Splitter Music Festival II - Counterbalance! at silent green Kulturquartier / 22.-24.11.2019

The second edition of Splitter Music Festival once again focuses on strategies of contemporary improvisation and progressive musical practice in the context of large scale, non-hierachic ensembles. The complex artistic disposition of the Splitter Orchester is informed decisively by dissent, disagreement and the coexistence of a multitude of more or less contradictory individual perspectives. Thematically, the main point of focus of the second edition is on the balancing of these artistic antagonisms inside of an anarchistic, self organised group dynamic. Radical de- and reconstruction of musical concepts arise necessarily as modes of cooperation, if the result is not supposed to block out participating individual positions in the unison. The festival program fuses apparent contradictions on the planes of composition, improvisation, instrumentation and spatial disposition and thus leads musicians and audiences alike in previously uncharted terrain.

https://youtu.be/CAve9yM3qrg

In 2016, the first Splitter Music Festival conducted »music mining in large scale formats«. Drawing from »data mining«, the question was: ‘How is it possible to generate a coherent and meaningful music spontaneously, under the conditions of seemingly limitless options’? The Splitter Music Festival 2019 under the title Counterbalance! interrogates the artistic process in itself. What role does conscious de- stabilization through diverse methods of opposition play in the creation of improvised music? What improvising strategies can be derived from this? What kind of music can potentially originate from confrontational contexts, in spontaneous alliances and under specifically manipulated conditions? Each participating musician and ensemble bring their own highly individual structure, working methods and developed playing techniques and strategies to the table, in order to create new contexts and situations in which they will be combined in previously unknown ways.

Performance duo The Skills is developing a new piece for the freely improvising Splitter Orchester, that reveals parallels and contrasts between their respective approaches, rendered both visually and sonically. The festival’s second evening starts with an intimate improvised orchestra concert in a chamber music atmosphere, followed by a duo playing noise in a concert hall – dimensions of sound and space being diametrically crossed to achieve unusual listening experiences.

The finale of the festival will see all participating musicians in a durational installational concert performance with constantly varying, dynamic constellations which let unexpected musical connections surface from presumably chaotic structures. Each performance throughout the festival is related to an individual localization, negotiating the musical approach and spatial disposition of musicians and audience at silent green anew every time.

Participating ensembles are Splitter Orchester, The Skills, Ensemble Skogen & Oren Ambarchi / Will Guthrie.