A week of concerts with the composer’s group Wandelweiser

An artist in residence project

21st - 25th of July 2008

Station Neufelden

Radu Malfatti (Vienna) trompone / Jürg Frey (Aarau, Switzerland) clarinet / Michael Pisaro (Los Angeles, USA) guitar  / Christoph Nicolaus (Munich) stoneharp / Antoine Beuger (The Netherlands, resident in Haan near Düsseldorf, Germany) flute / Sylvia Alexandra Schimag  (Haan, Germany) voice  / André O. Möller (Düsseldorf, Germany) guitar, electronics / Marcus Kaiser (Düsseldorf, Germany) violoncello

The basis of today’s sustainable and internationally recognized network of the composer’s group Wandelweiser was the initiative of some friendly linked composers who found a publisher to publish their own music. Meanwhile concerts regularly take place at different spaces over the whole world (Tokyo, Vienna, Zurich, Aarau, Düsseldorf, Berlin, Munich, Brussels, Amsterdam, and Los Angeles). Own pieces and those of fellow composers are being performed there.

Together with invited instrumentalists, composers and artists a programme is being developed at the locations according to the respective possibilities. Thus the artists create an intense communication on a musical, artistic and verbal level while and because of working together over the years.

Even though the music of the single composers pursues quite different directions, similar characteristics can be found in certain aspects. The music is often quiet and slow and even more often long. Traditional elements of organization like harmony and rhythm are of no or subordinate relevance. The music rather resembles more a gentle creation of a habitat or a garden in which animals and humans can move freely than the training of a tiger jumping through a circus hoop on fire.