Series: musikprotokoll 2016

From time to time we need to check our personal cultural maps for terrae incognitae. For example, where does our concept of “old music” end and where does it begin? Baroque? Renaissance? When it comes to music from the 13th and 14th century, the map tends to get a bit more sketchy. And the early Middle Ages sometimes feel downright strange.

What discoveries are to be made then, when Vokalensemble NOVA create a picture puzzle of perception made up of very old and very new music at musikprotokoll! A shift in cultural maps based on the factor of time. musikprotokoll 2016 stretches our globe of charted worlds of music in all directions.

Composers Bernhard Lang and Gerhard E. Winkler, for example, discover unsuspected topographies in Schubert’s “Winter Journey”; Renald Deppe surveys new territory together with Tehran-born composer and electronic musician Hassan Zanjirani Farahani; Deena Abdelwahed situates her art in the coordinate system between Tunisia and Western Europe; 85-year-old composer Alvin Lucier ventures along those narrow paths traced by the movements of a cellist’s bow arm; performer Blixa Bargeld manoeuvres his audience along tortuous paths of voice and language; in a joint expedition, RSO Vienna and Klangforum Wien climb the peak of powerful orchestral and ensemble premieres; the SHAPE project organised by the ICAS festival network – a European platform for innovative music and audiovisual art – points the compass towards young music scenes yet to be charted.

musikprotokoll at steirischer herbst sets sail for many a hidden realm on its journey this year.