The main venue of the festival Viitasaari Areena will be the stage for three large scale performative works during the festival, establishing the theme of the festival ”Bodies & Rooms”. “Corporality and different performance spaces have changed the performative arts as much as the digital age, and in that sense the trilogy asks what a larger entity such as a concert or an opera can be when the works have been separated from the classical concert hall or opera stage”, ponders the artistic director of the festival Johan Tallgren.
“Songs of Wars I have seen”, a staged concert by composer and director Heiner Goebbels is based on Gertrude Stein’s texts about women’s every day experiences during WWII. The work will be performed by International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) and Finnish Baroque Orchestra conducted by Christian Karlsen on Saturday 7.7. Heiner Goebbels, who visits Time of Music for the first time, is a prize-winning name in performance art and music theatre, and he will give a lecture about his years as an artistic director of Ruhrtriennale.
The last performance of the festival on Monday 9.7. is a production from Nowy Teatr, Warsaw, “Body-Opera” by the Polish composer Wojtek Blecharz. The theatre directed by Krzysztof Warlikowski is known for its border breaking works; Blecharz’s Body-Opera is an installation work composed for 100 transducers, dancer, double bass and percussion and it is a vision of what an opera of tomorrow could be like. The work invites the audience to experience the physical nature of music with their entire bodies.
The opening concert “The Otheroom” makes the audience move in space, among the theatrical ritual triggered by live electronics. A work by composer Rolf Wallin and choreographers and scenographers Heine Avdal and Yukiko Shinozaki from fieldworks Collective (Belgium) sets on stage dancers, musicians from Musikfabrik and helium balloons.
Guest composers Chaya Czernowin and Jennifer Walshe
The guest composer of the festival is Chaya Czernowin, whose major piece ”HIDDEN” for sting quartet and electronics will be performed by Arditti Quartet, a frequent visitor at Time of Music, and the technical team from IRCAM in Viitasaari Church on 6.7. Another work at the concert will be Sir Harrison Birtwistle’s ”Silk House Sequences” from 2015, the same year he visited Time of Music Festival.
Also a familiar guest at Viitasaari, Jennifer Walshe is returning as a performer and a teacher. In her work “Everything is Important” for singer, quartet and video we see Walshe in the midst of the digital overload of our time singing and dancing with the Arditti Quartet. Walshe is performing also as an improviser with the other teacher of Improvisation course, Tomomi Adachi.
First performances combine spaces, bodies and electronics
Sampo Haapamäki’s piece for the International Contemporary Ensemble, co-commissioned with IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique, Paris) is using motion capture technology to trigger live electronics with the conductor’s movements. The world premiere will be heard at Viitasaari church 5.7. with Christian Karlsen as the conductor. The concert includes also pieces “Love Song” and “Ayre” by Chaya Czernowin.
Another world premiere is co-commissioned with the Finnish electro-acoustic music group defunensemble from Alexander Schubert, whose works are closer to hybrid multi-artistic spectacles than traditional compositions. The work “Backrooms” using video, electronics and multiple spaces will be performed by defunensemble and guitarist Petri Kumela on Wednesday 4.7. at the Theatre space.
First time visitor at Time of Music, Finnish Baroque Orchestra has also their own concert that includes among others a world premiere from composer Sarah Nemtsov who has drawn a lot of attention in Central Europe for her works.
Soloists of the festival
Solo performers of the festival are viola player Stephen Upshaw and accordionist Andreas Borregaard. Upshaw, born in the US but working in UK, performs for example Kaija Saariaho’s and Jagoda Smytka’s pieces for viola and electronics. The Danish accordionist Andreas Borregaard includes in his concert also video and presents among others Jennifer Walshe’s and Simon Steen-Andersen’s works. Some of the festival concert programmes are yet to be confirmed.