ADVENTUROUS SOUNDS
Adventurous Sounds ist ein von
UMS ´n JIP initiiertes Projekt zur Vermittlung von Neuer
Musik für und mit Kinder. Dessen Partner sind Festivals,
verschiedene Musikschulen, KomponistInnen und
MusikerInnen. 2023 sind dies das Festival Forum Wallis,
die Musikschule Konservatorium Zürich MKZ und das griechische Ensemble
für Neue Musik dissonArt.
Ziel des Projekts ist die
spielerische, praxisorientierte und kindergerechte
Einführung in die zeitgenössische Musik, die geführte
kammermusikalische Spielpraxis in einem
professionellen Umfeld, das Zusammenspiel der Kinder
mit schulinternen und -externen Profis, die Zusammenarbeit
mit Komponisten aus einem internationalen Umfeld
sowie Aufführungen im Rahmen der Schule und im Rahmen
internationaler Festivals.
Über die Dauer
eines Semesters werden bestehende zeitgenössische und
neu komponierte Werke sowie Improvisationskonzepte
erarbeitet. Diese entwickeln Inhalte und Formate weiter,
welche UMS ´n JIP seit 2010 im Wallis, der Schweiz und im
Ausland in urbanen, suburbanen und ländlichen Umfeldern
mit Kindern und Jugendlichen entwickelt und angewandt
haben.
Adventurous Sounds, Forum
Wallis 2023
"The most entertaining event at Forum Wallis 2023 was
‘Adventurous Sounds’, a concert billed as being “New Music
for and with children” as part of a project aimed at
introducing contemporary music to young people, which also
extends to in-school activities.
One of the most hilarious compositions
i’ve ever heard, Motoharu Kawashima‘s Das Lachenmann,
which i’d seen Javier Hagen and Ulrike Mayer-Spohn perform
at Forum Wallis back in 2019, began the concert, preceded
on this occasion by an equally funny session where the
audience was taught to sing several isolated bars from the
score, which were projected onto the wall. It was
fantastic to see an audience of predominately young people
engaging with new music as both listeners and, briefly,
performers, and clearly having an absolute blast.
The majority of the concert involved
students from the Musikschule Konservatorium Zürich, all
playing various recorders, who took part in a number of
pieces alongside Hagen, Mayer-Spohn and members of the
dissonArt ensemble.
Particularly effective was Agnes
Dorwarth‘s Nachtvögel; Gezwitscher; Nachtkrapp, a textural
work made up of birdsong-like behaviours, concluding in a
lovely chorus of modulating pitches. Dorwarth’s
Kopfnuss-Trio was an even stronger, the three players
using their headjoints to create something akin to a
tribal chant, in a close unison peppered with rhythmic
cries and glissandi. Two of the students turned Franz
Müller-Busch‘s Der Streit into a brief but compelling
argument, while another student, Sara Weinmann, gave a
strong performance of Dorwarth’s Artikulator 1,
channelling a range of emotions into sound in different
ways, from disruptions and interruptions to the work’s
flow to violent vocal eruptions, in a nicely-controlled
melding of musical, non-musical and meta-musical ideas.
The concert ended with an expanded version
of Sancho’s Dream by UMS ‘n JIP (Hagen and Mayer-Spohn’s
joint nom de guerre), the original of which was part of
the duo’s opera Sancho, which i experienced in 2020. In
this new form it was utterly mesmerising, living up to its
title by creating a dreamy, soft texture environment
developing into what seemed to be accelerating Shepard
tones."
