PHACE | DW24

In Breaking for amplified ensemble, sampler and live electronics, Iris ter Schiphorst refers to Lars von Trier’s film Breaking the Waves and projects her work in a cavernous dome of sound, enclosing musicians and audience alike. DW 24 “Loops for Al Jourgensen” for solo saxophone and ensemble by Bernhard Lang paints an electroacoustic portrait of the personality of Al Jourgensen—founder and head of the industrial band Ministry. A highly virtuosic saxophone solo part (developed in collaboration with Lars Mlekusch) quotes the two saxophonists Eric Dolphy and Evan Parker. With Chromatic Bias, Wolfgang Suppan has created an extraordinary work for us, in which the musicians are distributed around the audience. This multi-dimensional sound experience is enhanced by an additional 8-channel playback.

PROGRAM

Wolfgang Suppan
Chromatic Bias (2013/14) (premiere)
for ensemble and 8-channel-live-feed
commissioned by PHACE in cooperation with ICST Zürich

P A U S E

Iris ter Schiphorst
Breaking (2012) (Austrian premiere)
for amplified ensemble, sampler and live-electronics

Bernhard Lang
DW 24 “Loops for Al Jourgensen” (2013/14) (premiere)
for saxophone and small ensemble
commissioned by PHACE and Wiener Konzerthaus

ABOUT BERNHARD LANG
Since 1997, Bernhard Lang has intermittently worked on the DW Series (Difference/Repetition), which now includes approximately 30 compositions. In the individual works of the series, he explores the process of repetition of musical material as well as the phenomena of differentiation – especially those at the edge of perception – through the occurrence of subtle and minimal methods of variation. Numerous musical styles and genres, such as rock, jazz or even electronic club music leave their mark in the way Lang creatively takes on them on as loops in the compositions of the DW Series. Influences from other arts and sciences, such as the experimental films of Martin Arnold and the philosophical oeuvre of Gilles Deleuze, play an essential role in DW. Lang designates DW 24 as the twin work of DW 23, in that both works act as electro-acoustic portraits of artistic personalities. The subject of DW 23 is actor Boris Karloff; in DW 24 it is the musician Al Jourgensen, singer and frontman of the industrial metal band Ministry, to whom the composition is also dedicated. On the one hand, Jourgensen’s voice served as a source of inspiration for the saxophone part of the piece, which Lang describes as the instrumentation of Jourgensen’s voice. Some of the band’s songs as well as interviews with the singer comprise the material for this piece, which is controlled by a keyboard and forms the looped rhythmic base of the composition. The instrumental ensemble and saxophone are in dialogue with this electronic material, doubling, re-transcribing, and contrapuntalizing the loops. Like the other works of the series, DW 24 also reflects the diverse intellectual and musical career of the composer and instrumentalist Bernhard Lang. The saxophone part was developed in a long collaboration with Lars Mlekusch and is most indebted to two formative jazz saxophonists: Eric Dolpy and Evan Parker. The latter’s unique technique, characterized by multiphonics and overblowing in the extreme registers of the instrument, gave rise to a new system of notation for DW 24, so dubbed “Parkerphonics” by Lang and Mlekusch.
(Juri Giannini)