MaerzMusik 2023 at Haus der Berliner Festspiele & other venues / 17-26.3.

MaerzMusik sees itself as a place to exchange artistic knowledge(s) through new and collective encounters. The festival is rooted in the multimodality of listening, contemporary music, and sound, employing concerts, performances, music theatre, installative and discursive formats that open reciprocal experiences.

For MaerzMusik 2023, artistic director Kamila Metwaly together with composer and conductor Enno Poppe – as guest curator – worked closely on the conception of the festival to reflect on as many aspects of our multifaceted reality in the programming – filtered and transformed through the lens of contemporary music. Each day of the festival tells multiple stories that change and transform, opening up a space through which difference is embraced rather than concealed. To represent the many voices that contribute to contemporary and experimental musics today, the programme presents a formation of ten unique encounters, presenting a set of questions, provocations, and contemplations that can be experienced alone or in conversation with other works and days of the festival.

All kinds of electronic vibes await you at this year’s edition of MaerzMusik: Liza Lim’s ritual “Sex Magic” for ocarina, contrabass recorder, electronics and percussion on 18 March is driven by “an alternative cultural logic of female power linked to the cycles of the womb” (Liza Lim). On March 20, Spółdzielnia Muzyczna’s sound field at St. Elizabeth’s Church follows a series of tracks, scents and paths to create a communal experience.

The German premiere of “FFF” demonstrates Laura Bowler’s abilities: an intense, virtuosic score, a vocal performance between singing and screaming – and garish videos underscored with electronic sound. The synthesizer trio lange//berweck//lorenz performs the new commissioned work “pseudo topos” by Asmus Tietchens, and works by Andrea Neumann, Korhan Erel and Bernhard Lang’s homage to Klaus Schulze, one of the pioneers of electronic music who also paved the way for techno. With Rebecca Saunders’s “The Mouth”, a work for solo soprano and electronics on 25 March at Radialsystem, Juliet Fraser will explore the vast spectrum of colours and sounds that can be produced in the oral cavity. And the finale of MaerzMusik, which takes place on 26 March at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele, will present various electroacoustic and experimental electronic works by Jacob Kirkegaard, Hanna Hartman, Else Marie Pade and others.

Many of the works will be presented at Haus der Berliner Festspiele, which also marks a return of the festival back to the house after lengthy renovations and Covid. The festival however continues its collaborations with venues in Berlin including Chamber Music Hall of the Philharmonie Berlin, Radialsystem, silent green, SAVVY Contemporary, daadgalerie, Villa Elisabeth and St. Elisabeth Church.