PULSE & Nick Dunston: ouroboros

In the organizer's words:

String instruments and electronics- in Ouroboros, PULSE works with the fundamentals of amplified sound: instruments, structure-borne sound transducers and microphones create waves in the air that can be perceived rhythmically, harmonically, melodically and spherically. Music by pioneers from different eras is presented: From Steve Reich's Pendulum Music from 1968 to a world premiere for banjo, feedback and string quartet by Puerto Rico-born bassist and composer Nick Dunston. Dunston is one of today's most active jazz musicians and current winner of the SWR Jazz Prize. His contributions in the areas of materiality, embodiment, decolonization and Afro-Surrealism have earned him great merit. Nick is currently conducting intensive research into sound bodies, transducers and feedback. His transducer-equipped banjo, long regarded as a symbol of Afro-American music culture in the USA, is in itself a bridge between strings and electronics. PULSE and Nick Dunston present a 30-minute electro-acoustic modular composition for string quartet and feedback. Using Dunston's compositional languages, improvisational vocabularies and listening-based methodologies, the work will delve into underutilized aspects of the string ensemble format.

Listening-based processes also inform the piece Feedback Loop for String Quartet and Contact Microphones by João Orecchia, born in Brooklyn, NY, to a Peruvian mother and Italian father. He grew up in the city's mixed immigrant communities, in all their contradictory beauty, displacement and unrest. With a strong connection to an elusive elsewhere, Orecchia has always felt drawn into unfamiliar territory. Orecchia is increasingly concerned with the nature of sound itself, how sound works and how bodies are affected by the movement and vibration of sound.

Finally, when writing Industry,Michael Gordon "was thinking about the industrial revolution, about technology, about how instruments are tools and how industry has overtaken us and is suddenly overwhelming us. I had this vision of a 30-meter-long cello made of steel hanging from the sky, a cello the size of a soccer field, and in the piece the cello becomes a hugely distorted sound."

Michael Gordon: Industry (1992)
João Orecchia: Feedback Loop for String Quartet and Contact Microphones (2016)
Steve Reich: Pendulum Music (1968)
Nick Dunston: Ouroboros (2024, world premiere)

before and after the sets: DJ Wasserfall
Projections: Pablo Garretón

PULSE: Johannes Haase, Malin Grass, Yuko Hara, Jakob Nierenz, Pablo Garretón

www.pulsepulse.de