Photo credits: Beata Wenclawek, Siamak Kazemi, Laurent Orseau, Sonja Mueller, Heike Liss, Vincent Stefan, TJ Huff, Oliver Schmid
DARA String Festival presents a wide range of innovative, genre-bending music for string instruments, ranging from early contemporary music to experimental
and freely improvised music. DARA transcends genre boundaries, bringing together high-caliber international artists from diverse musical backgrounds in a series of encounters to stimulate new thoughts and ideas for the advancement of individual and collective artistic endeavors.
This year we celebrate the fifth edition of the festival at the beautiful Delphi Theater with a special stage installation by Anna Kubelik. The program will include works
by Kaija Saariaho and Eres Holz, two world premieres by Sarah Nemtsov and Ying Wang, and improvisations/own compositions by the performers. All documentary videos from previous years will be available online throughout August and will be on loop at our venue during the festival dates.
You are cordially invited to the DARA String Festival 2023!
Das DARA String Festival präsentiert eine breite Palette innovativer, genreübergreifender Musik für Streichinstrumente, die von früher zeitgenössischer Musik bis hin zu experimenteller und frei improvisierter Musik reicht. DARA überschreitet Genregrenzen und vereint hochkarätige internationale Künstler mit unterschiedlichem musikalischem Hintergrund in einer Reihe von Begegnungen, um neue Gedanken und Ideen zur Weiterentwicklung der individuellen und kollektiven künstlerischen Arbeit anzuregen.
Dieses Jahr feiern wir die fünfte Ausgabe des Festivals im wunderschönen Delphi-Theater mit einer besonderen Bühneninstallation von Anna Kubelik. Auf dem Programm stehen Werke von Kaija Saariaho und Eres Holz, zwei Uraufführungen von Sarah Nemtsov und Ying Wang sowie Improvisationen/Eigenkompositionen
der Performer. Alle Dokumentationsvideos der vergangenen Jahre werden den ganzen August über online verfügbar sein und während der Festivaldaten in einer Schleife an unserem Veranstaltungsort zu sehen sein.
Sie sind herzlich zum DARA String Festival 2023 eingeladen!
Artists/Künstler*innen
Farida Amadou - bass guitar
Zoé Cartier - cello
Elshan Ghasimi - tar
Miya Masaoka - koto, electronics
Joanna Mattrey - viola, violin
Grégoire Simon - viola, violin
Biliana Voutchkova - violin, voice
Anna Kubelík - stage installation
August 26/27, Theater im Delphi, Gustav-Adolf-Straße 2
Doors open at 18:00
Concerts start at 19:00
Program
August 26
Improvisation / Ghasimi
Ernstalbrecht Stiebler "für Biliana" / Voutchkova
Kaija Saariaho - Cloud trio / Cartier, Simon, Voutchkova
intermission
"Hihildegard" and "Irijori" / Simon
Improvisation / Amadou, Voutchkova
„Hihildegard“ for viola and electronics is inspired by the Ave Maria melody of Hildegard von Bingen, a german abbess and musician from the 11th century. This piece was originally composed for three voices, performed by the Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop at the Sammlung Hoffmann in 2022.
„Irijori“ is an original composition for cymbal, viola and electronics, commissioned by the Ensemble Flashback (Perpignan) and premiered by Odile Auboin on the viola.
intermission
Eres Holz - MACH for cello and live electronics / Cartier
Improvisation / Ghasimi, Masaoka, Mattrey, Simon
English
MACH (DO) is the title of a cycle of pieces for solo instruments which Eres Holz began in 2011 with a virtuoso trumpet solo and which now comprises nine pieces, with live electronics added since the clarinet piece of 2016. MACH! is both an exhortation and an homage to the physicist Ernst Mach. The unit of measurement that bears the latter’s name is still used to indicate the speed of supersonic aircraft – a suggestion of the diffculty of the pieces. MACH, as written in the score of the organ piece, is “a kind of invitation to do that which is not trivial
Deutsch
MACH – so heißt ein Zyklus von Stücken für Soloinstrumente, den Eres Holz 2011 mit einem virtuosen Trompetensolo begonnen hat und der inzwischen neun Stücke umfasst; seit dem Klarinettenstück von 2016 kommt jeweils Live-Elektronik dazu. MACH! – als Aufforderung; MACH – auch als kleine Hommage an den Physiker Ernst Mach. Mit der nach ihm benannten Maßeinheit wird bis heute die Geschwindigkeit von Überschallflugzeugen angegeben – ein kleiner Hinweis auf die Schwierigkeit der Stücke. MACH – so steht es in der Partitur des Orgelstücks – sei »eine Art Einladung, das zu machen, was nicht trivial ist.
Eres Holz
August 27
Improvisation / Mattrey
Sarah Nemtsov - NUN III for three violins with electronics WP/ Mattrey, Simon, Voutchkova
intermission
Improvisation / Masaoka
Ying Wang - HAIR / Medusa meets L’Oréal for Amplified violin and viola WP / Mattrey, Voutchkova
Improvisation / Amadou
English
HAIR serves as the associative starting point for freely growing and moving musical thoughts. They begin at nodes, spreading everywhere. Even in space they exist. The cables of our generation are as thin as those on our heads. Underneath our houses, within the earth, they communicate the world to us. They reach every place. Globally and on the body. Soups are their natural enemy. In ancient Greek, they could kill. In fairy tales, they were rope. They represent purity and filth, are sources of allergy and caress. They radiate in all directions – in hair metal, they almost want to detach from the head; under elegant arches they stay highly tensioned in our hands. In "HAIR", the hairs of the violin and the viola are partly beautifully spread out, partly they, metaphorically speaking, whirl through the air. Quotes and allusions
tell of other, foreign hairs. The musical comb only organizes what grows freely along tangled lines one-sidedly. There are two hair tuRs; there are always several hairs. Their variations are numerous. They scratch, they protect, they nestle, they become ma=ed, they divide, they change colors like chameleons. On the strings, they merely rub and yet produce historic tone. The electronics listen to the hairs as they grow, amplify and project the hairs into the space, so that L'Oréal meets Medusa.
Deutsch
Das Haar ist assoziativer Ausgangspunkt für frei wachsende und sich bewegende musikalische Gedanken. Sie beginnen an Knotenpunkten, verteilen sich überall. Selbst im Weltall gibt es sie schon. Die Kabel unserer Generation sind so dünn wie die auf unserem Kopf. In der Erde unter unseren Häusern teilen sie uns die Welt mit. Sie erreichen jeden Ort. Global und am Körper. Suppen sind ihr natürlicher Feind. Bei den alten Griechen konnten sie töten. Im Märchen waren sie Seil. Sie stehen für Reinheit und für Schmutz, sind Quelle von Allergie und Liebkosung. Sie strahlen aus in alle Richtungen – im Hairmetal wollen sie sich vom Kopf
fast trennen; unter eleganten Bögen bleiben sie hoch gespannt in unserer Hand. In HAAR sind die Haare der Violine und der Viola teils schön ausgebreitet, teils fliegen sie, bildlich nur gesprochen, wirbelnd durch die Luft. Zitate und Anspielungen erzählen von anderen, fremden Haaren. Der musikalische Kamm organsiert nur einseitig was entlang wirren Linien frei wuchert. Es sind zwei Haarschöpfe; es sind immer mehrere Haare. Ihre Variationen sind zahlreich. Sie kratzen, sie schützen, sie schmiegen sich an, sie verfilzen, si eilen sich, sie wechseln Farben wie Chamäleons. Auf den Saiten reiben sie nur und machen doch historischen Ton. Die Elektronik hört den Haaren beim Wachsen zu, verstärkt und projiziert die Haare in den Raum, so dass L’Oréal auf die Medusa trifft.
intermission
Improvisation / Ghasimi, Masaoka, Cartier, Simon, Mattrey, Voutchkova
Tickets available here
Biographies
Farida Amadou
Farida is a self taught bass player based in Brussels, Belgium. The electric bass is her main instrument since 2011. In 2013, she has started to play a lot of different musical genres, including blues, jazz and hip-hop. Soon Farida started to dive into improvisation music, and got rapidly identified by local collectif and musicians. After a year (2017) as bass player in belgian punk band Cocaine Piss, Farida decided to focus on her solo improvisation practice and collaborations with musicians like Steve Noble, Thurston Moore, Peter Brötzmann, Floris Vanhoof, Julien Desprez among other occasional featuring such as Jerusalem in My Heart and Moor Mother.
https://faridamadou.com/
Zoé Cartier
With her high musical sensitivity and her uncompromising search for artistic expression, the French cellist Zoé Cartier is an exceptional musician. After successfully completing her solo studies at the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music in Berlin, she was engaged as principal cellist at the Magdeburg Opera House for two seasons. Since then she has performed as a solo cellist and guest with various ensembles, including the Kammerakademie Potsdam, the Ensemble Resonanz and the soloist ensemble Kaleidoskop. Her artistic openness and curiosity open up a wide range of possibilities for her collaborations with very different artists such as Tino Segal, the choreographer Sacha Waltz and the theater director Falk Richter. She has been active in the contemporary music scene for many years, working with musicians from Ensemble Adapter, Zaffraan Ensemble, K.N.M Berlin, Vokalsolisten Stuttgart, Zeitgenössische Oper Berlin and is a permanent member of Ensemble LUX:NM.
Elshan Ghasimi
"In her playing [...] every phrase is invested with deep thought and grave authority" - Michael Church, Musics Lost and Found (2021)
Elshan Ghasimi is a master of Persian classical music, composer, and soloist of the instrument Tar and Setar. She works in meeting spaces of tradition and modernity, West and East, music, and other forms of art. Her approach is greatly influenced by the tradition and practice of the Radīf, the repertoire of Persian classical music, which she is the first female musician to reinterpret over the course of a large-scale project. Her original compositions combine poetry and conceptual art with an individual engagement with her audience and fellow musicians, a purely human encounter at eye level. She has been living in Berlin, Germany since 2016, where she composes and performs as a soloist and collaborates with ensembles such as Concerto Köln.
Ghasimi began her training at the age of nine and continued her education at the Tehran Conservatory of Music and university of art and sculpture, further broadened her knowledge in Baku by studying the Caucasian Tar and the Muǵam, the repertoire of classical Azerbaijani music. At 17, she became the youngest member of the Iranian National Orchestra (1998-2006
https://elshanghasimi.com/en/
Miya Masaoka
Miya Masaoka is a Guggenheim and Rome Prize-winning composer, performer, and installation artist. Her work explores the natural world, bodily perception of vibration, movement, with work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, MaerzMusik, MoMA PS1, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Park Armory and Darmstadt. She had worked performed by the BBC Scottish Orchestra, ICE, Bang on a Can, MIVOS, the Jack among others, and has performed with Pharaoh Sanders, Pauline Oliveros, Cecil Taylor, Myra Melford, Zeena Parkins, Gerry Hemingway and Reggie Workman, and she is a Professor at Columbia University Sound Art MFA.
http://miyamasaoka.com/
Joanna Mattrey
Joanna is a violist working in free improvisation, new music, and classical music. She uses extended techniques, modern compositional approaches, and electronic alterations to challenge the conventions of the viola. Joanna creates an embodied performance practice centered on ceremony and ritual. Recent solo works include, 'Soulcaster' (Notice Recordings), ‘Dirge’ (Dear Life Recs 2021), 'Veiled’ (Relative Pitch Records, 2020). Mattrey is a current Roulette Resident, and past residencies include ISSUE Project Room, Banff's Creative Gesture for Composers and Choreographers, 14th Street Y, Wild Project, and MoMa PS1's ALLGOLD. Mattrey has performed with icons Tyshawn Sorey, Henry Threadgill, Marc Ribot, John Zorn, Billy Martin, Elliott Sharpe, and the International Contemporary Ensemble.
www.joannamattrey.com
Grégoire Simon
Grégoire works between Berlin and Paris as a performer (viola and violin), producer and composer. After studying violin and viola he was chosen in 2012 by Pierre Boulez to take the solo viola position in the prestigious Ensemble Intercontemporain (Paris), playing there for four seasons notably as a soloist with Gérard Grisey's Prologue and Hugues Dufour's viola concerto at the Paris Philharmonie / Cité de la Musique. In the same time he developed an activity as a composer and electronic music producer. Half of the electronic duo Yes Soeur! Grégoire Simon has been producing original music for visual installations and contemporary dance shows. With his hybrid Berlin based project SUGAR, Grégoire Simon build bridges between chamber music and pop music with originals creation presented at the Wien Modern Festival or at the Berlin Rotersalon der Volksbühne. Since 2020 Grégoire Simon obtained various composition commissions played by the Ensemble Flashback (Perpignan) the Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop, Zafraan Ensemble and Andromeda Mega Express Orchestra (Berlin).
https://www.gregoiresimon.com/
Biliana Voutchkova
Biliana Voutchkova is a dynamic, thoroughly engaged interdisciplinary artist, violinist, composer-performer, improvisor and curator with highly individual, unconventional artistic language. Through the prism of listening, her early training in classical music and the years of development as contemporary artist-performer, she explores states of spontaneity and intuitive resonance embodied in her multifaceted activities. Her work spans the widest possible range of sound, vision, movement and includes concert performances of improvisation, contemporary composition and original site specific work, exhibitions, long durational / multidisciplinary performances, audiovisual works and installation formats with focus on the interconnection between inner world and sound space.
Based between Berlin and her rural residency on the black sea coast of Bulgaria, Biliana works internationally as a soloist and with renowned ensembles such as her groups Voutchkova/ Thieke duo and Jane in Ether, the Splitter and Trickster Orchestras, United Berlin, Ensemble Modern, Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop etc.
Biliana is the founder and curator of the DARA String Festival, SHAPE+ Platform artist for 2022/2023 and a recent recipient of the German Residency Stipend at Cité des Arts / Paris, the Composition Stipend from the Berliner Senate, grands from INM/Berlin, Musikfonds, Deutscher Musikrat, National Culture Fund/Bulgaria and the Trust for Mutual Understanding/New York.
http://www.bilianavoutchkova.net/
Anna Kubelík
Anna Kubelík is an artist, designer and architect based in Berlin. After living for nearly a decade in London and graduating from Chelsea College of Art & Design and the Architectural Association she expanded her practice through numerous international scholarships (e.g. Akademie Schloss Solitude, the Rome Prize (Villa Massimo) or Goethe Institute in Beijing). Next to her own practice as an artist, Anna Kubelík collaborates with a wide variety of people from diverse fields and disciplines within the Arts and Sciences, such as dancers, composers, theatre directors as well as scientists. Hence it is inherent to her work to range in scale, material and context, however there is always a performative element to be found throughout all her projects. Currently she is professor for ‘Experimental Design’ at the HTWG Konstanz and Principal Investigator at the Excellence Cluster ‘Matters of Activity’ at the Humboldt University Berlin.
www.annakubelik.com
Funded by Musikfonds e.V. by means of the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, and INM Berlin.
Gefördert vom Musikfonds e.V. mit Projektmitteln der Beauftragten der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien, und INM Berlin.
DARA String Festival presents a wide range of innovative, genre-bending music for string instruments, ranging from early contemporary music to experimental
and freely improvised music. DARA transcends genre boundaries, bringing together high-caliber international artists from diverse musical backgrounds in a series of encounters to stimulate new thoughts and ideas for the advancement of individual and collective artistic endeavors.
This year we celebrate the fifth edition of the festival at the beautiful Delphi Theater with a special stage installation by Anna Kubelik. The program will include works
by Kaija Saariaho and Eres Holz, two world premieres by Sarah Nemtsov and Ying Wang, and improvisations/own compositions by the performers. All documentary videos from previous years will be available online throughout August and will be on loop at our venue during the festival dates.
You are cordially invited to the DARA String Festival 2023!
Das DARA String Festival präsentiert eine breite Palette innovativer, genreübergreifender Musik für Streichinstrumente, die von früher zeitgenössischer Musik bis hin zu experimenteller und frei improvisierter Musik reicht. DARA überschreitet Genregrenzen und vereint hochkarätige internationale Künstler mit unterschiedlichem musikalischem Hintergrund in einer Reihe von Begegnungen, um neue Gedanken und Ideen zur Weiterentwicklung der individuellen und kollektiven künstlerischen Arbeit anzuregen.
Dieses Jahr feiern wir die fünfte Ausgabe des Festivals im wunderschönen Delphi-Theater mit einer besonderen Bühneninstallation von Anna Kubelik. Auf dem Programm stehen Werke von Kaija Saariaho und Eres Holz, zwei Uraufführungen von Sarah Nemtsov und Ying Wang sowie Improvisationen/Eigenkompositionen
der Performer. Alle Dokumentationsvideos der vergangenen Jahre werden den ganzen August über online verfügbar sein und während der Festivaldaten in einer Schleife an unserem Veranstaltungsort zu sehen sein.
Sie sind herzlich zum DARA String Festival 2023 eingeladen!
Artists/Künstler*innen
Farida Amadou - bass guitar
Zoé Cartier - cello
Elshan Ghasimi - tar
Miya Masaoka - koto, electronics
Joanna Mattrey - viola, violin
Grégoire Simon - viola, violin
Biliana Voutchkova - violin, voice
Anna Kubelík - stage installation
August 26/27, Theater im Delphi, Gustav-Adolf-Straße 2
Doors open at 18:00
Concerts start at 19:00
Program
August 26
Improvisation / Ghasimi
Ernstalbrecht Stiebler "für Biliana" / Voutchkova
Kaija Saariaho - Cloud trio / Cartier, Simon, Voutchkova
intermission
"Hihildegard" and "Irijori" / Simon
Improvisation / Amadou, Voutchkova
„Hihildegard“ for viola and electronics is inspired by the Ave Maria melody of Hildegard von Bingen, a german abbess and musician from the 11th century. This piece was originally composed for three voices, performed by the Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop at the Sammlung Hoffmann in 2022.
„Irijori“ is an original composition for cymbal, viola and electronics, commissioned by the Ensemble Flashback (Perpignan) and premiered by Odile Auboin on the viola.
intermission
Eres Holz - MACH for cello and live electronics / Cartier
Improvisation / Ghasimi, Masaoka, Mattrey, Simon
English
MACH (DO) is the title of a cycle of pieces for solo instruments which Eres Holz began in 2011 with a virtuoso trumpet solo and which now comprises nine pieces, with live electronics added since the clarinet piece of 2016. MACH! is both an exhortation and an homage to the physicist Ernst Mach. The unit of measurement that bears the latter’s name is still used to indicate the speed of supersonic aircraft – a suggestion of the diffculty of the pieces. MACH, as written in the score of the organ piece, is “a kind of invitation to do that which is not trivial
Deutsch
MACH – so heißt ein Zyklus von Stücken für Soloinstrumente, den Eres Holz 2011 mit einem virtuosen Trompetensolo begonnen hat und der inzwischen neun Stücke umfasst; seit dem Klarinettenstück von 2016 kommt jeweils Live-Elektronik dazu. MACH! – als Aufforderung; MACH – auch als kleine Hommage an den Physiker Ernst Mach. Mit der nach ihm benannten Maßeinheit wird bis heute die Geschwindigkeit von Überschallflugzeugen angegeben – ein kleiner Hinweis auf die Schwierigkeit der Stücke. MACH – so steht es in der Partitur des Orgelstücks – sei »eine Art Einladung, das zu machen, was nicht trivial ist.
Eres Holz
August 27
Improvisation / Mattrey
Sarah Nemtsov - NUN III for three violins with electronics WP/ Mattrey, Simon, Voutchkova
intermission
Improvisation / Masaoka
Ying Wang - HAIR / Medusa meets L’Oréal for Amplified violin and viola WP / Mattrey, Voutchkova
Improvisation / Amadou
English
HAIR serves as the associative starting point for freely growing and moving musical thoughts. They begin at nodes, spreading everywhere. Even in space they exist. The cables of our generation are as thin as those on our heads. Underneath our houses, within the earth, they communicate the world to us. They reach every place. Globally and on the body. Soups are their natural enemy. In ancient Greek, they could kill. In fairy tales, they were rope. They represent purity and filth, are sources of allergy and caress. They radiate in all directions – in hair metal, they almost want to detach from the head; under elegant arches they stay highly tensioned in our hands. In "HAIR", the hairs of the violin and the viola are partly beautifully spread out, partly they, metaphorically speaking, whirl through the air. Quotes and allusions
tell of other, foreign hairs. The musical comb only organizes what grows freely along tangled lines one-sidedly. There are two hair tuRs; there are always several hairs. Their variations are numerous. They scratch, they protect, they nestle, they become ma=ed, they divide, they change colors like chameleons. On the strings, they merely rub and yet produce historic tone. The electronics listen to the hairs as they grow, amplify and project the hairs into the space, so that L'Oréal meets Medusa.
Deutsch
Das Haar ist assoziativer Ausgangspunkt für frei wachsende und sich bewegende musikalische Gedanken. Sie beginnen an Knotenpunkten, verteilen sich überall. Selbst im Weltall gibt es sie schon. Die Kabel unserer Generation sind so dünn wie die auf unserem Kopf. In der Erde unter unseren Häusern teilen sie uns die Welt mit. Sie erreichen jeden Ort. Global und am Körper. Suppen sind ihr natürlicher Feind. Bei den alten Griechen konnten sie töten. Im Märchen waren sie Seil. Sie stehen für Reinheit und für Schmutz, sind Quelle von Allergie und Liebkosung. Sie strahlen aus in alle Richtungen – im Hairmetal wollen sie sich vom Kopf
fast trennen; unter eleganten Bögen bleiben sie hoch gespannt in unserer Hand. In HAAR sind die Haare der Violine und der Viola teils schön ausgebreitet, teils fliegen sie, bildlich nur gesprochen, wirbelnd durch die Luft. Zitate und Anspielungen erzählen von anderen, fremden Haaren. Der musikalische Kamm organsiert nur einseitig was entlang wirren Linien frei wuchert. Es sind zwei Haarschöpfe; es sind immer mehrere Haare. Ihre Variationen sind zahlreich. Sie kratzen, sie schützen, sie schmiegen sich an, sie verfilzen, si eilen sich, sie wechseln Farben wie Chamäleons. Auf den Saiten reiben sie nur und machen doch historischen Ton. Die Elektronik hört den Haaren beim Wachsen zu, verstärkt und projiziert die Haare in den Raum, so dass L’Oréal auf die Medusa trifft.
intermission
Improvisation / Ghasimi, Masaoka, Cartier, Simon, Mattrey, Voutchkova
Tickets available here
Biographies
Farida Amadou
Farida is a self taught bass player based in Brussels, Belgium. The electric bass is her main instrument since 2011. In 2013, she has started to play a lot of different musical genres, including blues, jazz and hip-hop. Soon Farida started to dive into improvisation music, and got rapidly identified by local collectif and musicians. After a year (2017) as bass player in belgian punk band Cocaine Piss, Farida decided to focus on her solo improvisation practice and collaborations with musicians like Steve Noble, Thurston Moore, Peter Brötzmann, Floris Vanhoof, Julien Desprez among other occasional featuring such as Jerusalem in My Heart and Moor Mother.
https://faridamadou.com/
Zoé Cartier
With her high musical sensitivity and her uncompromising search for artistic expression, the French cellist Zoé Cartier is an exceptional musician. After successfully completing her solo studies at the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music in Berlin, she was engaged as principal cellist at the Magdeburg Opera House for two seasons. Since then she has performed as a solo cellist and guest with various ensembles, including the Kammerakademie Potsdam, the Ensemble Resonanz and the soloist ensemble Kaleidoskop. Her artistic openness and curiosity open up a wide range of possibilities for her collaborations with very different artists such as Tino Segal, the choreographer Sacha Waltz and the theater director Falk Richter. She has been active in the contemporary music scene for many years, working with musicians from Ensemble Adapter, Zaffraan Ensemble, K.N.M Berlin, Vokalsolisten Stuttgart, Zeitgenössische Oper Berlin and is a permanent member of Ensemble LUX:NM.
Elshan Ghasimi
"In her playing [...] every phrase is invested with deep thought and grave authority" - Michael Church, Musics Lost and Found (2021)
Elshan Ghasimi is a master of Persian classical music, composer, and soloist of the instrument Tar and Setar. She works in meeting spaces of tradition and modernity, West and East, music, and other forms of art. Her approach is greatly influenced by the tradition and practice of the Radīf, the repertoire of Persian classical music, which she is the first female musician to reinterpret over the course of a large-scale project. Her original compositions combine poetry and conceptual art with an individual engagement with her audience and fellow musicians, a purely human encounter at eye level. She has been living in Berlin, Germany since 2016, where she composes and performs as a soloist and collaborates with ensembles such as Concerto Köln.
Ghasimi began her training at the age of nine and continued her education at the Tehran Conservatory of Music and university of art and sculpture, further broadened her knowledge in Baku by studying the Caucasian Tar and the Muǵam, the repertoire of classical Azerbaijani music. At 17, she became the youngest member of the Iranian National Orchestra (1998-2006
https://elshanghasimi.com/en/
Miya Masaoka
Miya Masaoka is a Guggenheim and Rome Prize-winning composer, performer, and installation artist. Her work explores the natural world, bodily perception of vibration, movement, with work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, MaerzMusik, MoMA PS1, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Park Armory and Darmstadt. She had worked performed by the BBC Scottish Orchestra, ICE, Bang on a Can, MIVOS, the Jack among others, and has performed with Pharaoh Sanders, Pauline Oliveros, Cecil Taylor, Myra Melford, Zeena Parkins, Gerry Hemingway and Reggie Workman, and she is a Professor at Columbia University Sound Art MFA.
http://miyamasaoka.com/
Joanna Mattrey
Joanna is a violist working in free improvisation, new music, and classical music. She uses extended techniques, modern compositional approaches, and electronic alterations to challenge the conventions of the viola. Joanna creates an embodied performance practice centered on ceremony and ritual. Recent solo works include, 'Soulcaster' (Notice Recordings), ‘Dirge’ (Dear Life Recs 2021), 'Veiled’ (Relative Pitch Records, 2020). Mattrey is a current Roulette Resident, and past residencies include ISSUE Project Room, Banff's Creative Gesture for Composers and Choreographers, 14th Street Y, Wild Project, and MoMa PS1's ALLGOLD. Mattrey has performed with icons Tyshawn Sorey, Henry Threadgill, Marc Ribot, John Zorn, Billy Martin, Elliott Sharpe, and the International Contemporary Ensemble.
www.joannamattrey.com
Grégoire Simon
Grégoire works between Berlin and Paris as a performer (viola and violin), producer and composer. After studying violin and viola he was chosen in 2012 by Pierre Boulez to take the solo viola position in the prestigious Ensemble Intercontemporain (Paris), playing there for four seasons notably as a soloist with Gérard Grisey's Prologue and Hugues Dufour's viola concerto at the Paris Philharmonie / Cité de la Musique. In the same time he developed an activity as a composer and electronic music producer. Half of the electronic duo Yes Soeur! Grégoire Simon has been producing original music for visual installations and contemporary dance shows. With his hybrid Berlin based project SUGAR, Grégoire Simon build bridges between chamber music and pop music with originals creation presented at the Wien Modern Festival or at the Berlin Rotersalon der Volksbühne. Since 2020 Grégoire Simon obtained various composition commissions played by the Ensemble Flashback (Perpignan) the Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop, Zafraan Ensemble and Andromeda Mega Express Orchestra (Berlin).
https://www.gregoiresimon.com/
Biliana Voutchkova
Biliana Voutchkova is a dynamic, thoroughly engaged interdisciplinary artist, violinist, composer-performer, improvisor and curator with highly individual, unconventional artistic language. Through the prism of listening, her early training in classical music and the years of development as contemporary artist-performer, she explores states of spontaneity and intuitive resonance embodied in her multifaceted activities. Her work spans the widest possible range of sound, vision, movement and includes concert performances of improvisation, contemporary composition and original site specific work, exhibitions, long durational / multidisciplinary performances, audiovisual works and installation formats with focus on the interconnection between inner world and sound space.
Based between Berlin and her rural residency on the black sea coast of Bulgaria, Biliana works internationally as a soloist and with renowned ensembles such as her groups Voutchkova/ Thieke duo and Jane in Ether, the Splitter and Trickster Orchestras, United Berlin, Ensemble Modern, Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop etc.
Biliana is the founder and curator of the DARA String Festival, SHAPE+ Platform artist for 2022/2023 and a recent recipient of the German Residency Stipend at Cité des Arts / Paris, the Composition Stipend from the Berliner Senate, grands from INM/Berlin, Musikfonds, Deutscher Musikrat, National Culture Fund/Bulgaria and the Trust for Mutual Understanding/New York.
http://www.bilianavoutchkova.net/
Anna Kubelík
Anna Kubelík is an artist, designer and architect based in Berlin. After living for nearly a decade in London and graduating from Chelsea College of Art & Design and the Architectural Association she expanded her practice through numerous international scholarships (e.g. Akademie Schloss Solitude, the Rome Prize (Villa Massimo) or Goethe Institute in Beijing). Next to her own practice as an artist, Anna Kubelík collaborates with a wide variety of people from diverse fields and disciplines within the Arts and Sciences, such as dancers, composers, theatre directors as well as scientists. Hence it is inherent to her work to range in scale, material and context, however there is always a performative element to be found throughout all her projects. Currently she is professor for ‘Experimental Design’ at the HTWG Konstanz and Principal Investigator at the Excellence Cluster ‘Matters of Activity’ at the Humboldt University Berlin.
www.annakubelik.com
Funded by Musikfonds e.V. by means of the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, and INM Berlin.
Gefördert vom Musikfonds e.V. mit Projektmitteln der Beauftragten der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien, und INM Berlin.