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PLURIVARSALE I

Academy of the Arts of the World Cologne

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faithful! II

The Fidelity and Betrayal of Musical Interpretation

www.faithful-festival.de

 

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faithful! II

The Fidelity and Betrayal of Musical Interpretation

November 13 – 23, 2014
Berghain – Galerie Mazzoli – Me Collectors Room Berlin – RADIALSYSTEM V

Concerts + Discourse

Concept, Artistic Direction: Elke Moltrecht

Honorary patron: Helmut Lachenmann

How is this possible? Audiences may be at times surprised or irritated, when interpretations of one and the same composition sound as if they were completely different works.

With faithful! II these very irritations become the content. The Berlin festival for contemporary music takes up the question of the Fidelity and Betrayal of musical interpretation once again in this year’s edition. With a wide array of concerts, talks and experiments, faithful! II opens up an exciting interplay between musicians, composers, and listeners.

Artistic interpretation, the relationship between composer and interpreter, has always been at the core of contemporary music. Knowledge and practice have expanded radically in the 20th century. Musical interpretation is no longer only what a musician does with his instrument. Theoretical, scholarly and medial dimensions of interpretation are varied and omnipresent today. faithful! II expands upon the forward-looking stimuli from the first festival in 2012 and sets eclectic new accents. Thus, we will again experience comparisons of interpretation and reinterpretations, with new questions for interpreters and composers.

The festival opens with a compact debut concert by the legendary Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS). The group reinterprets essential material, which has had to wait forty years for a revival. The same material will then be reworked by Berlin improvisers with Zeena Parkins as guest. Added to this will be a version in the form of an interpretation by all musicians together. Thus, right on opening night, faithful! II poses the question of how contemporary music, whose “original” mainly exists as a recording, can be interpreted, and gives a direct musical answer to it.

Similar questions are presented by the Ensemble Extrakte which, together with the Gebrüder Teichmann, will focus on Berlin club culture from the 1990s to the present. The module of the loop will be taken up and investigated on instruments of the most varied cultures, including electronics.

Three composers and three ensembles will face special challenges during the festival. faithful! II has awarded commissions to Ernstalbrecht Stiebler, Dror Feiler and Osvaldo Budon. The works that they create have to be suitable for interpretation by ensembles of the most varied backgrounds.

For comparison, we will hear the same pieces interpreted by Norrbotten NEO, the Swedish ensemble for contemporary music, a group of improvising musicians and the Lautten Compagney, an ensemble for early music. The festival thus puts notation methods, instrumentation and the varied approaches of composers and ensembles to the test. The question: Is there such a thing as “musical objectivity”?
faithful! II will intensify the comparison of interpretations of selected contemporary works with internationally renowned ensembles – the Oslo Sinfonietta, Ensemble Multilatérale, Norrbotten NEO, the Sonat Quartet and the Tana String Quartet – as well as with solo musicians and ensembles.


faithful! II will locate a mobile performance project in a gallery in which the French cellist Séverine Ballon will place new music in relationship to contemporary visual art. The festival will compare remixes of Iannis Xenakis’ Persepolis and reinterpretations with the composition Cogito by Iancu Dumitrescu and music by Ashtray Navigations.
The beginnings of graphic notation will be explored by two ensembles with scores by the Greek composer Anestis Logothetis.

Certain works from the festival will be presented again in a 3-D sound environment by Charlie Morrow. The three-dimensional sound space will render sonic details – which even in a concert hall with the best acoustics would remain hidden – perceptible.

The band Califone is founded by frontman Tim Rutili. Originally from Chicago, Califone works in collaboration with other multi-instrumentalists as they convey seemingly fragmented sketches. The band draws on folklore, rock and electronic experimentation as they play impressionistic instrumental jazz-rock and spherical blues instrumentals; that at times draw on elements ranging from kraut rock to trip hop. In addition, they have notably reinterpreted works by Psychic TV and The Rolling Stones. Califone situates astonishing musical reinterpretations that bend between experimentation and unheard soundscapes.

Johannes Kreidler programs a keyboard in such a way that the note first sounds when the key is let go. This fundamentally contradicts the sense of touch for the keys that a pianist has acquired through long years of practice. The audience, but also professional pianists are invited to play this instrument.

Musicians and Composers:
OndÅ™ej Adámek, Liz Allbee, Ashtray Navigations, Séverine Ballon, Burkhard Beins, Sebastian Berweck, Sandeep Bhagwati, Frank Bedrossian, Christian von Borries, Osvaldo Budon, Califone, Jani Christou, Iancu Dumitrescu, Ensemble Extrakte, Ensemble Multilatérale, Dror Feiler, Alexander Frangenheim, Reinhold Friedl, Gebrüder Teichmann, Burkhard Glaetzner, Gérard Grisey, Georg Friedrich Haas, Alois Hába, Lars Petter Hagen, Robin Hayward, Steve Heather, Clara Iannotta, Hilary Jeffery, Gregorio García Karman, Johannes Kreidler, Lautten Compagney, Anestis Logothetis, Logothetis Ensemble, Los Angeles Free Music Society, Ernesto Molinari, Charlie Morrow, Theo Nabicht, Ensemble Norrbotten NEO, Andrea Neumann, Oslo Sinfonietta, Zeena Parkins, Lydia Rilling, Giacinto Scelsi, Gerd Schenker, Chiyoko Szlavnics, Sonar Quartett, Ernstalbrecht Stiebler, Ernst Surberg, Tana String Quartet, Biliana Voutchkova, Christopher Williams, Iannis Xenakis, Marta Zapparoli aka Penelopex, et al.


A project by x-tract-production. www.x-tract-production.de
Sponsored by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds/ Capital Cultural Fund. With the kind support of Impuls Neue Musik/German-French Fund for Contemporary Music, the Artist Program of the DAAD, Deutschlandradio Kultur, Filmwerkstatt Kiel of the Filmförderung Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein GmbH (Film Zeile für Zeile), Kulturrådet/Swedish Arts Council, Norrbottensmusiken, Oslo Sinfonietta, matralab/Concordia University, FRQSC, morrowsound, Royal Norwegian Embassy Berlin and Music Norway. Presented by the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und der Halbach-Stiftung.
Cooperating partner: Blickpunkte e.V.

Information: www.faithful-festival.de
Reservation: www.reservix.de, RADIALSYSTEM V, t +49 (0)30 288 788 588
Box office: Holzmarktstr. 33, 10243 Berlin, Tue - Fri, 10:00 - 19:00h and Sat, 12:00 - 19:00h
Tickets: 5 - 18 EUR / combined tickets 18 - 28 EUR