Electronic music and digital music tools have become so ubiquitous in today’s art and pop culture that it is almost impossible to imagine life without them. No DJ act is complete without electronic clicks and glitches controlled by digital tools. Audio engineers design the sound of luxury cars, and today’s mobile-phone users routinely access personal sound libraries.
However electronic composers are pioneers who, apart from a few exceptions such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, Gottfried Michael König and Jean-Claude Risset, remain largely unknown. The same is true, but to an even greater degree, for the female composers of early electronic music, who appear only in the margins of music history and whose music still has barely entered our cultural memory.
[vimeo 22602389 w=620&h=300] Yet female artists such as Bebe Barron, Else Marie Pade, Delia Derbyshire and Laurie Spiegel had successful careers in the field of early electronic music studios.The work of the early female electronic composers was characterized by their willingness to experiment outside the boundaries of classical art music: They wrote scores for films and the theater, worked pseudonymously with pop musicians and created software for rock and pop music. They significantly shaped the sound of electronic pop culture and influenced generations of musicians.
This genre-spanning festival presents concerts, performances and discussion sessions over the course of two days. (We will focus on the female pioneers of electronic music while also turning our attention to the women of today’s music scene and showing how contemporary female artists are conceptually advancing and performatively interpreting the electronic transformation of sound in avant-garde pop and “serious” music.)
[vimeo 77412300 w=620&h=300] Concert offerings include early electronic music from the 1950s–1970s by composers such as Laurie Spiegel, Else Maria Pade, as well as chamber music with audio feeds (Iris ter Schiphorst), live electronic performances and sound art (Heidrun Schramm, Catherine Lorent, Julia Mihály). Featuring two premieres by Les Femmes Savantes, a international composer-performer ensemble followed by a piece for multichannel computer music by electric indigo, an avant-garde club and techno musician.The overall aim is to make the work of the female pioneers of electronic music accessible to a wide audience while simultaneously enabling the public to see and feel the historical ties linking those artists to female composers of contemporary music and electronic performance works.
[vimeo 51856050 w=620&h=300] A public panel discussion with artists, scientists and composers will seek to expand musical and aesthetic perspectives on electronic music with an examination of gender-specific implications, focusing on questions of contemporary reception aesthetics in the charged field between the historiographies of music and technology and their cultural dispositives.Festival programme:
Day 1: compositions by Laurie Spiegel, Heidrun Schramm, Catherine Lorent, Les Femmes Savantes
Day 2: panel with Antje Greie-Ripatti, Prof. Sabine Sanio, Prof. Marion Saxer, Susanne Kirchmayr, moderated by Bettina Wackernagel & compositions by Else Marie Pade, Iris ter Schiphorst, Julia Mihály, Susanne Kirchmayr aka Electric Indigo
Presented by Berliner Gesellschaft für Neue Musik e. V. & Digital in Berlin. Check out our Facebook page to win tickets.
Heroines of Sound Festival w/ Femmes Savantes, Heidrun Schramm, Julia Mihály LIVE
Wednesday, June 11th, 2014 | 20:00 CET
Thursday, June 12th, 2014 | 18:00 CET
Berghain Kantine | Am Wriezener Bahnhof | 10243 Berlin/Kreuzberg
bgnm.de | femmes-savantes.net | juliamihaly.net | iris-ter-schiphorst.de | nerdgirls.poemproducer.com | Catherine Lorent @ interview.de | berghain.de
