Art’s Birthday

17.01.2018 / 22:30
With Arturas Bumšteinas

and Thomas Ankersmit

Ultraschall Berlin – Festival für neue Musik

Program

Arturas Bumsteinas: thus time goes by (UA)
for voices

Thomas Ankersmit: Treatise on Musical Objects (UA)
for synthesizer

with
Solistenensemble PHØNIX16
Conductor: Timo Kreuser

Art is having a birthday: on January 17 it turns 1,000,055 years old. Thanks to Fluxus artist Robert Filliou. He initiated Art’s Birthday in 1963, a global party of performances, exhibitions and concerts.
Lithuanian composer Arturas Bumšteinas creates a score for the 1963 document that founded Art’s Birthday, in which Robert Filliou turns all that was believed then about art on its head. For his piece, Bumšteinas invited vocalists from the ensemble PHØNIX16 to the studio, asking them one by one to improvise to a recording of Filliou’s whispering voice. Each singer created melodies and tones the composer then combined into a poly-logue of personal inclinations and musical patterns, which, now transcribed, will be sung live in concert.

Conceived as a basic framework for musique concrète, Pierre Schaeffer’s Traité des objets musicaux, published in 1966, is not just applicable to concrete noises. Musician Thomas Ankersmit demonstrates this by translating Schaeffer’s concepts into purely synthetic sounds. Using a Serge synthesizer, he creates complex Schaeffer’ian acousmatic morphologies: simultaneously dense and transparent, energetic sound-forms.
The event is a cooperation of the Redaktion Klangkunst at Deutschlandfunk Kultur, the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program and the Elektroakustischer Salon at Berghain as part of Ultraschall Berlin – Festival für neue Musik.

A concert by Redaktion Klangkunst at Deutschlandfunk Kultur, dDAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program and Electroacoustic Salon at Berghain, in the context of Ultraschall Berlin – Festival für neue Musik.

Radio broadcast
Deutschlandfunk Kultur, experimental music, Friday, January 19, 12am
Entry fee: tba