PROGRAM
FREDAG 27 OKTOBER
19.00: Stockholms Saxofonkvartett (SE)
20.30: Veronica Svobodova (CZ)
21.30: Slow slow loris (US/DE)
LÖRDAG 28 OKTOBER
19.00: Inanna – Elektroakustisk opera (SE)
20.30: Cedrik Fermont diffusing Alternate Africa (BE)
21.30: Aurelie Lierman + Cedrik Fermont (BE/NL)
I foajén: James Brewster – Electro acoustic café
Biljetter: 120/180 kr/dag, 210/275 kr/två dagar
Atalante, Övre Husargatan 1, Göteborg
Info in English below
En del bekanta namn och några nya utgör årets oktoberfestival. Cedrik Fermonts konsert med elektroakustisk musik av tonsättare och ljudkonstnärer från Afrika och dess diaspora knyter ihop säcken på den festival vi gjorde förra året, Alternate Africa. På denna festival uppstod samtal mellan oss, Cedrik och Aurelie Lierman om att de skulle göra en konsert tillsammans vid ett senare tillfälle. Således avslutas Geigers oktoberfestival i år med en konsert med Aurelie och Cedrik på lördagen den 28 oktober.
Festivalen inleds på fredagen med att Stockholms Saxofonkvartett gör stycket Vortex av Benjamin Thigpen. I detta stycke har vi en lite annorlunda uppställning än vi brukar ha på Atalante. Ni i publiken kommer bjudas in till att lyssna på denna konsertinstallation mitt ibland musikerna och högtalarna. Sverigepremiär för detta stycke! Saxkvartettens konsert avslutas med två stycken av Dror Feiler då vi i publiken sätter oss i gradängerna igen.
Fredagen fortsätter med tjeckiska Veronika Svobodová med sina hemmabyggda musikmaskiner, och tysk-amerikanska knaster-noiseduon Slow Slow Loris.
Inanna är ett elektroakustiskt multimediaverk om den sumeriska gudinnan Inannas nedstigning i underjorden. Musik för sopran, ljudobjekt, elektronik och video med musik av Anna Eriksson och Michael Idehall. Denna opera inleder lördagen innan vi avslutar med ovan nämnda Cedrik Fermont och Aurelie Lierman.
Under hela festivalen finns James Brewster och hans Electro akustiska kafé i Atalantes foajé. Beställ en kopp kaffe och lyssna på hur det låter!
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth, is the Sumerian godess personifying the planet Venus, moving across the sky, ascending and descending. Her presence affects the seasons and the climate of the world. She is mighty, with devastating powers. She is the goddess of war, magic, fertility and love, and she is the patron saint for women and for the transforming sexuality. The idea of the Sumerian goddess Inanna inspires many cultures, and she can be found as Ishtar in Mesopotamia, as Aphrodite in Greece and as Venus in Rome. Her descent may be seen as a ritual involving rebirth and transformation, a ritual found in cultures across the world, where you depart on an inner journey to return a changed person.
The Inanna myth was written in cuneiform as a temple hymn approximately 2250 BC by the first known woman author Enheduanna, a Sumerian princess, astronomer, and high priestess of the moon temple in the city of Ur. She was part of creating one of the first calendars. The Temple Hymn is a complex and comprehensive creation myth, referencing a number of historical cultures and religions.
THE OPERATIC PIECE INANNA
Inanna is an electroacoustic multi-media piece about the Sumerian godess Inanna’s descent into the underworld. Notated music for soprano and soundobjects in symbios with EAM and video.
The narrative focuses on the part of the story where Inanna chooses to depart into the underworld to unite with her dark sister and counterpart Ereshkigal. She travels through seven portals and has to strip her garments and jewellery to be able to transform into a part of the underworld. Her garments represent her heavenly Me, the divine powers and knowledges she possesses, from whom she has to depart to to be able to transform and receive the under-worldly Me. As she has declined from all her Me, her body, her Ego, has to die as a final part of the descention. After three days and three nights, when the world is burning and bare, Inanna rises from the dead and ascends from the underworld, now as a transformed version. The planet Venus is now back on her journey across the sky and the balance of the world is restored.
Music: Anna Eriksson and Michael Idehall
Sound design and music production: Michael Idehall
Soprano, text editing, libretto and production: Åsa Nordgren
Video and video production: Michael Idehall
Scenography, costume and video: Ann Petersson Malmstedt
Text editing, script: Anna Forsell
Recorded voices: Åsa Nordgren, Anna Forsell and Michael Idehall
The first performance of the Inanna, produced by Ljudkonstgalleriet, took place Autumn 2022 supported by Swedish Arts Council, Swedish Performing Arts Agency, and Västra Götaland Regional Council.
Slow Slow Loris use voice and electronics to search for the intersections where melody meets noise, emotional meets avant-garde, feminine meets industrial, non-rhythm meets accuracy, and raw meets craft. Their 5 albums and various tracks are released by Cloister Recordings, Zaetraom, Staaltape, Syrphe, Klang, and others. They have toured in Western and Eastern Europe, Russia, and the USA.
https://www.slowslowloris.com/
The Stockholm Saxophone Quartet, formed in 1969, has made a special form of chamber music for saxophone – by composers from Sweden and abroad. They also specialise in advanced electro-acoustic music. The members of the Quartet have had over 700 works written for them.
A recurring feature of their work is the close collaboration they undertake with Swedish and foreign composers, as well as with future composers, particularly from the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. The members of the Quartet hold seminars, take part in concerts, and work together with artists in genres other than their own. This approach to their work means that their style and skills have rapidly developed and they are now among Sweden’s foremost interpretative artists in their particular, very wide- ranging, field. The Stockholm Saxophone Quartet is driven by an irrepressible desire to continually test and go beyond the boundaries of what is considered possible in artistic terms. They often perform at international festivals, in opera houses, and in concert halls.
The studios at Stora Ängby Allé in Bromma house offices, rehearsal rooms, and provide the opportunity to make studio recordings. But just as importantly, the Quartet’s home in Stockholm serves as a meeting-point – for musicians, composers, artists, choreographers, and writers. Seminars and educational activities are being held there, as well as conferences of various kinds, discussion evenings, and concerts on a smaller scale.
Cedrik Fermont (also known as C-drík Fermont or Kirdec) is a vegan artist, academically trained musician, DJ, singer, composer and drummer. He is a former student of electro-acoustic composer Annette Vande Gorne (Royal Conservatory of Mons, Belgium). In 2017, he was co-awarded the prestigious Golden Nica Prix Ars Electronica in digital music and sound art.
Of Greek, Zairian, and Belgian descent, born in Congo (former Zaire), C-drík grew up in Belgium and has also lived in the Netherlands. He is an eternal voyager, a ”noise nomad”, and a ”musical archivist”. He has performed in numerous countries across North America, Europe, the Middle-East, Africa and Asia. He started his first project in 1989 and juggles many projects and electronic genres. He is also a label manager and concert organizer who produces his own projects and releases experimental artists (predominantly originating from Asia and Africa) on the labels Syrphe and Textolux.
C-drík is a noted researcher on the history of experimental and extreme music in Africa and in Asia. He has written essays and presented at many conferences on the topic. In 2016, with sociologist and experimental musician Dimitri della Faille, he co-wrote a book on noise music in Southeast Asia.
Aurélie Nyirabikali Lierman [/oʁe’li ni:rabi’kari ‘li:rmɑn/] was born in Rwanda but grew up in Belgium. She is an independent radio producer, vocalist, and composer exploring new directions by fusing radio art, vocal art, and composition. Her main focus is her personal field-recordings: a large collection of unique sounds and soundscapes from rural and urban contemporary East‐Africa. Sound‐bit by sound‐bit she’s transforming and sculpting the sounds into what she calls “Afrique Concrète”. Lierman’s work has been broadcast, exhibited, and performed throughout Europe, Israel, Morocco, South Africa, Tanzania, Australia, Canada and USA.
Behind Veronika Svobodová´s approach to working with sound, we can uncover the artist’s ties to theatrical scenography, the art of installation and performance. In her work Veronika connects aspects of time, space, and situation. What matters to her, in the end, is not the sound itself, but the way it is shaped. During the performance, the viewer witnesses a mysterious story, in which the sound is not the only important component. The way in which the artist brings various artifacts to life is significant. Sand, wood fragments, slate slabs, and pebbles are picked up by contact microphones and, together with field recordings, create a distinctive sound and spatial situation.
Veronika graduated from the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague DAMU and is currently teaching Alternative and Puppet Theatre in that department. In 2020, Veronika Svobodová won the Palma Ars Acustica award with her sound composition Ror-bu.
GEIGER stöds av Göteborgs stads kulturförvaltning och Kulturrådet