Alex Paxton / Music for Bosch People

Ultraschall – Festival for new Music

Vladimir Jurowski sees himself as a politically aware artist who intervenes and takes a stand on current events. The RSB’s concert at Ultraschall Berlin is therefore particularly characterised by current affairs.Olga Rayeva: On the seaMany of her compositions deal with the theme of the sea. This is no coincidence: her early childhood is deeply connected with two cities: Moscow, where there is no sea, and Mariupol, where her mother’s parents lived at the time. She was always very happy in Mariupol and dreamed her whole life of being back there one day, near the somewhat murky, green Sea of Azov. She would then walk along an alleyway in this southern city to the small theatre…Now neither the theatre nor the town itself exists.This is a personal tragedy for Olga. The events of the last few years have destroyed her to a large extent internally. And the only way for a composer to deal with trauma is to write music.Elnaz Seyedi: a mark of our breathElnaz Seyedi’s compositions are influenced by literature, architecture and the visual arts as well as her studies in computer science. The sounds often oscillate between rigour and delicacy. Her work “a mark of our breath” was premiered as part of the concert series ‘Miniatures of Time’ – a series of twelve short orchestral pieces commissioned by Westdeutscher Rundfunk from various composers. They all deal with issues of our time, such as sustainability or the coronavirus crisis. Elnaz Seyedi himself writes about a mark of our breath:“The composition was created in 2021 during a stay in Wendland. Inspired by the expansive view with three quarters of the sky, which is different in every weather and every time of day, but actually always spectacular, and a landscape with a rich spectrum of green and later in autumn of yellow. The piece begins in this peaceful landscape, which gradually breaks up from within. The human voices – played and sung simultaneously in the brass instruments – are on the one hand part of this landscape, enriching it with their very special colour. On the other hand, their flipside is the destruction of the seemingly original.”Farzia Fallah “Traces of a Burning Mass” for orchestraLike Seyedi, Farzia Fallah was also born in Iran. Her orchestral work, for which she received the Heidelberg Women Artists’ Prize, was written during the protests against the violent death of Mahsa Amini in police custody in autumn 2022: musical traces of a burning, angry, freedom-loving mass. The concert can be heard on the radio on the following dates:Deutschlandfunk Kultur: 18 January 2024, 8:03 pm rbbKultur: 12 March 2024, 11:03 pm About the festival:The “Ultraschall – Festival for New Music” presents recently created works in a music-historical context that goes back to the beginnings of the post-war avant-garde, a period that now spans more than 70 years.In recent years, more and more premieres and first performances have been presented at the festival, and some of the works are also commissioned by the festival, but the approach remains the same: to give space to current trends in contemporary music and at the same time to categorise these current productions in terms of music history.

Ultraschall – Festival for New Music

MUSIC FOR A FUTURE WITHOUT GUARANTEES

How to deal with the uncertainty of the future? Together with the audience, singer Zola Mennenöh and composer Max Andrzejewski set out in search of musical answers. Inspired by the artist and researcher Lisa Nyberg, they use poetic song lyrics and chamber music with influences from new music and jazz to encourage openness, curiosity and hope in dealing with uncertainty. ‘Our times demand that we learn new skills,’ write Mennenöh and Andrzejewski - including ’actions that involve our body and our feelings and thus awaken self-efficacy and creative power.’ In contact with the audience, the result is a concert evening with chamber music, improvisation and spoken word that transcends formats and genres. The event will be held in English.

Film music – cinema for your ears

Music really brings a film to life! Whether contemplative moments, fast-paced chases or sad farewells – the right music completes the scenes. Music is used as a means to drive the plot forward and steer it in a certain direction. What composition techniques are there? What happens when the same music accompanies different images? Together with the orchestra, presenter and music lover Malte Arkona explores selected soundtracks in a humorous and informative way.

Thank You For The Music: ABBA Symphonic

From "Mamma Mia" to "Dancing Queen": The stirring hits of the Swedish pop icons make hearts dance. The WDR Funkhausorchester brings back the glamor of the ABBA era and lets the band's biggest successes shine in a new symphonic light.

Jewish Music Night

Sacral and spiritual music is the focus of this three-part evening that brings together Jewish singing traditions from several continents. The Piyut Ensemble takes its name from a form of religious Jewish poetry. Synagogue songs and music from North Africa and the Middle East are the sources of inspiration for its spiritual and artistic work, which is deeply rooted in the Jewish faith and Jewish ceremonies. The band Yemen Blues received unanimous acclaim from the audience here back in the Elbphilharmonie’s opening year. Almost seven years later, their singer Ravid Kahalani returns to Hamburg with his equally exciting ensemble Voices of Yemen. Jewish-Yemeni songs intoned with an amazing rawness to the accompaniment of an electric guitar, percussion and the relentlessly pulsating bass of Shanir Blumenkranz promise once more to lead the Hamburg audience to a state of trance, joy and ecstasy. For a number of years now, young Hassidic singers in Brooklyn have been intensively searching together for the synagogue songs of their ancestors. Sound recordings from the pre-war era provide valuable points of reference for producing historically accurate yet individual interpretations. The strong, beautiful singing exudes an uplifting joy and optimism, which probably gave their ancestors strength and solace as they experienced persecution, expulsion and flight, and were forced to start new lives in foreign countries. The Brooklyn Cantors’ programme also includes a song by Yossele Rosenblatt, who worked in Hamburg from 1906 until 1912, before he made it big in the USA. Rosenblatt is still regarded as one of the greatest cantors of all time. This video gives a taste of the Brooklyn Cantors’ impressive singing.

Buganda Music Ensemble

Court music comes to the Elbphilharmonie. The Buganda Music Ensemble comes from the Kingdom of Buganda, which was founded in the 14th century. The territory of the pre-colonial state lies in eastern Africa, in what is now the modern state of Uganda. The ensemble is led by Albert Bisaso Ssempeke, a renowned virtuoso on the ennanga arched harp and the endongo bowl lyre. Another of the formation’s key instruments is the amadinda, a bulky xylophone-like instrument that is played by three musicians at the same time and that boasts an incredible power. European art music composers such as John Cage and György Ligeti have also been inspired by the polyrhythm and microtonality of Bugandan music. How exactly the ancient composers of Buganda developed their compositions is still a mystery, but it is known that they composed on the ennanga arched harp. Various drums also belong to the Buganda Music Ensemble, whose complex melodic and rhythmic patterns produce fascinating effects and tonal illusions that gradually intensify into a mesmerising ritualistic sound. As is often the case in traditional African music, this is also a magical dialogue with the spirits of the ancestors.

Harri Stojka – A Song for My Daddy

He is probably one of the most famous jazz musicians in Austria: Guitarist Harri Stojka has stood on the familiar festival and concert stages since the 1970s and has worked with many musical greats from John McLaughlin and Carlos Santana to Van Morrison and Herbert Grönemeyer. Despite his unique style varying between jazz, rock, punk and world music, he has always remained true to his musical and familial Roma roots as well as gypsy jazz. André Heller presents the guitar legend as part of his »Reflektor« festival with a very personal and historically important project. Stojka’s father, Johann »Mongo« Stojka, was one of the few family members to survive the genocide of the Sinti and Roma by the Nazis, known as the Porajmos. As a 13-year old in the Buchenwald concentration camp, he wrote a little book with poems and drawings, which lay in various archives for eight decades, then reached the Holocaust Galleries of the Imperial War Museum in London. It was only there that it was attributed to Stojka – a minor sensation for the family. The Austrian musician and journalist Robert Rotifer (FM4, Ö1, Deutschlandfunk Kultur, Rolling Stone) was there in January 2024 when Stojka saw the original copy of his father’s childhood creation for the first time. On the stage of the Elbphilharmonie, the two of them discuss the moving story of this remarkable discovery. Following this, Harri Stojka together with Claudius Jelinek will, in a furious acoustic guitar set, celebrate the immortality and vital courage of Romani culture in the face of discrimination and genocide in his favourite way – with the guitar under his agile fingers. Please note: This event takes place in German.

Thank You For The Music: ABBA Symphonic + Livestream

From 'Mamma Mia' to 'Dancing Queen,' the captivating hits of the Swedish pop icons get hearts dancing. The WDR Funkhausorchester revives the brilliance of the ABBA era, letting the band's greatest successes shine anew in symphonic light.

Indian Classical Music: Soumik Datta

Soumik Datta is a British composer and sarod maestro (the sarod is a 19-stringed fretless lute, as opposed to the more traditional sitar.) Soumik Datta is more than a sarod virtuoso though. A polymath composer, producer, bandleader, TV presenter and Artistic Director of the Soumik Datta Arts charity, his work embraces traditional and contemporary art forms to address the urgent issues of our times. Soumik is best known for his creative collaborations with Beyonce, Jay-Z, Bill Bailey, Nitin Sawhney, Anoushka Shankar, Arijit Singh, Akram Khan, Javed Akhtar, London Philharmonic Orchestra and City of London Sinfonia amongst others. As a fervent champion of the preservation of Indian arts, Datta strives to bring this ancient Indian stringed instrument to new audiences on a global scale. While contributing to the preservation and ongoing development of musical heritage, Soumik believes that music can serve as a cultural anchor, deepening a sense of community, identity and heritage, while simultaneously reaching out in powerful ways to people of different backgrounds.What is the cost of forgetting? What is created when we misremember? Mone Rekho (or ‘Remember’ in Bengali) is an immersive concert that explores how the beauty and complexity of Indian music shifts and changes through the prism of memory. Born from Soumik’s conversations with elderly people in care homes, facilitated by University College of London and the Alzheimer’s Society, Mone Rekho weaves Indian music with electronic hybrids, visual collages, cinematic scenes, personal anecdotes and bursts of comedy. Accompanied by Gurdain Singh Rayatt on tabla and Camilo Tirado on live effects, Soumik moves between the roles of student, storyteller and master musician in a space that shifts from concert hall to classroom; from care homes to the streets of Kolkata. Everyone is left with something to think about - from remembering lost memories to learning something new. Intimate yet expansive, ‘Mone Rekho’ stretches your imagination.