__ SJU __ Alte Suste (The Haunted
House)
PROGRAM
Kollektivkreation, 2021
Alte Suste, Susten/Leuk, Wallis, Switzerland
IDEA
Musikalische Räume und nichtlineare
Erzählweisen
ausserhalb des klassischen Konzertformats.
MUSIC & SOUND LABORATORY.
SJU is a laboratory
bringing together musicians, composers and researchers with
a common purpose defined by specific projects. It consists
of S(imone Conforti), J(IP), U(MS), basically working on
electronics, voice and recorders. SJU designs a new
listening and music exploration experience by extending the
traditional audience and stage setting exhibiting music
itself.
INNER PERMEABILITY
. SJU rethinks and
reshapes the music experience and exploration for both
musicians and the audience: for a long time in human
history, music has been exclusively related to a specific
place where people have been performing live. Since the
possibity to record and broadcast music, especially since
the appearance of digital media, this has deeply changed.
For this, extending the possibilities to access music and
sound is an important issue: both by composing and
performing differently, as well as by considering space and
time differently.
EXPERIENCED RESEARCHERS AND MUSICIANS.
SJU can look back on many independent and common research
as well as artistic projects: Recorder Map and Recorderology
(recorder playing techniques mapping, web app programming,
Musikforschung Basel), PRIME Research (Paetzold Recorder
Investigation for Music with Electronics, HEMU Lausanne),
common keynotes and publications at the International
Computer Music Conference in Utrecht 2016, at the Web Audio
Conference in Atlanta 2016, Musikakademie Basel 2014,
Elektronisches Studio Basel 2015, festival appearancies at
RESET Museum Tinguely Basel, Forum Wallis 2018, Archipel
Geneva 2017, Biennale Venezia 2019, specific and
experimental recordings documenting the repertoire of UMS 'n
JIP, pluriannual work and research at highly specialized
enterprises such as http://www.musstdesign.com (hi-end
loudpeaker systems) and http://www.musi-co.com (algorythmic
composition).
2018/9 bespielen SJU das historische Burgerspittel im
mittelalterlichen Städtchen Leuk im Wallis und machen diese
Arbeiten auch für Schulklassen zugänglich. 2021 entwickeln
sie ihr site-specific-Konzept um mehrere interaktive
Komponenten weiter. Deren musikalisches Format visiert einen
nicht linearen Hybrid von Live-Performance und Installation
an, welcher dem Publikum die Möglichkeit bietet, seine
eigene Erzählperspektive und sein eigenes Erzähltempo zu
definieren.
Mit diesen Arbeiten, welche die Qualität der
Hörerfahrung an sich sowie die individuelle Hörerfahrung in
den Mittelpunkt stellen, werden langfristig Museen und
Ausstellungsräume als Spielstätten anvisiert. Deren
Vermittlungsstrukturen und Räumlichkeiten eignen sich a
priori für diese Art von Arbeiten am besten und schaffen
beste Voraussetzungen für eine breite Bevölkerungsschichten
erreichende, nachhaltige und qualitativ hochstehende
Vermittlung und Sensibilisierung für Klang, Klang und Raum,
Raumklang sowie für Neue Musik.
SJU, Burgerspittel Leuk 2018/19
COMPOSERS
Simone Conforti, composer, computer music designer, sound designer and software developer. Graduated in Flute and Electronic Music in Florence and in Electronic Music Composition in Perugia, works as professor at IRCAM in Paris. Currently PhD candidate at the Basel University, he is working on a research which combines music composition with automatic audio data segmentation and recognition, through unsupervised neural networks. Specialised in interactive arts and multimedia, his work passes also through an intense activity of music oriented technology design, in these fields he has developed many algorithms for sound spatialisation and space virtualisation, for noise masking, and for generative music and automatic composition. Co-founder and CTO of MUSI-CO formerly co-founded MusicFit and MUSST (multisensing space studio); these companies share a deep inclination towards the audio technology innovation and are characterised by the development of novel and proprietary methods and algorithms applied to music research. These range from aided composition, to architectural design through sounds, reaching sound processing. He has been teaching as professor in Electroacoustic at Cuneo’s and Florence’s Conservatoires and has been working as researcher for the HEM Geneva, the MARTLab in Florence in the field of sound digitisation and computer music design and for the HEMU in Lausanne where he was involved to develop a new hyper-instrument based on motion detection applied to the Paetzold Recorders, he has also been working for the company Architettura Sonora as sound designer and software developer. He has published for AIB, ISTI Institute, Biennale Musica (Venice), Suvini Zerboni, Mudima Music, ET’CETERA, die Schachtel, Cramps, Stradivarius, Dissonance, Artestampa and A14. http://www.temporoom.net/en/simone_conforti.php
Extraordinary diversity describes the composer and
multi-instrumentalist Ulrike Mayer-Spohn
who plays the recorder (with a focus on contemporary music),
as well as historical string instruments (fiddle and baroque
violin). She studied composition and audio design with Erik
Oña at the Studio of Electronic Music, Academy of Music,
Basel, beginning to compose in 2007, and receiving
commissions from the festival Forum Valais and the
international New Music Days, Shanghai. Her work has been
performed by the Stuttgart Vocal soloists, Ensemble Phoenix
Basel, Vertigo, DissonArt, L'Arsenale, cool a cappella (1st
Prize world choir games 2008) and her own ensemble Ums' n
Jip in Switzerland, France, Greece, Italy, Russia,
Australia, the USA and China, premiered under the baton of
Beat Furrer, Mark Foster, Tsung Yeh, Jürg Henneberger and
Filippo Perocco and broadcast by the Swiss radio. She was
awarded the 1st Prize at the London Ear Festival Composition
Contest in 2016, the 1st Prize at the Walter Ferrato
Composition Contest in Savona, Italy in 2017, the 1st Prize
at the Weimarer Frühjahrstage für Zeitgenössische Musik
Composition Contest in 2017, the 2nd Prize in the
composition competition Culturescapes 2010, 2nd Prize in the
composition competition at the Bern music festival 2011, the
Scholarship Award for 2011 at the Music Village Mount Pelion
in Greece and the Call for Scores Award L'Arsenale Treviso,
Italy 2011. In the ensemble Ums' n Jip she has undertaken
research in the field of musical theater (chamber operas
One, Two, Three, Four, Five), live electronic music and
sound spacialization. She studied recorder with Ulrike
Mauerhofer at the Musikhochschule Karlsruhe, with Conrad
Steinmann and Corina Marti at the Schola Cantorum Basel
before specializing in contemporary music and studying with
Dorothea Winter at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. From
2009-11 she studied for a specialized master's degree in
contemporary performance at the HSM in Basel supervised by
Jürg Henneberger, Marcus Weiss and Mike Svoboda and has
taken masterclasses with Marion Verbruggen, Peter van
Heyghen, Sebastien Marq and Gerd Lünenbürger. She studied
baroque violin and viola with Martina Graulich and David
Plantier and fiddle with Randal Cook in Basel. Ulrike
Mayer-Spohn works with internationally leading composers and
annually plays more than 20 world premieres dedicated to
her, which she has recorded for the radio as well as VDE
Gallo on CD. Together with the Swiss composer and singer
Javier Hagen, she established the experimental new music duo
Ums `N Jip for voice, recorder and electronics, which,
alongside the Ensemble Modern, Intercontemporain and Kronos
is one of the most active ensembles worldwide and in 2011
won the prestigious MusiquePro scholarship. Since 1999,
Ulrike Mayer-Spohn has also performed as a recorder player,
violinist, violist and fiddle player in specialized early
music ensembles such as the Amsterdam Barok Compagnie,
Freitagsakademie, Collegium Musicum Stuttgart, La Chapelle
Ancienne, Musica Poetica, Muscadin and La Morra and has
performed in Germany, China, the Netherlands, France, Spain,
Italy and Switzerland. www.ulrikems.info
Javier Hagen is one of the most astonishing
classical singers of his generation: new music, performance
art and Swiss folk music rank equally in his repertoire
alongside opera and early music. Hagen was born as
Javier-Ignacio Palau-Ribes (JIP) in 1971 in Barcelona and
raised on the Mediterranean and in the Valais Alps. He
studied classical singing (both tenor and countertenor) in
Germany, Italy and Switzerland with Roland Hermann, Alain
Billard and Nicolai Gedda, and composition with Heiner
Goebbels and Wolfgang Rihm. He studied Lied with Irwin Gage,
Hartmut Höll and Ernst Haefliger and early music with Karel
van Steenhoven and Kees Boeke. He has a four-octave vocal
range. Hagen has worked with world-class composers such as
Reimann, Kagel, Rosemann and Eötvös and leading artists from
the worlds of concrete poetry and constructive art. Guest
appearances have taken him to the modern music festivals in
Donaueschingen, Zurich, Geneva, Lucerne, Karlsruhe,
Amsterdam, Strasbourg, Bologna, Milan, Prague, New York,
Hong Kong, Shanghai, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Adelaide, Riga,
Avignon and Berlin. Alongside operatic roles such as
Handel's Giulio Cesare, Zsupan (Kalman), Dardanus (Rameau),
Stanislaus (Zeller), Bruno (Roesler), Toni (Kalman) and
Pappacoda (Strauss), Javier Hagen has premiered more than
200 works, including operas 'à l'air en verre' by Daniel
Mouthon 'eismeer' by Christoph Schiller, 'poem ohne held' by
Regina Irman, 'esther de racine' by Boris Yoffe, 'The
Madman's Diary' by Guo Wenjing, 'Marienglas' by Beat Gysin,
'Les Musiciens de Brème' by Wen Deqing, 'Keyner nit' by
Mathias Steinauer, 'Ushba et Tetnuld' by Nicolas Vérin and
almost all vocal works by Maria Porten. He has made more
than 50 recordings and broadcasts for Swiss, German, French,
Czech, Chinese, Mongolian, Spanish, Egyptian, Italian and
Latvian radio and television. He won prizes at international
contemporary music and composition competitions in 2001,
2004 and 2008 in Basel, Lausanne and Dusseldorf. In 2003,
his distorted folk song arrangements "s´sch mr alles 1 Ding"
were released on CD on the Swiss label "musiques suisses".
His compositions, in particular the vocal works, are
performed throughout Europe, Israel, China, Korea, Russia,
Australia, North and Central America, by ensembles and
conductors including Titus Engel, Ensemble Phoenix,
dissonArt, Taller Sonoro, Basler Madrigalisten, Schweizer
Jugendchor, Männerstimmen Basel, Philip Bride, Eliana Burki,
Amar Quartet. In 2012, a selection of his graphic scores was
shown at the prestigious Museum of Modern Art ‘haus
konstruktiv’ in Zurich. At the European Youth Choir Festival
2012, Javier Hagen represented German-speaking Switzerland
in the context of 'Swiss Composers meet Europe'. With Ulrike
Mayer-Spohn, Hagen formed the experimental new music duo UMS
'N JIP, which, with over 100 concerts annually is one of the
most active and prolific contemporary music ensembles around
the world and winner of more than 20 awards, among them the
prestigious scholarship MusiquePro. Javier Hagen, who speaks
6 languages, also directs the international contemporary
music festival Forum Wallis, hosting Stockhausen's famous
Helicopter String Quartet with Arditti in 2015. He is called
as an expert on experimental music theater for the
University of Arts in Bern, President of the Swiss Section
of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM
Switzerland), of IGNM-VS, as well as a board member of the
European Conference of Promoters of New Music ECPNM, Swiss
Music Edition and Swissfestivals. He presents guest lectures
at universities in Shanghai, Moscow, Adelaide, Thessaloniki,
Barcelona, New York, Riga and Hong Kong. He is a jury member
at national and international composition and new music
competitions (a.o.ISCM World Music Days Young Composers
Award, Bohol Int. Choir Competition Philippines) and a
member of various committees on behalf of Valais as well as
for the inventory of the cultural heritage on behalf of
UNESCO. In 2007 he was nominated for "Walliser of the Year."
In 2013 he was awarded the Prix Culturel de l'Etat du
Valais. In 2017 he has been elected to the Academic Board of
the Escuela de Invierno, the FNOBA Contemporary Opera
Academy at the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires. www.javierhagen.ch
ALTE SUSTE
