counterpoint

Collaboration project between the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg (HfMT), Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg (HFBK) & the Hamburger Gitarrenforum.
Performances: 21st & 26th February 2022, HFBK & HfMT Hamburg

VIEW POSTERS & PROGRAM

Improvisation project: "Passacaglia” for strings + electronics

Concept + Live Electronics: Junya Fujita + Alexander Iliashenko / HFBK
Theorbo + Archlute: Felix Ritter + Emma-Shay Gallenti-Guilfoyle / HfMT

This collaborative four-channel improvisation piece uses a theorbo, an archlute and live looping electronics. The piece begins with the recording of a passacaglia group on period instruments, which serves as the basis for a sequence of variations. Felix & Emma-Shay improvise a passacaglia in Baroque style. Simultaneously Junya & Alexander being improvising with the recorded material, looping and gradually distorting the passacaglia ground. As the four-way improvisation progresses, the passacaglia loses its conventional structure and the instruments their sound characteristics, pushing the Felix & Emma-Shay from the traditional Baroque improvisation mode into free modern improvisation.

Interdisciplinary project: "PlayingShapes"

Concept and realisation: Olga Mos + Kyle Egret / HFBK
Barock Guitar + Modern Guitar: Felix Ritter + Emma-Shay Gallenti-Guilfoyle / HfMT

Music and visual arts are fundamental genres of art and culture. Their different expressions show themselves in different ways. In our joint project we refer to the "counterpoint" taken from music. In the spirit of the idea of equality and artistic polyphony, we concentrate on similar ways of working and thinking. From this uniformity, a visual multi-track develops, which is based in its structure on the musical principle of "MIDI notation". The visuality of "MIDI notation" follows a simple pattern, but is able to represent the complexity of all sounds. We take up this visual system and expand it with additional aesthetic methods, while at the same time following a stringent concept. Musicians from the HfMT and the Hamburger Gitarrenforum freely interpreted and performed it.