Pierre Jodlowski, concept – composition
– video – lights
Frank Witzel, text
Louise Sari, stage design

Polish translation: Zbigniew Naliwajek

PHACE
Doris Nicoletti, flute
Michael Krenn, saxophone
Ivana Pristašová Zaugg, violin
Roland Schueler, cello
Manuel Alcaraz Clemente, percussion
Stefan Obmann, trombone
Alfred Reiter, sound design

Voice Performers
Véronique Caye, Frank Smith, Maria Cristina
Mastrangeli, Xavier Maurel, Ulysses Mengue,
Vanessa Bettane, Philippe Langlois

Camera crew
Pierre Jodlowski
Markus Bruckner
Michael Eder

Video extras
Barbara Eder, Michael Eder, Reinhard Fuchs,
Petra Fuchs-Jebinger, Simone Göbel,
Nikolas Heep, Mia Kim, Maximilian Ölz,
Wolfgang Winter, Elfriede Wuschko

Production
Reinhard Fuchs, artistic director PHACE
Markus Bruckner, production PHACE
Emilie Roupnel, production éOle

Pierre Jodlowski

INSULÆ for six musicians, video, lights and electronics, 2024/25
commissioned by PHACE and éOle studio de création musicale & with the support of the

   and   

a production by PHACE & éOle in co-production with Warsaw Autumn, Wien Modern, Osterfestival Tirol and GRAME – Centre National de Création Musicale

In 1940, Adolfo Bioy Casares published The Invention of Morel, a visionary novella released at a time when Hollywood cinema was flourishing. Around the world, movie theaters were multiplying, and with them emerged a new form of human connection: the ability to share emotions, stories, and attachments with fictional beings—with images, simply projected onto a screen.

Since then, humanity has entered an era where our relationship to images has become central—eventually blurring the line between reality and its representation. This confusion, now intensified by digital networks and our growing desire for virtual existence, raises a question already posed by Casares: Can one fall in love with an image?

Autor Frank Witzel greift diese Frage auf und komponiert ein literarisches Palimpsest, das Fragmente von Casares mit Echos von  Shakespeare, Kierkegaard, Deleuze, Augé, Baudrillard usw. vermischt. Er führt uns auf eine Insel außerhalb der Zeit, gefangen in einer Endlosschleife, wo drei Figuren – ein Mann und zwei Frauen – versuchen, einer instabilen Welt durch die Auseinandersetzung mit ihren Gedanken und Gefühlen einen Sinn zu verleihen. Wie in Tarkowskis « Solaris » ist der Ozean hier kein natürliches Element, sondern ein denkender Organismus, eine mentale Projektion, die ein Eigenleben entwickelt hat.

Martin Matalon, conductor

PHACE
Doris Nicoletti, flute
Walter Seebacher, clarinet
Reinhold Brunner, clarinet
Michael Krenn, saxophone
Mathilde Hoursiangou, piano
Berndt Thurner, percussion
Ivana Pristasova Zaugg, violin
Petra Ackermann, viola
Roland Schueler, cello
Maximilian Ölz, double bass
Alexandra Dienz, double bass
and many more …

SOUND DESIGN
Alfred Reiter

Martin Matalon

Foxtrot Délirium for 12 instruments and electronics, 2015
Music for the silent film

Die Austernprinzessin (1919) Director: Ernst Lubitsch, Script: Ernst Lubitsch, Hanns Kräly

This early silent film by master director Ernst Lubitsch already demonstrates his tremendous talent for timing. With a light touch and exuberant inventiveness, he staged the fast-paced, satirical social comedy genre for the first time, perfecting it.

The extremely wealthy American businessman Quaker has earned his fortune from seafood and is therefore known everywhere as the Oyster King. His spirited daughter, the “Oyster Princess,” is determined to marry a European nobleman. This leads her to the penniless Prince Nuki, who first sends his servant Josef ahead. Believing she has a real prince on her hands, the impetuous millionaire’s daughter marries the servant at the first opportunity. In doing so, she sets in motion a turbulent chain of events…

Musically, Martin Matalon exploits the entire spectrum of possible relationships between music and images, between the editing of the film and the articulation of the music: from the most dependent parallelism to the most complete divergence. From the points of contact between music and image, a third, independent work emerges that carries an important aspect of Lubitsch’s film into the present: social criticism through comedy and humor. Humor, which is all too often lacking in contemporary music, enables us to deal with important, often profound things with wit and lightness.

PROGRAM

Bernhard Lang
The Travel Agency is on Fire for voice, five instruments and electronics, 2021 (ÖEA)
​​Text: William S. Burroughs

Loops and samples repeatedly wander through the ear canal, distorted and doubled by electronics and effects, deformed and restructured by patches and digital algorithms, until perception shifts and a different meaning emerges from the superposition. Repetition and mutation are part of the program in the works of Bernhard Lang, powerfully supported this evening by Sarah Maria Sun, arguably one of the most outstanding vocal interpreters of our time. The Travel Agency is on Fire is based on a selection of “cut-up” experiments by William S. Burroughs on texts by a range of canonical authors, from William Shakespeare and Arthur Rimbaud to William Wordsworth and James Joyce. Burroughs selected the source texts, cut them up, and juxtaposed the fragments to select random word combinations and create new word compositions. The Travel Agency is on Fire, which has only been available in the archives since 2010, fascinates scholars and Burroughs fans alike, as it illuminates the experimental processes underlying Burroughs’ work. Musically, the cut-up strategies that Burroughs developed together with Brion Gysin and visualized in the films with Anthony Balch and Ian Sommerville are referenced in various ways: essential here is Burroughs’s maxim: “Play it back, play it back, play it all back,” which points to a change in consciousness through the overlaying and doubling of reality with samples and loops.

merry-go-round
PHACE series 2025/26 at Wiener Konzerthaus

Let’s go to the next round. The carousel of sounds whirls again, spinning the ears, spinning the mind. Sound organisms move and develop according to their own dynamics, like a broad stream caught in eddies and vortexes, yet still flowing. Intelligent automatons diligently shovel, in rhythm with the server’s pulse, until all anomalies are sorted out.

Funky music in the centrifuge! Categorized, hunted, out of balance. Only to shatter the syntax; only to piece together new meaning from the rubble. Power lies in repetition; loops and samples duplicate reality. “Play it all back!” is the mantra, fragmented and combined, composed into a new whole.

In the end and in the beginning, the annual cycle closes. At the turning point, everything hangs in the balance, neither up nor down, even the intervals appear unfamiliar. In the clearing of isolation, shrouded in darkness, the sounds emerge with unexpected clarity. Get in, get on, never get off again – the next ride is in reverse.

PROGRAM

Malika Kishino
Sensitive Chaos for electric guitar, trumpet, trombone, 2 percussionists, piano and cello, 2010  (austrian premiere)

Zara Ali
Isolation Forest  for eleven instruments and electronics, 2023

Emre Sihan Kaleli
Adjacent Rooms, a Part of a Labyrinth for ensemble  (wp of the expanded new version), 2025
comissioned by PHACE and Wien Modern

schtum– Manu Mayr & Robert Pockfuß
loom for e-guitar, e-bass and ensemble, 2024

“The sound of the sea reaches far,” writes Maliko Kishino about her piece Sensible Chaos, finding similarities between water and music in the Buddhist sutra: resonance and diffusion. Like raindrops on the surface of a lake, the composition shows how individual events branch out into incredibly expansive patterns and, through mutual interference, create a delicate and fragile beauty from the chaos. In Adjacent Rooms, a Part of a Labyrinth, the music of Emre Sihan Kaleli often takes abrupt, unexpected detours, but reveals a continuous flow as it travels through very different corridors, one thing leading to the next. The labyrinthine progression offers a clear view of time and infinity. In Isolation Forest, Zara Ali delves into the digital wilderness, discovering algorithmic grace with the help of rigid instructions and the sorting out of anomalies, allowing the AI to reveal its wildest dreams and lyrical fantasies. An organically pulsating web of electroacoustic sounds is revealed in the work loom by the experimental electronic duo schtum. Rhythmic permutations chase each other in circles, building each other up into ever new, intense patterns. And somewhere, restlessness resonates, a fascinating, almost threatening sonic shadow lurking underground.

PROGRAM

Arturo Fuentes
SKULPT for instruments and automata, 2025/26 (wp)
comissioned by PHACE, with financial support by BMKOES

Yuheng Chen
To a Bubbling Fountain Stirr’d with Wind,for saxophone, E-guitar, keyboard, percussion, and contrabass, 2025/26 (wp)
comissioned by PHACE

Zara Ali
thermo_doxa for clarinet, viola, drum set and electronics, 2024

Enno Poppe
Fleisch for saxophone, electric guitar, piano and percussion, 2017

In Fleisch, Enno Poppe systematically and purposefully dissects the idioms of rock music. The resulting phrases and snippets, which only vaguely recall oft-heard clichés and stereotypes, create an entertaining soundscape that combines and unpacks the expressive power of rock in a new way. With his music, Yuheng Chen attempts to explore the possibilities of tonal-instrumental modulations and push their boundaries. His works often contain image-forming moments that almost create concrete situations upon listening. We are already excited to see what the premiere of his new work has in store for PHACE. In thermo_doxa, Zara Ali opens up a thoroughly fascinating soundscape: driving, exhilarating, energetic, yet balanced and nuanced. She shows little hesitation or reservation in utilizing musical expression techniques from EDM to techno, creating a brutally sensitive sonic hybrid that combines the strengths of instruments and electronics. Arturo Fuentes, with whom we’ve realized numerous exciting projects over the years, also contributes a new work. His music exists at the intersection of genres and aesthetic forms and is often enhanced by a mix of digital, visual, acoustic, or material media. Which automatons will set the tone in SKULPT remains unclear for now.

PHACE

Mathilde Hoursiangou, electric organ
Ivana Pristasova Zaugg, violin
Petra Ackermann, viola
Roland Schueler, cello
Jorge Sánchez-Chiong, electronics

SOUND DESIGN
Alfred Reiter

Dreams, of music, about music, and through music. Three works look at unheard-of utopias, unimagined connections, and parallel realities, each in its own way inviting us to shift our perspective. In Animal Smileys (20222/24), Jorge Sánchez-Chiong imagines a third Summer of Love, playing with an iconography of peace and liberation that seems refreshingly utopian yet strangely out of place in the here and now. Samples and electronic effects transport the soundscape to a parallel universe, a timeline in which the combined hippie and techno aesthetics have prevailed, and an eternal, post-human summer of love reigns.

Effects and distortions also offer glimpses into parallel dimensions in Kadosh (2021) by Sarah Nemtsov. This virtuoso solo piece for violin explores timbres and resonances, takes unexpected shortcuts, and finds new connections between the tones and sounds that wind through the musical material like wormholes, making things seemingly distant appear like neighbors.

Peter Ablinger needs only water and glass tubes to shift reality to another level. Constant drops, seemingly uniform, almost imperceptibly subject to deceleration, interplay to create mutating rhythms and melodies. It is a flowing, almost meditative soundscape, which nevertheless resonates with a certain amount of glassy hardness, which invites you to immerse yourself in WEISS / WEISSLICH 31e, Membrane, Regen (2002) and leaves behind an absolutely memorable listening experience.

Liquid Loft
Luke Baio, dance/ choreography
Andreas Berger, composition/ soundconcept
Valentina Diaz, social media
Kim Dong Uk, dance/ choreography
Stefan Grissemann, text
Chris Haring, artistic director/ choreography
Roman Harrer, stage management
Verena Herterich, dance/ choreography
Thomas Jelinek, light design/ scenografie
Cornelia Lehner, companie management
Michael Loizenbauer, video
Katharina Meves, dance/ choreography
Dante Murillo, dance/ choreography
Anna Maria Nowak, dance/ choreography
Stefan Röhrle, costume
Judith Thaler, production
Hannah Timbrell, dance/ choreography

PHACE
Petra Ackermann, viola
Manuel Alcaraz Clemente, percussion
Stefan Obmann, trombone
Maximilian Ölz, bass
Roland Schueler, cello
Doris Nicoletti, flute
Reinhard Fuchs, artistic director
Markus Bruckner, production
Michael Eder, promotion

with musical fragments by
Franck Bedrossian,
 Pierre Jodlowski, Lorenzo Troiani
and Johannes Brahms.

Spaces of Freedom

Oct. 5 2024 // 21:00
ORF Musikprotokoll,
Helmut List Halle, Graz

Lars Mlekusch, conductor

PHACE
Doris Nicoletti, flute
Walter Seebacher, clarinet
Michael Krenn, saxophone
Thomas Märzendorfer, trombone
Mathilde Hoursiangou, piano
Maria Chlebus, percussion
Ivana Pristasova Zaugg, violin
Myriam García Fidalgo, cello
Maximilian Ölz, double bass
Manu Mayr, e-bass
Maria Mogas Gensana, accordion

SOUND DESIGN
Alfred Reiter

How do AI, robotics, and virtual reality affect the freedoms of contemporary composing? What musical questions arise with a view toward future digital revolutions? PHACE from Vienna brings these topics together in three world premieres.

In Alessandro Baticci’s Luminal Mirage, natural and virtual sounds merge. The instruments imitate the sound of electronics, doubling rhythms and timbres. Endlessly ascending and descending lines wind along, as if in an M. C. Escher staircase.

Grzegorz Pieniek is inspired by futuristic films and current digital developments. Nava Hemyari uses balloons as portable instruments. Annesley Black, who has been teaching composition at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz since 2023, presents her work scrap at ORF musikprotokoll. She works with the live electronic processing of instrumental sounds; the smallest possible distinguishable audio fragments vie for supremacy over hearing and memory.

PROGRAMM

Grzegorz Pieniek
Cyberbrain for amplified ensemble and electronics, 2024 (wp)

Comissioned by PHACE and Radio Österreich 1 in cooperation with ORF musikprotokoll, with support by SKE Austro Mechana and Stadt Wien Kultur

Nava Hemyari
blowfür Ensemble, 2024 (UA)
Comissioned by PHACE, with support by SKE Austro Mechana

Annesley Black
Scrap for ensemble and live-electronics, 2019

Alessandro Baticci
Luminal Mirage for ensemble und electronics, 2024 (UA)
Comissioned by PHACE and Radio Österreich 1 in cooperation with ORF musikprotokoll, with support by SKE Austro Mechana and Stadt Wien Kultur

BTZM 2024

26.Sept.2024 // 20:00
Bludenzer Tage für zeitgemäße Musik,
Bludenz, Kunstraum Remise

Nacho de Paz, conductor

PHACE
Doris Nicoletti, flute
Walter Seebacher, clarinet
Spiros Laskaridis, trumpet
Mathilde Hoursiangou, piano
Francesco Palmieri, e-guitar
Manuel Alcaraz Clemente, percussion
Ivana Pristasova Zaugg, violin
Petra Ackermann, viola
Roland Schueler, cello
Maximilian Ölz, double bass

SOUND DESIGN
Alfred Reiter

In  the three lessons of Professor Bad Trip, Fausto Romitelli created a unique piece of music that unfolds waves of melodic fragments over seductively fragile harmonies and exalted ornaments and rushing glissandi, only to collapse in on itself again and again. Influenced by the distorted and “dirty” sounds of psychedelic rock music, the material is shaken up, developing expressive metastases, like a musical mutant infected by viruses, becomes a beautifully scary monster and casts a spell over the listener. Inspired by the descriptions of the mind-altering effects of mescaline in the works of Henri Michaux, Romitelli’s work is all about “the artificial, the distorted, the filtered”. The composer forges sound sculptures that materialize like surreal musical visions of the deformations, distortions and disfigurements in Francis Bacon’s paintings.

The professor’s three idiosyncratic lessons also could be of interest to Clara Iannotta’s composition class. Her students at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna have created a collective composition for the Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik, adding a contemporary perspective to the evening. The aim was to find out how an idea can spread and change by passing through different minds and bodies, ultimately becoming a coherent sound performance. Silent Post represents a year of hard work full of experimentation and mutual inspiration.

PROGRAMM

Gaia Aloisi, Claudia Cañamero Ballestar, Isaac Blumfield, Yuheng Chen, Giuseppe Franza, Yoko Konishi, Manuel Hidalgo Navas, Miguel Segura Sogorb, Sophie Wallner
Stille Post for ensemble (2023–24) UA
a collective composition by students in the class of Clara Iannotta at Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien

Fausto Romitelli
Professor Bad Trip: Lesson I – III for ensemble and electronics (1998-2000)