal, Voutchkova
Solo improvisation with mini speaker installation - Voutchkova
Set 3
Solo improvisation Ciaccona haunting - Lindal
Heather Frasch Dappled Light (WP, commissioned by DARA SF) - Dunston, Ginzery, Kasakawa, Voutchkova
September 10
Set 1
Solo improvisation - Hernandez
Solo improvisation - Dunston
Set 2
Gabriel Iranyi Contours, Présences III - Voutchkova, Ginzery
1. Moderato, un poco flessibile
2. Con motto e con leggerezza
3. Largo, molto strascinato
4. Allegro
György Kurtág Auswahl Erbittert-Antiphone in Fis-Sternmusik-Hommage a J.S.B.- Zank-Blumen die Menschen - Ginzery
Malika Kishino Monochrome Garten VI - Kassakawa
Quartet improvisation - Lindal, Hernandez, Kasakawa, Dunston
Set 3
Kontrapunkt - collaborative project of violinists Anna Lindal, Katt Hernandez, Biliana Voutchkova, and visual artist Lisskulla Moltke-Hoff.
Kontrapunkt (Countrepont) is a musical technique, used to create polyphony by combining several independent voices. It is often grounded in each part or voice having its own line of expression. In this artistic project, the visual art also forms its own "voice", offering resistance, and giving rise to the musical parts to form a
multi-voiced whole. The musicians improvise their respective parts and create distinct voices of their own, while listening to the whole - improvising with each other, the images and the room. The visuals by Lisskulla Moltke-Hoff have been created based on layers of film, images and performances from Lisskulla's previous works, including Hexagrams - scores, Sulphur - film and Estela - a playable sculpture.The musicians relate to the images as a spatial score which, in an improvisational act, replaces traditional notation.
September 11
Set 1
Rainer Rubbert Regenbogen - Ginzery
Norbert Fröhlich Klanggedichte / Poetic solo's for cimbalom - Ginzery
(Please, find the full German text at the end of the program)
Duo improvisation - Dunston, Voutchkova
Set 2
Georges Aperghis Volte-face pour alto - Kasakawa
Salvador Torré DifferAnce (WP) - Lindal, Voutchkova
Solo improvisation with mini speaker installation - Voutchkova
Set 3
Solo improvisation Ciaccona haunting - Lindal
Heather Frasch Dappled Light (WP, commissioned by DARA SF) - Dunston, Ginzery, Kasakawa, Voutchkova
Artists biographies
Anna Lindal
Anna Lindal, with a background as concertmaster and professor, is a freelancing violinist primarily active within the experimental, contemporary chamber music and free improvisation scenes, but also in baroque and classical repertoire settings. She is a member of different permanent ensembles like Lipparella, Makadam, Skogen,
Fire! Orchestra & the violin duo "Bäver". Anna has collaborated with many composers and also engages in interdisciplinary collaborations with directors, choreographers, fine artists and authors. She has released a number of solo, chamber music and improvisation recordings, among those the duo-CD “Bäver” with her sister, violinist Eva Lindal.
https://www.annalindal.se/
Katt Hernandez
Katt Hernandez is a violinist, composer, improvisor, producer and artistic researcher. She moved to Stockholm in 2010, and rapidly began working with many artists and music organizations. In addition to her solo projects, she has worked with a host of artists in a swath of music and sound art scenes in Europe. After earning a Masters in composition from the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, she began a PhD at Lund university in 2015, entitled The Ephemeral City: Songs for the Ghost Quarters, comprised of a group of multichannel, field recording, synthesizer, string and organ works about the psychogeography of Stockholm, and the importance of our inner-most imaginary cities. The latest composition for that project was for the 1926 Wurlitzer theater organ that is now housed in the R1 former nuclear reactor hall, deep under the Roya Technical Institute in Stockholm. In recent years she has also worked with Klas Nevrin's 3-year research project Music in Disorder, Fire! Orchestra, GGR Betong, multi-disciplinary artist Björn-Ola Lind, the Denis Egberth Quintet, Butoh artist KAI-EN and Lotte Anker's ensemble sub-habitat at the Rhythmic Music Conservatory in Copenhagen, amongst a host of others. Her work has been featured on festivals, series, museums, conferences and radio stations throughout the world, most recently at Antenn Festivalen at the Ljudtornet water tower, Cola bora dio and Datscha Radio in Berlin, BlowOut in Oslo, PULS festival of multichannel music in Bergen and Visby, Nordic New Music Days in Bodø, Klubb Primi in Copenhagen, N:EAR in Slovenia and more. Before leaving the U.S., Katt was a 13 year veteran of experimental music scenes on the East Coast, where she produced fistfuls of concerts, and worked with a vast array of musicians, dancers, visual artists, puppeteers, film makers and performance artists, in venues ranging from underground art spaces to ivy league concert halls.
http://www.katthernandez.net
Megumi Kasakawa
Megumi Kasakawa has been the Ensemble Modern’s violist since 2010. Raised in Fukui (Japan), she studied at the Soai University Osaka (2000 - 2004) and
studied solo viola with Nobuko Imai and chamber music with Gabor Takacs Nagy at the Geneva Conservatory (2005 - 2009). Megumi participated in the Open Chamber Music Festival of Prussia Cove in England, Japan’s Viola Space, performed with the Ensemble Contrechamps Genève, the Orchestra Chambre de Genève, Porto Symphony Orchestra and HR Symphony Orchestra as principal violist. She has performed at well-known concert halls like the Victoria Hall Geneva, Tonhalle Zürich, Alte Oper Frankfurt, Konzerthaus and Philharmonie Berlin, the Philharmonie Cologne, London’s Barbican Hall and Wigmore Hall. Megumi has also performed with various chamber music formations, including the Ensemble Artefakt and the Camerata Bellerive, in France, Switzerland, England, Japan and Germany. Among other prizes, she was awarded the Albert Lullin Prize in Geneva as well as the Verbier Academy’s Special Prize for Viola. In 2017 her Portrait CD ›for viola‹ was released by Ensemble Modern Medien. She teaches regularly at master courses in Japan, Korea and Taiwan. And she is one of the docents for the Ensemble Modern’s education projects as well. From 2018 until 2022 she was Artistic Director of the Master degree Program (International Ensemble Modern Academy). Since 2014 she plays on a viola made by Pellegrino Di Michelis.
https://www.megumikasakawa.com/
Enikő Ginzery
Enikő Ginzery studied cimbalom at the Bratislava Conservatory and then at the F. Liszt Academy in Budapest. A postgraduate study in "New Music" led her to the Hochschule für Musik Saar in Saarbrücken.1995 she won the prize for the best foreign participant at the international Youth Festival Plovdiv/Bulgaria, and in 1997 she won the International Cimbalom Competition Valašské Meziříčí in the Czech Republic. Since 1995 her concert tours have taken her throughout Europe and the USA, both as a solo performer and as a soloist with various orchestras and chamber music ensembles (SWR SO Stuttgart, RSO Berlin, Radio SO Vienna - ORF, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Helsinki Philharmonic, Orchestra of the Komische Oper Berlin, Musikfabrik Köln, United Berlin etc.). Enikö makes an important contribution in the field of contemporary music and inspires numerous composers to write new works for cimbalom. So far about 50 pieces have been premiered. Her repertoire includes not only compositions of the present, but reaches back to the Middle Ages. In 2013 she was awarded a Doctorate by the University of Bratislava for her musicological dissertation on sound possibilities of the cimbalom. Numerous projects for children are also part of her artistic activity. Her solo CD's were released as follows: "Contemporary Music for Cimbalom" by Slovart records/2001, "Overflowing Crystals" by Hevhetia/2013 , "Hommage a Pantaleon Hebenstreit" by Hevhetia/2021.
https://www.ginzery.com/
Nick Dunston
Nick Dunston is an acoustic and electroacoustic composer, improviser, and multi-instrumentalist. Called an “indispensable player on the New York avant-garde" (New York Times), his performances have spanned a variety of venues and festivals across North America and Europe. His work explores notions of ancestral memory, materiality, embodiment, decolonization, and Afro-surrealism. As a collaborator he has worked with artists such as Marc Ribot, Ches Smith, Lucrecia Dalt, Mary Halvorson, Imani Uzuri, Ingrid Laubrock, Tyshawn Sorey, Anna Webber, Amirtha Kidambi, and Vijay Iyer. In addition to four studio albums released under his name, Dunston has been commissioned by artists and organizations such as Bang on a Can, JACK Quartet, A L'ARME! Festival, Ex-Aequo, Bass Players for Black Composers, Tenth Intervention, Johnny Gandelsman, T R O M P O, Maggie Cox, Joanna Mattrey, and Joy Guidry. In 2019 he was awarded the Van Lier Fellowship by Roulette, which supported the creation of the trans-media song cycle La Operación, the double bass quintet piece The Floor is Lava!, and his debut studio album, Atlantic Extraction. In 2020 in collaboration with Dogbotic Labs, he co-created “Ear Re-training”, a music composition course focusing on media-bending experimental techniques and concepts. He, along with Katherine Young were featured as the first Artists-in-Residence with Wet Ink Ensemble for the 2021-2022 season, where Dunston created his 14-piece ensemble work Reverse Broadcast, himself performing on double bass, processed radio, and improvised Conduction. Dunston currently resides and maintains an active presence in both the Berlin and New York experimental music scenes.
http://www.nickdunston.org/
Lisskulla Moltke-Hoff - visuals
Throughout a career in film and beaux arts Lisskulla's artistic elaborations lean on the creative collaborations between musicians and dancers. Her visuals explicitly address movement, music and form, and are based on the cross-over transformation of image into music and vice versa. Lisskulla has held numerous solo-exhibitions in Sweden, Berlin, Mexico/. Their content is often related to the moving image - video installations, video sculptures, films, collages. Alongside, photography and prints, as well as performances where image, music and dance take improvisational measures are part of her work. She has collaborated with Grapeshade, Biliana Voutchkova, UNSTUMM and NOW! REULECKE/KIRSTEIN/PIRA/MOLTKE-HOFF QUARTET! in Berlin, Bremen and Sweden.
www.lisskulla.weebly.com
Biliana Voutchkova
See the "About" page