Festival politischer Medienkunst, Performance und Musik

Samstag und Sonntag 20. und 21. Juli 2013

KONZERT IM ÖFFENTLICHEN RAUM

Volkspark am Weinberg / Rosengarten 14.00 und 17.00 Uhr bei Regen nur am 20. Juli um 17:00 Uhr in der Villa Elisabeth Info unter Tel. 030-4404 8609

Richard Teitelbaum Threshold Music (1973) / Threshold in Berlin (2013) Richard Teitelbaum, electronics Ensemble Konzert Minimal Johnny Chang, viola Catherin Lamb, viola Koen Nutters, upright bass Morten J Olsen, bass drum

Volkspark am Weinberg / Rosengarten Kulturpavillon í Eingang gegenüber Weinbergsweg 13, 10119 Berlin-Mitte Villa Elisabeth í Invalidenstr. 3, 10115 Berlin-Mitte

RELEVANTE MUSIK Die Diskussionen im Umfeld der zeitgenössischen Musik waren in den letzten Jahren geprägt von der Frage nach ihrer Vermittlung. Es schien, als rückte an die Stelle inhaltlicher Auseinandersetzung das „Ziel [der] Stärkung der Präsenz Neuer Musik im Kulturleben, um die Wahrnehmung in der Öffentlichkeit zu erhöhen und neues Publikum zu gewinnen“ (Netzwerk Neue Musik). Mit dem Festival Relevante Musik spielen wir den Ball an die Künstler zurück und fragen nach der gesellschaftlichen und politischen Relevanz ihrer Arbeiten. Im Vergleich zur aktuellen Bildenden Kunst mit ihrem sozial-analytischen oder politisch-strukturellen Fokus stehen der zeitgenössischen Musik, wenn Sie von der Textvertonung absieht, weniger Mittel zur Kommunikation außermusikalischer Inhalte zur Verfügung. Das Festival Relevante Musik strebt an, von den politischen Verwerfungen der 1970er Jahre bis zur jüngsten Gegenwart verschiedene Verfahren engagierter Musik und klanglich dominierter Medienkunst aufzuzeigen, wobei so unterschiedliche Themen wie die Zensur in der DDR, Gewalt gegen Homosexuelle, der Irak-Krieg, der gesellschaftliche Umgang mit der atomaren Katastrophe von Fukushima, Migrationsphänomene, digitale Überwachung und die Ökonomie der Medienindustrie Beachtung finden. Ausgehend von Konzerten und Installationen in Kirche und Villa Elisabeth werden in musikalischen Aktionen im Stadtraum und in Gesprächsrunden Formen, Ziele und Resultate politisch motivierter Musik und Medienkunst erprobt und diskutiert. Volker Straebel

Richard Teitelbaum: Threshold Music (1973) / Threshold in Berlin (2013) Richard Teitelbaum entwickelte in den 1970er Jahren das Konzept der Threshold Music, einer „Schwellenmusik“, bei der sich ein Musiker über mehrere Tage im Außenraum aufhält, die lokale Klanglandschaft studiert und sich in sie versenkt, bis er ihre Klänge zu antizipieren vermag und in einem improvisatorischen Duo auf diese reagiert. Die internationalen Musiker des Ensembles Konzert Minimal , die in Berlin im Umfeld der Off-Konzertorte O Tannebaum und Sowieso in Erscheinung treten, verfolgen mit ihren jüngsten Projekten ähnliche Ziele, wenn auch weniger aus einem klang-ökologischen als vielmehr sozialem Interesse: Spontane Konzerte auf der Straße sollen die „Politik des Lärms und Geräusches“ thematisieren, ebenso wie Formen der Interaktion mit dem „Publikum“ der Passanten. In dem Performance-Projekt Threshold in Berlin unternahm Richard Teitelbaum zehn Tage lang mit den Instrumentalisten von Konzert Minimal Feldstudien zum Klang von Berlin Mitte, erarbeitete eine neue Fassung seiner Threshold Music und führt sie gemeinsam mit den Musikern während des Festivals im öffentlichen Raum auf.

Threshold in Berlin I started doing Threshold Music in 1973 while living for a year in the remotest, furthest north, and quietest place in which I've ever stayed. I was teaching in the northern suburbs of Toronto at York University. About 30 miles further north, in the township of Guilford, there is a flat, round-ish valley perhaps, two miles wide by three miles long, and our small cabin was located near the center of this quasi-parabola, which seemed to focus the sounds around down towards our home. Several miles away to the west was Highway 400, the main 4-lane road heading due North. On those long, cold, winter nights the sound of the cars and trucks on that road would come to us very faintly, filtered by the low lying hills around the valley, and I would listen to that gorgeous threshold of sounds for many hours. Gradually I would try adding other sounds to it, matching the loudness level of the distant road as closely as possible so it was often impossible to identify the road sound separately from what I was playing. Often I used a large-ish bowl-shaped Japanese temple bell, rolling faintly on it with soft mallets. Sometimes I played my old Moog modular synthesizer, tuning the oscillators and filter to match the waveforms of the distant auto motors. I also realized that this was an activity very similar to those I had been doing for years in elevators, apartments and even on the street, listening to the hums of air conditioning motors, cars, trucks, busses et al and humming or whistling with them almost inaudibly to match or interfere with their frequencies, making heterodynes and beats through slight detunings. I soon started trying this approach in concert situations in galleries and concert halls in Toronto, Montreal, Buffalo, New York, Berlin, Köln, and elsewhere. Each time I would compose a new text inspired by the soundscape/score of the new location, and give it a new number. Some of these concerts were outdoors, some aided by opening windows and doors to let the distant sounds of birds, traffic and the outdoor environment penetrating the performance space and offering themselves as "score" materials to be gently followed, matched and played with. Sometimes only indoor sounds were available in the chosen (or assigned) performance spaces – sounds such as heating or air conditioning drones, or sounds from elsewhere in the building, filtering down several floors from some apartment or industrial sight. In the late Walter Bachauer's Metamusik Festival in 1974, the Group performed it in Mies van der Rohe's beautiful Neue Nationalgalerie here in Berlin. In Cologne I played it solo inside the Deutzer Brücke over the Rhine, with the roadway and tramlines running overhead. At the Albright Knox Gallery in Buffalo a four walled but open on top, Zen-like raked stone garden let in near and (mostly) distant sounds of the city to that peaceful space, further inspiring the meditative feeling of the piece. Some of the performances were purely acoustic, some electronic or both. The attitude towards sound and the environment encouraged by Threshold Music has strongly influenced my approach to sound in my music generally, greatly extending its dynamic range and the use of the ambient environmental sounds generally. In recent years I have learned of other composers working in this direction – here in Berlin, in Vienna and in Japan among other places. Last year, Volker Straebel saw some of my old scores for Threshold Music in Georg Weckwerth's exhibit “Membra Disjecta for John Cage” (the piece was originally dedicated to Cage) organized in Vienna and elsewhere and thought it interesting, after four decades, to organize a new performance of Threshold Music here in the “new” Berlin, this time outdoors and with the collaboration of Johnny Chang and Konzert Minimal. Richard Teitelbaum

Richard Teitelbaum: Threshold Music (1973)

Richard Teitelbaum (1939) is an American composer, keyboardist, and improvisator. Born in New York, he is a former student of Allen Forte, , and . He is best known for his live and synthesizer performance. For example, he brought the first Moog synthesizer to Europe. He is also involved with world music and uses Japanese, Indian, and western classical instruments and notation. He studied in Italy with Luigi Nono and Goffredo Petrassi. While in Italy, he became a founding member of Musica Elettronica Viva with and . He has also collaborated with , , , , and , among others. Teitelbaum lives in upstate New York and teaches at . 1984 he was in residence at the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program. Konzert Minimal (Johnny Chang, Catherine Lamb, Koen Nutters, Morten J Olsen) focuses on the music of the Wandelweiser collective and composers who share similar aesthetics and interests in the organization of sound and silence as well as extending beyond conventional confinements and traditional hierarchy. As an ensemble of Berlin-based musicians, Konzert Minimal draws upon diverse yet focused collective experiences of its members, who come from various backgrounds of music; modern , experimental and improvised music, sound art, conceptual performance and composition. Konzert Minimal was initiated by Johnny Chang and Koen Nutters in November 2010, and the ensemble has appeared in venues and festivals in Berlin (Labor Sonor, NK, Ausland) and Sonic Acts festival in Amsterdam (February 2012). A key aspect of Konzert Minimal is ongoing co- operation and research with composers in the recreation of new works, with ongoing collaborations alongside composers such as Peter Ablinger, Antoine

RELEVANTE MUSIK Festival politischer Medienkunst, Performance und Musik 19. – 21. Juli 2013 Villa Elisabeth & St. Elisabeth-Kirche und Veranstaltungen im öffentlichen Raum

Freunde Guter Musik Berlin e.V. in Kooperation mit dem Elektronischen Studio der TU Berlin, Fachgebiet Audiokommunikation und dem Berliner Künstlerprogramm des DAAD. Gefördert durch den Hauptstadtkulturfonds. Mit Unterstützung des DAAD Bonn, des Deutschlandradio Kultur, der Einstein Stiftung Berlin, von KlangQuadrat, Rosengarten e.V. und WDR 3. Medienpartner: taz. die tageszeitung.

Künstlerische Leitung: Volker Straebel Projektleitung: Ingrid Buschmann, Produktionsleitung: Vilém Wagner Redaktion Abendprogramme: Melanie Uerlings, Presse: Achim Klapp Ton / Medien: Andreas Pysiewicz, Ton Teitelbaum: Wilm Thoben

Freunde Guter Musik Berlin e.V., Erkelenzdamm 11-13 BIV, 10999 Berlin Tel. ++49-(0)30-215 6120, [email protected] www.freunde-guter-musik-berlin.de