This summer, the Kiezsalon takes its first trip to Potsdam, setting up at DAS MINSK every Thursday evening this June. This time featuring Ukrainian modular synthesist Heinali together with vocalist Andriana-Yaroslava Saienko and Berlin-based Peruvian duo Agua Dulce—Ale Hop & Laura Robles.
»Agua Dulce« is a collaboration project by Berlin-based artists Alejandra Cárdenas (aka Ale Hop) and Laura Robles, and also the name of the most popular beach in Lima, Peru, near where both artists lived during their childhood, houses apart, without ever meeting one another. Years later, the pair joined forces with Robles on a self-built electric cajón and Cárdenas on electric guitar and electronics.
Together, they explore rhythmical structures that form the backbone of the complex Afro-Peruvian music and dance traditions – a broad term used for the various musical developments that occurred in the last two centuries at the shores of the Peruvian Pacific. Their music is a radical deconstruction of these rhythms focusing on the cajón, the Peruvian box drum that enslaved peoples made from fruit boxes when Spanish colonizers banned the more familiar foot drum in the 19th century.
Heinali (Oleh Shpudeiko) and Andriana-Yaroslava Saienko are reinterpreting Hildegard of Bingen’s music, employing the sound production principles of authentic Ukrainian folk singing, practised by Andriana-Yaroslava, and modular synthesis techniques based on polyphony and monophony of the High Middle Ages, which Oleh has been researching for the past years.
Hildegard’s work has long since gone beyond the repertoires of mediaeval music ensembles and the interest of medievalists. It is popular among contemporary music composers, experimental music artists, and representatives of dance music and New Age communities. Performances of Hildegard’s music have developed an interpretative tradition that engages the voices of angelic, seemingly disembodied nature.
Гільдеґарда also presents an opportunity to place traditional Ukrainian culture among European culture, where it rightfully belongs. Oleh and Andriana-Yaroslava prepared the concert version and recorded Гільдеґарда in September 2024 as artists in residency at Sylvanes Abbey in France, in an XII-century Cistercian church with unique acoustics. The subsequent premiere at Unsound was met with resounding success, described by Philip Sherburne as ‘the most astonishingly gorgeous show’.
Bask in the evening sunlight with us this June on Potsdam’s scenic rooftop terrace with international DJs and curated fine wines. DAS MINSK is easy to reach from Berlin’s city centre in under 30 minutes by public transport.
