sound & vision

extra information

 

Sacred Places III: Parvati, the Remover of bad Energy

Inspired by a stay in Kathmandu (Nepal) and the spirituality he experienced at various locations there, the Antwerp composer Wim Henderickx wrote a series of works with the title Sacred Places. The Remover of Bad Energy is the third part of the Sacred Places series, commissioned by ART’uur and was originally intended to have its premiere at Klarafestival 2020 during the Imaginary Mirror concert. A year later, ART’uur finally presents this piece at Klarafestival as the opener to Sound & Vision . In Sacred Places III, Wim Henderickx combines 16th century Tibetan song with electronics and contemporary playing techniques for trumpet and percussion. The visuals are provided by Lieven Vanhove who plays with scale and magnetism.

 

Wim Henderickx (composition)

Wim Henderickx works as a composer, percussionist, conductor and professor of composition. He studied composition and percussion at the Royal Conservatoire in Antwerp and sonology at IRCAM in Paris, and at the Conservatoire of Music in The Hague. His compositions are often inspired by other cultures. He wrote works for opera, music theatre, orchestra, choirs and chamber music. Electronics are often an important feature in his oeuvre. Wim Henderickx has been composer in residence at Muziektheater Transparant since 1996. He joined the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra as an artist in residence in 2013. He is a professor of composition at the conservatories of Amsterdam and Antwerp. Finally, he is the main coach of the annual SoundMine composition course for young composers at Musica, Impulse Centre for Music in Belgium.

 

Lieven Vanhove (visuals)

Lieven Vanhove worked for five years in digital post production, providing IT-support but also overseeing the whole process of digital cinema and functioning as an assistant editor. While working, he discovered the unlimited possibilities of animation and special effects in fiction. He expanded his knowledge through courses of stage directing, basics of 3D-animation and doing screenplay workshops. This made it possible to devote more time to his passion: filmmaking, in which he likes the use of state-of-the-art technology to create a mystifying atmosphere.

 

 

Televisioniist / Season 1 Episode 1

Surrealism is not an empty concept for the Canadian composer Nicole Lizée. During the performance of her Televisioniist, Koen Plaetinck (percussion) and Wim Van Hasselt (trumpet) not only play their own instruments, they also shake newspapers, use spray cans and have sweets explode in their mouths. Nicole Lizée has also created images to accompany her composition, which Lieven Vanhove (final editor) puts on a television screen and mixes with images of Koen Plaetinck and Wim Van Hasselt’s performance.

 

Nicole Lizée (composition and visuals)

Award winning composer and video artist composer Nicole Lizée creates new music from an eclectic mix of influences including the earliest MTV videos, turntablism, rave culture, Hitchcock, Kubrick, Alexander McQueen, thrash metal, early video game culture, 1960s psychedelia and 1960s modernism. She is fascinated by the glitches made by outmoded and well-worn technology and captures these glitches, notates them and integrates them into live performance. Nicole’s compositions range from works for orchestra and solo turntablist featuring DJ techniques fully notated and integrated into a concert music setting, to other unorthodox instrument combinations that include the Atari 2600 video game console, omnichords, stylophones, Simon™, vintage board games, and karaoke tapes. In the broad scope of her evolving oeuvre she explores such themes as malfunction, reviving the obsolete, and the harnessing of imperfection and glitch to create a new kind of precision.

 

 

Echo de Clèves

Festivals for Compassion was a project initiated by the Dutch music festival Wonderfeel in the summer of 2020. The idea was to show solidarity with anyone who has been affected by the coronavirus in any way. For this virtual, border-crossing festival, the Greek-Dutch composer Calliope Tsoupaki created a composition that travelled through Europe like a musical relay race from festival to festival – always shared digitally.   

Inspired by this, the eight Flanders Festivals developed the Festivals for Compassion in this country with the work of a Flemish composer: Frederik Neyrinck. He revised the Danse de Clèves from the manuscript with Margaret of Austria’s dances into Echo de Clèves: eight variations written for eight different soloists from Gwen Cresens to Lieselot De Wilde. Each festival has taken on the production of one of these variations. Klarafestival’s variation is performed by violinist Alice Van Leuven. This variation will be performed once more during Sound & Vision. Photographer Peter De Bruyne provides accompanying images. 

 

Frederik Neyrinck (composition)

Composer Frederik Neyrinck (°1985) studied in Brussels, Stuttgart and Graz with Piet Kuijken (piano), Jan Van Landeghem, Marco Stroppa and Clemens Gadenstätter (composition). His compositions were already performed by different ensembles and orchestras in Belgium and abroad. He often makes transcriptions of existing repertoire as well. His music has been recorded by, among others, I SOLISTI, Revue Blanche and SPECTRA. In 2017-2018, he was season’s composer at Concertgebouw Brugge. He is artist in residence at I SOLISTI from 2020 until 2024. He received the Austrian Staatsstipendium for compostion in 2018 and the Förderpreis of Vienna in 2020. He is also very active in the field of music theatre/opera. He is in residency at LOD muziektheater and already collaborated with Kopergietery (Ghent), makemake produktionen (Vienna) and the State Theatre in Oldenburg. As a pianist, he currently has a duo together with Teresa Doblinger (bass clarinet/dance) with whom he recently won the NASOM-bursary for 2020-2021.

 

Peter De Bruyne (visuals)

The work of Peter De Bruyne (born 1966 in Bruges; lives and works in Bruges) means he is largely on the road; often in the United States, although he has also travelled in Flanders in recent years. Over the last ten years, De Bruyne has taken photos that appear to have been taken from behind a glass curtain or a rain-spattered windscreen. With the unimportant details removed, all that remains is the essence: the atmosphere of a particular film or series that is etched into collective memory, such as Hitchcock’s Vertigo or David Lynch’s Twin Peaks. De Bruyne does not take photographs digitally, or use retouching or Photoshop. He captures the atmosphere in the one image that he creates at exactly the right moment.

 

 

The air we breathe

“The air we breathe is a reflection on human impact on the environment,” explains Saskia Venegas Aernouts. “Our overconsumption, overexploitation, pollution and deforestation have led to a collapse of resources, a meteoric reduction of wilderness, extinction of animal and floral species, raise of the global temperature…  This is our work, the result of our lack of empathy and respect towards the earth and all its living species. I frequently ask myself if we are actually that ‘human’. This piece is an invitation to stop taking and start giving, an invitation to reverse the damage we have created. Everything is not yet lost.”

The air we breathe is an ode to the strength and magic of nature, with the tree as an important symbol throughout the musical and visual composition of this interdisciplinary creation. The music is written in a programmatic manner starting with textural almost airy sounds that depict a bleak landscape. A lamento-like phrase gradually transforms into a wild energetic section that symbolizes the strength of the natural world.

 

Saskia Venegas Aernouts (composition)

Saskia Venegas is a Spanish-Belgian composer, violinist and music theatre maker. After finishing her violin diploma with baroque violinist Pedro Gandia’s she moved to the Netherlands to continue studying violin at CODARTS, University for the Arts, under the guidance of professors Christian Bor, Benzion Shamir and Gordan Nikolich. During the last year of her violin studies, she took part in interdisciplinary performances working with visual artists, dancers and actors. This experience inspired her to apply to the New Music Theatre Master at CODARTS from which she graduated in 2013. During this interdisciplinary master studies, she attended music composition, dramaturgy and stage directing lessons and created several music theatre performances under the guidance of artists such as Micha Hamel, Arlon Luijten, Merlijn Twaalfhoven, Marcel Sijm, Titus Muizelaar and Rob de Graaf among others. In 2016 Saskia Venegas obtained her bachelor diploma in composition at the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp where she studied with Wim Henderickx, Luc Van Hove and Alain Craens. Two years later she graduated with highest distinction at her master composition final exam. In 2017 Antwerp Symphony Orchestra premiered her piece At the Aegean shores and in 2018 A veces, el silencio es la peor mentira got premiered by Belgian contemporary music Hermes ensemble. In Mai 2018 she presented the first part of her new music theatre piece At night, flamingos fly at the Singel obtaining very positive critics for its interdisciplinary composition and the dramaturgical developments of its content.

 

Nele Fack (visuals)

Video composer Nele Fack graduated from LUCA School of Arts in Ghent in 2010 as a Master in Ceramics. Her fields of expertise include video mappings, installations, animations and lots of in-between forms. Nele’s work has previously been presented in Finland, Norway, Croatia, Germany and of course Belgium as a part of light festivals, theatre productions, live AV shows and exhibitions. She also has an ongoing collaboration with filmmaker Lisa Tahon and dramaturg Phéline Thierens under the name Studio Sandy.

 

 

Diamond Princess, 17.02.2020, Yokohama - Japan

In February 2020, artist Karl Van Welden was staying in Japan. At the same time, the cruise ship Diamond Princess was in quarantine and moored at the Daikoku Pier in Yokohama. On board the ship, the first COVID-19 infections outside China were detected. Van Welden recorded this momentum from the Akarenga Park. Since March 2020, pianist Frederik Croene has worked on new piano pieces under the title of Solastalgia. This neologism describes the feeling of mourning for landscapes lost to climate change and the ecological fear of a menacing, uncertain future. The structure of the music emphasises the dramatic metaphor in which humanity has got itself stuck, like the passengers on the Diamond Princess.

 

Frederik Croene (composition)

After graduating from Conservatories in 1999 Frederik Croene developed a handful trajectories in which he reflects on the ever changing and multi-layered identities of the classical pianist. As the Gestalt of his instrument is grounded in 19th century romanticism, he still uses virtuosity to communicate about being a pianist. He played and recorded the classical repertoire and worked intensively with composers as Michael Beil, Johannes Kreidler, Simon Steen-Andersen, Michael Finnissey, Alexander Schubert and Stefan Prins. His formulation of the concept of 'Le Piano Démécanisé' in an article and an LP-release in 2010 was a turning point in becoming a composer/performer. With pianist Elisa Medinilla he founded PIANOGUIDE, a dynamic pianist think tank that develops concert events together with programmers and for which Croene composes new pieces. Other trajectories tend to focus more on transdisicplinary art with artist Karl Van Welden, improvisation and intiutive performance/studio recording with Timo van Luijk a.k.a Af Ursin. He is a piano teacher and leads the Vinim-atelier, a place for new music experiments. In a small venue in Merelbeke (BE) he curated PXP (2015-2020), a series of concerts with experimental music.

 

Karl Van Welden (visuals)

In 2006 Karl Van Welden initiated United Planets, a cycle of visual and performative work based on terrestrial or human presence in the universe. How does ʻlittleʼ humankind relate to the immensity of the universe? Using the planets in our solar system as anchorage; he searches for artistic answers to this crucial question, with a predilection for silenced movement and architectural forms. As an atmospheric backdrop, each planet represents another series of projects. The same planet can take on different shapes and the research doesn’t come to a halt with its first public exposure. Every planet contains a series of projects within which the same theme and form are further explored in-depth. Utilizing different disciplines and depending on content Karl Van Welden chooses a suitable form. He often works in situ. Unusual locations can in that sense fulfil an important role as active partner and source of inspiration. His other work is smaller in scale but covers more or less the same thematic approach as the performative work. It comprises drawings, paintings, installations, interventions, video and three-dimensional works, which can act as reflections, preliminary studies, but could just as easily exist autonomously or be combined into one work.

 

 

We’ll find you when the sun is black

Anouk De Clercq’s video We’ll find you when the sun goes black was inspired by a line of verse by Bertolt Brecht, written in exile during the 1930s: “In den finsteren Zeiten / Wird da auch gesungen werden? Da wird auch gesungen werden. / Von den finsteren Zeiten.”  (Will there be singing during dark times? Yes, in dark times there will be singing. About the dark times.) As far as the images are concerned, Anouk De Clercq was inspired by a so-called 'terella': a small magnetic ball that represents Earth and was used to study auroras until the late 20th century. The music is provided by Vessel (pseudonym of British musician Sebastian Gainsborough).

 

Anouk De Clercq (visuals)

Anouk De Clercq (°1971, Gent) studied piano in Ghent and film at the LUCA School of Arts Brussels. Her movies explore the potential of audiovisual language to create possible worlds. She is interested in what lies behind ‘reality’ or in between the visible and the imaginary. She has received several awards, including the Illy Prize at Art Brussels in 2005 and a Prix Ars Electronica Honorary Mention in 2014. Her work has been shown in Tate Modern, Centre Pompidou, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, MAXXI, Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, BOZAR, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Berlinale, Ars Electronica, among others. Anouk De Clercq is affiliated to the School of Arts University College Ghent as a guest professor. She is a founding member of Auguste Orts, On & For Production and Distribution and initiator of Monokino. Anouk De Clercq is the author of Where is Cinema, published by Archive Books.

 

Vessel (composition)

Vessel is the musical alias of London based composer Sebastian Gainsborough. His first album Order of Noise was released on experimental mainstay Tri-Angle Records. In 2014 the sophomore album, Punish, Honey was released to widespread critical acclaim with the single Red Sex being lofted via the trailer for Park Chan-Wook’s The Handmaiden. After an extended period of touring, writing and maturation through artistic residencies the third record Queen of Golden Dogs, was released in late 2018.  Vessle is a founding member of Bristol's Young Echo Collective, and an alumnus of renowned residencies such as Aldeburgh Music, Tate and Somerset House.

 

 

Drei Choräle (penser à Satie)

What happens when a director-choreographer and visual artist with an interest in film meets a musician who is guided by silence and space, which he explores in the rhythm of sunlight? What if a choreographer and a musician make a film in which dance, architecture and the sonorous landscape of the city rub up against and fertilise each other? Time and space are stretched to create a special biotope that not only reaches beyond the museum and the dance theatre but creates new relationships between dancers, artists and the audience.  

Soupart & Vandromme perform Episode#1, the first of a five-part film, for Klarafestival. The film functions as an alternative exhibition space where the majestic space of Wild Gallery in Forest forms the backdrop against which dancers perform figures from Isabella Soupart’s choreographic palette while Guy Vandromme plays slow, pared-down piano music by Eva-Maria Houben; ambient sounds permeate the film score along with sonorous landscapes captured by Guy Vandromme.

 

Eva-Maria Houben (composition)

Eva-Maria Houben (°1955) studied Music Education at Folkwang-Musikhochschule Essen and the organ with Gisbert Schneider. She received her doctorate and postdoctoral lecturing qualification in musicology and was called for lectures at Gerhard-Mercator-Universität Duisburg and Robert-Schumann-Hochschule Düsseldorf. Since 1993 Professor Houben has been lecturing at Dortmund University`s “Institut für Musik und Musikwissenschaft”, with both music theory and contemporary music as her focus. Her period of service at Dortmund University concluded with February 28, 2021. Up to now many books were published, concerning contemporary music, contemporary composers and traditional music, listened to with ‘new ears’. Eva-Maria Houben has been performing works for the organ for more than 30 years. As she is related to the “wandelweiser-group” of composers, her compositions are published by “edition wandelweiser”, Haan. Her list of compositions up to now includes works for the organ, piano, clarinet, trombone, violoncello and other solo instruments, works for voice and piano, for wind and chamber ensembles, for orchestra and for choir.

 

Isabella Soupart (visuals)

Isabella Soupart is a choreographer, dancer, director and visual artist of Polish-Russian origin based in Brussels. She is also an actress revealed to the general public in the film “Le Fils” by the Dardenne brothers and works with Franco-Chilean director Raoul Ruiz and Berlin-based filmmaker Maria Speth. A transdisciplinary artist, she regularly collaborates with visual artists, composers and architects. She creates performances and visual works at the interface of several disciplines. While her work takes multiple forms, from video production to live performance through musical theatre and opera, choreographic writing is at the centre of her work. Her search for a singular style of writing, not based on the codes of contemporary dance, has led her to encounter dancers/interpreters who embody other stories. Her productions are presented in festivals and on national and international stages. She is regularly invited to present her work in museums, where she develops new dance formats in combination with new listening experiences.

 

Guy Vandromme (piano)

Pianist/conductor Guy Vandromme is a performer within the fields of opera and music theatre, dance, working as a soloist, accompanist, conductor and artistic director. He has been a major driver behind the program of the European Cultural Capital of Brugge 2002. More recently he became responsible for the festival Klankenstroom bringing cultural heritage, classical music and tourism together and was invited to launch a new festival in Süd-Tirol Talklang. His main focus is to open the boundaries of music theatre, collaborating with contemporary artists and exploring scores of forgotten music. In december 2018 Edition Wandelweiser Records released his first solo recording with the Number Pieces of John Cage and Socrate of Erik Satie in collaboration with the soprano Olalla Alemán.

 

Drei Choräle, a film by Isabella Soupart

CREDITS: Johanna Willig Rosenstein (dancer), Isabella Soupart (director and choreographer), Julien Lambert (director of photography), Johan Legraie (camera operator), Roel Snellebrand (field recording and audio set up), Noémie Sonveau (assistant and stage coordinator), Aurélien Bihr (set designer), Silas Bieri (sound mixer and editor), Elie Rabinovitch (film editor), Maxime Tellier (colorist), Noémie Sonveau (production manager)

production: Made in Bruxelles, ACT2

supported by: Vlaamse overheid, Klarafestival, Artonov Festival, WBI - Wallonie Bruxelles International

film set & location: Wild Gallery Brussels

piano: Steinway & Sons - 1986 - Collection Paul Mercelis