Ethics Lab 2 w/ Splitter Orchester and Christopher A. Williams at Akademie der Künste / 26+27.8.2022

The composer-performer-improvisers of Berlin’s Splitter Orchestra meet composer-researcher Christopher A. Williams in a grand musical and intellectual experiment. Over a week, the artists will explore the practical ethical aspects of playing together. Two concerts offer a window onto their work process and a radical perspective on what large improvising ensembles can sound like.

(Musical) Ethics Lab 2 is the second in a series of seven collaborations between Williams and three pioneering large improvising ensembles: Splitter Orchester (Berlin), the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra (Norway), and the klingt collective (Vienna). The Lab is the public heart of the research project ‘(Musical) Improvisation and Ethics’, led by anthropologist Caroline Gatt (University of Graz), philosopher Joshua Bergamin (University of Vienna), and Williams (University of Music and Performing Arts Graz). Over four years, the researchers will investigate the improvised nature of ethical behavior, using the seven Lab encounters as case studies. In each of the seven encounters, Williams directs with help from his team a series of exercises and concepts that challenge musicians’ habits, values, and senses of each other and their environment – from within their own idioms.

Concerts and talks will all vary from one night to the next, so attendance on both nights is strongly recommended!

Splitter Orchester, founded in 2010, brings together 21 of Berlin’s most cutting-edge composer-performer-improvisers to question the musical establishment. Their sound blends a broad array of extended techniques on traditional, electronic, and self-built instruments, focusing on sonic materiality and space. The methods of the orchestra reflect the members’ inclusive but critical approach toward the many facets of composition and improvisation.

Christopher A. Williams (1981, San Diego) makes and researches (mostly) experimental music. As a composer and contrabassist, Williams’ work runs the gamut from chamber music, improvisation, and radio art to collaborations with dancers, sound artists, and visual artists.