Tabumator in Hitzacker

Sophia and I recently had the great honour of presenting a programme with only music by living composers as part of achtelton, the new concert series based in Hitzacker, Germany. This turned out to be one of the most challenging programmes we have ever undertaken (and we thought our CD programme was tough enough!), but also one of the most satisfying ever. The logistics alone required so much planning: borrowing a ton of instruments, tackling technology (definitely not our forte)..each of us had a very long checklist filled with notes like multiple reminders to charge multiple devices and reminders to pack an infinite amount of bits and pieces (some borrowed from my toddler who was very upset!) for different works. The day we drove to Hitzacker felt like we were either moving house, or we were a circus on tour, or both…

This programme also challenged us to go way out of our usual comfort zones, breaking personal boundaries: I had a bunch of voice lessons to help me sing the wonderful Moritz Eggert songs “Liebeslieder” (singing whilst playing was then another number!) as well as speak/scream/shout/whisper in Michael Maria Ziffels´ mini opera “Taumel der Trennung”, not to mention percussion lessons for Liebeslieder. And then I had a ton of great fun being actually enabled to move around during pieces and create my personal dramaturgy for entire scenes/pieces, like in “Taumel der Trennung” and Johannes Schöllhorn´s “lutheal”. Sophia and I took on a whole lot of different roles on stage with each other, we got to call each other on stage with our mobile phones, use different apps during the performance. We grew so much as a duo.

The audience was told to actively un-mute their electronic devices, take calls and participate in the welcome chaos of Eggert´s “I, Phone”. We also performed Snezana Nesic´s “Meltdown II”, composed specially for us three years ago for our CD and which we’ve included in every programme since then because it always works, no matter where. Incredible how our main staple turned out to be a contemporary work and how revisiting it always feels like coming home, and how we always end up with a fresh twist to it.

World premiere of Michael Maria Ziffels “Taumel der Trennung”, with text from Ulrike Draesner. Thank you for writing this gem of a piece specially for us!

One of the key aspects of the achtelton concert series is the Werkstatt prior to the concerts where audiences are invited for a pre-concert talk with the performers. We had a blast, as you can see from the picture, despite our initial jitters. It was so heartwarming to have audiences come up right after to let us know how inspired they were and how they were whisking off to bring a few more people to come attend the concert! We received so much positive feedback post-concert from the incredibly enthusiastic and open-minded audience, from Ulrike Draesner whose text was set to music by Ziffels, to the many various composers whom we’ve had contact with.

Writing this, I’m filled with so much gratitude. It is encounters and live experiences like these that make our lives as musicians that extra bit special, the intense hours (which can be really long and tough!) working on a new work together with the composer in which you get to experiment so much and have the chance to be part of creating something new. That’s so precious and magical. the moments where you go way out beyond your comfort zone and it’s exhilarating, thrilling, but also feels just right. An entire evening with just contemporary music can sometimes be daunting for both performer and audience, so it was truly rewarding to hear how much an audience (most of which have hardly any experience with new music) enjoyed a programme which we put a lot of thought into conceptualising and preparing.

And ultimately, this was an evening in which we were truly able to experience collectively with our audience an entire spectrum of emotions and connect with them: there was lots of humour and silly fun, spicy sensuality, suffering and injustice, pain, longing and grief. And many, many moments where the audience just sat there with us, letting the lingering emotions and sounds wash over us before moving to applause. And that: that’s priceless.

all photos from our rehearsal and Werkstatt courtesy of Rainer Erhard