Donaueschingen 2015 ################### :date: 2015-11-01 16:00 :modified: 2016-04-03 16:00 :tags: robots, orm finnendahl, hans hübner, ensemble mosaik, swr, ircam, neue musik, donaueschingen :category: events :slug: donaueschingen-2015 :summary: A short review of Donaueschinger Musiktage 2015 :authors: David Runge The festival ____________ | Due to a fortunate contact through the |tu_electronic_studio| I went to |donaueschinger_musiktage_2015| being the *robot kindergarten worker* for |orm_finnendahl|'s piece |orm_finnendahl_ast| at most likely **the** "|new_music|" festival worldwide. | The festival is curated and organized by the |swr| (a regional public broadcasting station serving the southwest of Germany). Traditionally it is held in |donaueschingen|, a small town in Baden-Württemberg. | As it is a highly publicly subsidized event and genre of music that is presented there, the whole festival is quite an interesting and diverse place to be in. | An additionally very interesting aspect is, that all pieces presented are premieres! | That being said, I didn't have that much time to watch other pieces, but I made it to those two: The dress rehearsal of |michael_beil|'s |michael_beil_bluff| (incredible timing!) and |olga_neuwirth|'s |olga_neuwirth_piece| (literally **big** production). | The latter made me miss my train on the way back (which was okay, because I ended up with parts of |ensemble_mosaik|). | The ensemble ____________ | Berlin based |ensemble_mosaik| realized Orm's piece amongst several others in the Donauhallen (one of the many locations used during the festival) and presented it to the public two times (the first one also being a live broadcast). | You can listen to the whole broadcast |donaueschingen_ensemble_mosaik_stream|. |orm_finnendahl_ast| begins around **01:06:30**. | For a more general overview, have a look |donaueschingen_ensemble_mosaik_donauhallen|. .. figure:: /images/donaueschingen_ast_dress_rehearsal.jpg :alt: Rehearsal of |orm_finnendahl_ast| with |ensemble_mosaik| in Donaueschingen Dress rehearsal of |orm_finnendahl|'s |orm_finnendahl_ast| with |ensemble_mosaik| in Donaueschingen The piece _________ | |orm_finnendahl_ast| is quite a challenging piece to perform, as it not only involves *"robots"* (designed by |hans_huebner|) that bang on different materials and thus have to be *"in tune"*, but also a nifty |puredata| based setup, that allows all involved musicians to sample themselves and improvise to those samples at certain times, while at the same time gives Finnendahl the possibility to oversee all of their actions according to local and global timelines. | Like all of his newer pieces, its score is written using :abbr:`LISP (a powerful family of functional programming languages)` and sonified by using backends that base on |supercollider| or |puredata|, while the spatialization is done in |puredata|. | Sounds like a powerful setup? It is! .. figure:: /images/donaueschingen_ast_aftershow.jpg :alt: Rehearsal of |orm_finnendahl_ast| with |ensemble_mosaik| in Donaueschingen The *"robots"* after the first round of |ensemble_mosaik| presented pieces in Donaueschingen The rehearsals ______________ | Rehearsals for |orm_finnendahl_ast| took place in Berlin at |ensemble_mosaik|'s rehearsal space. | A handful of weird issues had to be worked out during those, including network problems (*"Don't ever user WiFi for anything! Ever!"*), MacOSX related hickups (*"Ah, is that application really closed?"*) and versioning fun (*"What version of the application was it, I gave to you?"*). | As with all technical setups a methodical procedure is of the essence. I worked out a plan for moving all needed tools and boxes from Berlin to Donaueschingen. | In the end everything worked out rather nicely and I think the piece went for a very good start at |donaueschinger_musiktage_2015|! .. figure:: /images/ensemble_mosaik_rehearsal1.jpg :alt: Ensemble Mosaik rehearsal Rehearsal of |orm_finnendahl|'s |orm_finnendahl_ast| with |ensemble_mosaik| in Berlin .. figure:: /images/ensemble_mosaik_rehearsal2.jpg :alt: Ensemble Mosaik rehearsal Rehearsal of |orm_finnendahl|'s |orm_finnendahl_ast| with |ensemble_mosaik| in Berlin | All in all I'm very happy for the opportunity to have worked with such professional musicians as the |ensemble_mosaik| and a mindblowing setup as |orm_finnendahl|'s. | You live and learn. | .. |tu_electronic_studio| raw:: html Electronic Studio of TU Berlin .. |new_music| raw:: html New Music .. |olga_neuwirth| raw:: html Olga Neuwirth .. |michael_beil| raw:: html Michael Beil .. |michael_beil_bluff| raw:: html "Bluff" .. |olga_neuwirth_piece| raw:: html "Le Encantadas o le avventure nel mare delle meraviglie" .. |orm_finnendahl| raw:: html Orm Finnendahl .. |orm_finnendahl_ast| raw:: html AST .. |donaueschinger_musiktage_2015| raw:: html Donaueschinger Musiktage 2015 .. |swr| raw:: html SWR .. |donaueschingen| raw:: html Donaueschingen .. |ensemble_mosaik| raw:: html Ensemble Mosaik .. |donaueschingen_ensemble_mosaik_stream| raw:: html here .. |donaueschingen_ensemble_mosaik_donauhallen| raw:: html here .. |hans_huebner| raw:: html Hans Hübner .. |puredata| raw:: html PureData .. |supercollider| raw:: html SuperCollider