Eröffnung

With Decoder Ensemble & Heinrich Horwitz, Lisa Lammel & Desheng Chen and Nelly Boyd Kreis.

Inspired by the unique possibilities that Kampnagel affords us, we have, since 2009, developed various innovative modes of presenting experimental music. Due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, we will not be featuring a concert-installation for the audience to explore through movement this year. But a little hike can’t hurt. The ensemble Nelly Boyd will open the festival with a composition by recently deceased composer and percussionist Matthias Kaul, who was a close friend of both the festival and the ensemble itself. Do nothing, just wait, the singing will start…. sooner or later is a composition for cymbals and japanese electric toothbrushes from 2012.

Subsequently, Hamburg based Decoder Ensemble will present Dissociated Press by Leopold Hurt, a modularly arranged series of compositions, which began in 2017 as a work-in-progress. Its instrumentation ranges from solo pieces with electronic elements to septets – conceived to suit the characteristic line-up of Decoder. Dissociated Press – intended as a pun on »Associated Press« – designates an algorithm for the automated generation of texts based on known speech patterns. From this, the cycle derives and unites different approaches to the notion of the remix, both on the levels of language as well as music. In an ongoing dialogue between original and copy, mashup and fake, perceptions gradually shift.

The night concert will consist of Lisa Lammel and Desheng Chen playing the last completed composition of Italian composer Luigi Nono (1924–1990): »Hay que caminar« Soñando for two violins (1989). The central theme of this piece is wandering. Nono took the title from an inscription that he discovered in the wall of a monestary in Toledo: »Caminante no hay caminos hay que caminar« (»Wanderer. There are no paths. There is only wandering«). To this, Nono added »dreaming«. This composition invites its two instrumentalists to play the piece from various positions – traversing their shared space in a somnambulistic way.