Welcome in – A musical path

We invite you to an enjoyable and surprising path of exploration through the interior and exterior spaces of the Akademie der Künste – filled with unheard music and sound.

Small, intimate concert situations in meeting rooms, silence in the concert hall, playful kinetic sound machines, improvisations, musicians on the forecourt to the Akademie, a Serbian singer, cracking chickpeas, lots of violins, picnics in the Beech Garden, a tête-à-tête with a composer, breath: the whole building conceals musical gems in niches and large halls, with musicians appearing again and again, crossing paths.

Everything flows, everything happens twice and you put it all together yourself. A warm welcome to everyone to share the place and the music on a long day in May.

PROGRAMME

4:30 – 10 pm
Experiments with clocks and chickpeas

Martin Riches: Two Clocks Sharing a Common Support

Using two pendulum clocks he built himself from wooden cogwheels, British sound artist Martin Riches, well-known in Berlin for his many sound machines, recreates an experiment carried out in 1665 by the bedridden mathematician Christiaan Huygens, an attempt to find a mathematical formula for the dependent pendulum behaviour of two pendulum clocks. The phenomenon – audible as a soft click – still interests mathematicians today.

Annette Schmucki: bündel und büschel

A kind of sound-gathering: in a small intermediate space, the sounds of the entire Akademie der Künste building (voices, clattering dishes, footsteps, instrumental sounds, beating hearts) are bundled live for a single listener. Four people go on a simultaneous sound hunt with microphones and capture the edges of the world, the besides, the background noise. You can register for a specific time slot of 5 minutes.

Daniel Rothman: Chickpea(ce)

Say “Chickpea(ce).” In the mouth it sounds almost like the phenomenon of chickpeas rehydrating; the pop of a thin membrane expanding.  And a bowl of them, their delicate and lyrical explosions, tickle our eardrums as much as our taste buds. The soft random cracking sounds are also a reminder of the everyday and the importance of peace and sharing.

Iris ter Schiphorst: Wie… anders

Wie ... anders is a kind of thinking space, in the Sesselclub of the Akademie der Künste, where nothing happens but there is a text to read: How could the gift of presence be celebrated – how might gestures, movements, sounds of being-with, of listening and hearing, come to life in a way that is not directed towards a meaning, but towards an infinity of meaning in which we all participate? Answers can be written down and shared.

Picnics in the Buchengarten

In the midst of the music trail, the beech garden in the centre of the building with its large beech tree offers a place for contemplation in deckchairs under the fresh green of the leaf canopy. Small snacks and water are on offer, including hummus made from chickpeas from the Chickpea(ce) installation.

from 4:30 pm
From the forecourt into the interior

Raven Chacon: Plainsong

Plainsong is a large format outdoor score by the American composer and installation artist Raven Chacon, presenting musical staves and noteheads of various sizes. Sustaining long tones on any instrument, the musicians move to positions nearer or further away in order to navigate the score. There is no clear beginning or ending, the performance appearing like a leisurely interruption in the day.

Caspar Johannes Walter: Songs and Interludes

Serbian vocal music, which is characterised by complex, metrically free phrases and microtonality, is passed down orally. In order to experience the magic of this music, Johannes Caspar Walter first chooses imitation in the Songs, renotating the part subsidiary to the singing voice (Dragana Tomic) for the violinist (Nurit Stark) to play, and then, in the Interludes, reordering notes for the violinist to read anew, with a few vocal tones as commentary.

Iris ter Schiphorst: Für Akkordeon

On the familiar semitone accordion Lore Ammenabar Larrañaga plays Iris ter Schiphorst’s Für Akkordeon, music that flows in and out of the dance rhythms with which the accordion is traditionally associated.

from 5:45 pm
Dialogues, breath, accordion

Annesley Black: Orrery Singing

Orrery Singing is a fluctuating improvisation for musicians and Orrery Singer, a mechanically crank-driven percussion sound art object co-developed by Thomas Meixner, Martin Riches and Annesley Black. The instruments’ reactions to the multi-tempo drum machine generate a lively tension between the mechanical and the musical or human qualities.

Carola Bauckholt: Luftgeister

Inspired by the sound of chickpeas and the violinist Nurit Stark, and with the Doină, a melismatic, improvisatory Romanian style as musical ancestor, spirits of the air (Luftgeister) visit Daniel Rothman’s installation Chick-Pea(ce), communicate with it and disappear again, just as musical and personal experiences do with us.

Kathryn Williams: Coming Up For Air

Woodwind players need to breathe from time to time. But sometimes breathing is an inconvenience, an unwanted interruption of the flow of musical activity: a break, a barrier. Since 2017 Kathryn Williams has been asking composers to answer a question: what if her breathing is part of the music, not just a mechanism to make it happen? Their answers have become her Coming Up For Air repertoire, many different versions of what can be communicated in a single breath. Some composers have made a melody, others have offered a single sound or focused on a physiological challenge, and some of the pieces of this repertoire will be presented.

Huihui Cheng: Overflowing Tones
Sofia Gubaidulina: De Profundis

One musician, two accordions. The premiere of features a new instrument, the quartertone accordion, designed by and constructed for Lore Ammenabar Larrañaga. On the quartertone accordion designed by and constructed for Lore Ammenabar Larrañaga, she premieres the new quartertone work, Overflowing Tones, commissioned by the AdK from Huihui Cheng. On the more familiar semitone accordion she plays as in memoriam for Sofia Gubaidulina (1931–2025), De Profundis, a cornerstone of the modern accordion repertoire.

from 6:50 pm
Indoors and outdoors

Sidney Corbett: Absconditus
Birke Bertelsmeier: Partita
Nikolaus Brass: Solo V

In the meeting room at the back of the Akademie, with a view of the Tiergarten, an intimate space is created with music for two instruments. Absconditus for violin and cello is a fragile music in which Sidney Corbett’s quest for the sounds behind sounds can be heard as a nervous curiosity. Partita is a solo violin piece by composer Birke Bertelsmeier, searching for a controlled imperfection in its rich sonorities. Finally, Solo V from Sei Soli is one of the six partitas that Nikolaus Brass composed for solo violin during the Corona pandemic. Based on paintings by Stephanie v. Hoyos, this is music that once existed only between the composer and the performer and is now shared with an audience.

Kirsten Reese: Wholesome Shower

The performance is based on the composer’s own experience of showering by pouring water over herself from a bucket, as she did in Davao, Philippines, in 1979 and then again in Berlin from 1988. This practice of showering is widespread in Southeast Asia; at the end of the 1980s, many Berlin apartments were still without showers. With this performance, the composer traces the pleasure of reduction.

from 7:30 pm
Break

Peter Ablinger: Violinstück für Nurit

The violinist Nurit Stark goes on stage with violin and violin bow – but then she explains to the audience why she is NOT playing the announced piece – or why the not-played piece is the piece itself. What reasons does she give? Only her own. But does she refer – perhaps critically – to the composer’s intentions, to the General Strike of Art?

from 7:40 pm
Voice and breath

Caspar Johannes Walter: Songs and Interludes

Details see above

Sol-i So, Yiran Zhao & Kristine Tjøgersen: Neue Werke

Woodwind players need to breathe from time to time. In the context of the project Coming Up For Air Kathryn Williams and the Akademie der Künste have commissioned three new breaths, from alumni of the Junge Akademie For Welcome in.

from 8:10 pm
Improvisation and accordion

Liudas Mockūnas: Improvisation

Liudas Mockūnas is a saxophonist who composes and improvises. He trained in both jazz and classical music and his playing is a highly individual mixture of free jazz, lyricism and expressionism, using new playing techniques to go deep into the sonic properties of his instrument. Expect to hear explosions of sound, stylistic borders being crossed.

Iris ter Schiphorst: Für Akkordeon
Dominic Flynn: Pittwater

The premiere of Dominic Flynn’s Pittwater features a new instrument, the quartertone accordion, designed by and constructed for Lore Ammenabar Larrañaga. On the more familiar semitone accordion she plays Iris ter Schiphorst’s Für Akkordeon, music that flows in and out of the dance rhythms with which the accordion is traditionally associated.

from 8:40 pm
Density

Annesley Black: Orrery Singing
Carola Bauckholt: Luftgeister
Liudas Mockūnas: Improvisation
Kirsten Reese: Wholesome Shower
Huihui Cheng: Overflowing Tones
Sofia Gubaidulina: De Profundis

Details see above

from 9:20 pm
Finishing with violin and cello

Sidney Corbett: Absconditus
Birke Bertelsmeier: Partita
Nikolaus Brass: Solo V

Details see above

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