klubkatarakt¹⁹

Festival for Experimental Music
January 15^th – 18^th, 2025
Kampnagel, Hamburg

We would like to thank all the composers, musicians, our team, as well as all the sponsors and helpers who made klubkatarakt¹⁹ possible.

We thank Pascale Criton for her presence, her music, and especially for her new composition Streams. A huge thank you also goes to the wonderful and tireless musicians of the Dedalus ensemble, which played a total of five concerts as ensemble in residence, including the opening. C’était un grand plaisir!

We were also delighted that Catherine Lamb and Alessandro Bosetti were able to personally attend the performance of their compositions. A big thank-you goes also to Ju-Ping Song and Thomas Ankersmit, who both not only played solo performances but also participated in the opening. And it was wonderful that Elisabeth Smalt and Alfrun Schmid from Scordatura Ensemble, as well as Erik Drescher and Chad Kinsey, travelled to Hamburg for the memorial concert for Phill Niblock.

Last but not least, we thank all the musicians, improvisers, and composers from Hamburg who participated in the opening and the Long Night – it was an immense pleasure for us!

Here is a photo selection by our photographer Jann Wilken:

klubkatarakt¹⁹

Festival for Experimental Music
January 15^th – 18^th, 2025
Kampnagel, Hamburg

Line-up 2025:

Performers

Thomas Ankersmit, Didier Aschour, Moxi Beidenegl, Julia Berg, Amélie Berson, Katrin Bethge, Cyprien Busolini, Gregory Büttner, Eric Chalan, Sascha Demand, Erik Drescher, John Eckhardt, Corinna Eikmeier, Robert Engelbrecht, Jan Feddersen, Ayse Glass, Tobias Gronau, Georgia Hoppe, René Huthwelker, Daria Iossifova, Annette Kayser, Chad Kinsey, Nicola Kruse, Kris Kuldkepp, Thierry Madiot, Svetlana Maraš, Pierre-Stéphane Meugé, Matthias Meyer, Ewelina Nowicka, Johann Popp, Christian Pruvost, Pit Przygodda, Raspe, Alfrun Schmid, Jiwon Sim, Elisabeth Smalt, Ju-Ping Song, Louise Stauske, Silvia Tarozzi, Tam Thi Pham, Deborah Walker, Gisbert Watty, Krischa Weber, Anne Wiemann, Mizuki Wildenhahn

Ensembles

Dedalus in Residence, Die Dicke Trompete, Duo Scordatura, Nelly Boyd, Okapi

Music / Compositions / Improvisations

Pascale Criton, Phill Niblock, Svetlana Maraš, Thomas Ankersmit, Catherine Lamb, Brian Eno, Éliane Radigue, Alessandro Bosetti, Jiwon Sim, Jan Feddersen, Kris Kuldkepp, Karen Tanaka, Deborah Walker, Philipp Krebs, Pit Przygodda, Molly Joyce

Films / Visuals / Installations

Katrin Bethge, Karin Fisslthaler, Tina Frank, Siegried A. Fruhauf, Michael E. Haase, Michael Lyons, Phill Niblock, Billy Roisz

klubkatarakt¹⁹

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In January 2024, the US composer and intermedia artist Phill Niblock passed away at the age of 90. Niblock was a frequent guest at klubkatarakt, most recently in 2019, and was closely connected to the festival.
Known for his thick, loud drones of music, Niblock’s signature sound is filled with microtones of instrumental timbres that generate many other tones in the performance space.

For the opening, klubkatarakt is honoring this special artist with a large-scale, immersive concert in which his music and films will be presented in all three halls. In addition to the Dedalus Ensemble, long-time companions such as electronic musician Thomas Ankersmit (Berlin), violist Elisabeth Smalt and singer Alfrun Schmid from Ensemble Scordatura (Amsterdam), pianist Ju-Ping Song (New York), flautist Erik Drescher (Berlin), Nelly Boyd (Hamburg) and others will be performing.

Matthias Meyer (Hamburg) is a visual artist and filmmaker and is interested in music. He has been buying records for forty years and sometimes plays them.

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On the second day, Dedalus will present the German premiere of Histoire sentimentale des intervalles by the Italian composer Alessandro Bosetti (* 1973). From spontaneously sung notes and personal narratives from the musicians, Bosetti creates a collective musical biography of the ensemble coming from the composer’s particular interest in the musicality of language and in the voice.

In the second concert of the evening, Thomas Ankersmit will play a solo performance on his analogue Serge Modular Synthesizer. His music combines intricate sonic detail and raw electric power, with a very physical and spatial experience of sound. Acoustic phenomena such as infrasound and otoacoustic emissions (sounds emanating from inside the head, generated by the ears themselves) play an important role in his work, as does a deliberate, creative misuse of the equipment.

In the night concert, Dedalus will perform a programme of works by the English musician, producer, visual artist and theorist Brian Eno (* 1948). The ensemble will present instrumental arrangements of Discreet Music and other Ambient pieces by the British experimentalist.

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Dedalus opens the third day of the festival with a portrait of Pascale Criton. Born in 1954, the French composer has been researching sound variability, microtones, and the spatialization of listening since the 1980s. Pascale Criton is particularly interested in reflections on the “continuum”. She is working with very dense microtonal scales. The very small intervals are hardly perceived by the ear, but are influencing the perception of timbre, rhythm, and sense of time.

Following a presentation in collaboration with the Verband für aktuelle Musik Hamburg, Pascale Criton will present a selection of her compositions for the first time in Hamburg together with Dedalus. klubkatarakt has commissioned a new piece from her, which will be premiered at the concert.

Surprisingly, we can present a short solo piano performance by the US-American pianist Ju-Ping Song on this evening. Song is internationally recognized as one of today’s masters of contemporary music. Among others she will play Karen Tanaka’s Techno Etudes in this program.

In the night concert, Dedalus will play Occam Hepta I by Éliane Radigue, which was written for the ensemble. Radigue (* 1932), one of the most important pioneers of electronic music, writes long, gradual sound progressions with a feel for finest nuances in her instrumental music.
The second piece played by the ensemble is Overlays – AtmospheresTransparent/Opaque by the American composer Catherine Lamb (* 1982). This work was also written especially for the ensemble. Lamb belongs to a younger generation of composers who deal with the interaction of sounds, acoustic phenomena, just intonation, etc.

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The Long Night did not grow out of the festival alone, but from a concert form developed by the composers’ collective katarakt back in the 1990s. The concept is simple, but holds new surprises every year, as the festival primarily presents first and world premieres by the local scene and international guests, alternating with experimental short films.

The Serbian electronic musician and composer Svetlana Maraš will be a special guest. Maraš works at the intersection of experimental music, sound art and new media. She describes her music as “complex and dense musical structures and forms without exact repetitions.” Rather a continuously changing sound over the course of time.

Other participants include Hamburg’s first free improvising ladies orchestra DIE DICKE TROMPETE, the improvisation project Okapi (Sascha Demand, John Eckhardt, Tobias Gronau and René Huthwelker) and many other local composers and musicians.

klubkatarakt will continue the collaboration with the Short Film Agency Hamburg in 2025 and show experimental films as part of the program.

Finally Raspe will accompany us through the last night. Raspe is a Hamburg-based DJ who‘ll present an eclectic selection of records creating a wonky, stoical and obscure sound from different spheres.