Concert Featuring the Work of Rafal Zapala
As the culminating expereince of Rafal Zapala's Fulbright residency at CNMAT, a concert featuring his work will be performed by the visiting Hashtag ensemble. It will focus on artistic theory surrounding new open forms of music intermediated by technological tools. These forms are explored in the context of written scores and live chamber music performance.
The concert will present participatory works involving the audience, works of an open, non-linear form, "rhizome" or "hypertext" compositions. It is conceptually focused on building the "community of listeners," with all compositions interactively engaging listeners, sometimes through physical interaction, sometimes with mobile consoles prepared for the pieces. The concert will feature a new work titled „Introverts’collective” which was created at CNMAT during Rafal's residency.
#Hashtag Ensemble is a music cooperative from Poland specializing in contemporary music, improvisation and musical education. The group operates by creating egalitarian structures based on multi-layered activities of its members and by building programs based on legible and usually non-musical contexts. An important element of the group’s concert practice is support and presentation of artistic achievements of women. Intervention operations, concerts in the backyards of Warsaw townhouses or on the street are the foundation of rooting in locality and integration with small communities.
conductor, keyboards – Lilianna Krych
flutes – Ania Karpowicz
viola – Aleksandra Demowska-Madejska
cello – Dominik Płociński
double bass – Mateusz Loska
guitar, electronics – Wojtek Błażejczyk
programming - Szymon Kaliski
composition – Rafał Zapała
Compositions:
1) "Judge Me Again" (for flute, live electronics )
2) "Futility" (for ensemble, video, mobile controllers):
3) "Introverts'collective" (for ensemble, electronics, mobile controllers)
4) "Scrolling to Zero" (for keyboards and electronics)
The Adam Mickiewicz Institute is the organizer of this event. The concerts are co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland.
Hashtag Ensemble dedicates the concert to the memory of Stanislaw Lem, the Polish science fiction writer and futurologist, whose 100th birthday anniversary we celebrated this year and whose spirit permeates each of the presented works. We will try to evoke Lem's characteristic world of bio-technological hybrids and experimental electronics, organically merging with the 'human factor', and the writer's typical critical distance towards technology.