May 21, 9:00 PM in the National Music Forum – the Polish premiere of a piece for organ controlled by computer and electroacoustic processing, performed together with a video layer created live by Mira Boczniowicz with her installation “…SOMETHING…”. This is a ticketed event.
“Wind, and more broadly air, are an inseparable part of music. Without air, there is simply no music,” underlines Matthias Krüger, one of Germany’s leading composers of contemporary music. In L’être contre le vent – an improvisation for computer-controlled organ and electroacoustic processing – he explores the timbre of the organ by confronting the mass of sound with the properties given to it by electronics. Tobias Tobit Hagedorn will play the organ during the Polish premiere of the work.
Krüger was inspired to create L’être contre le vent (“to be against the wind”) by the French poet and essayist Paul Valéry and his La jeunesse parque from 1917. The references to the power of the wind contained in the poem were a starting point for the composer, in whose approach the breeze is also a powerful metaphor for the omnipresent sound. Krüger places it in the context of the organ generating sound by using the vibrations of air flowing through the pipes grouped into voices.
“The organ is rightly considered the oldest synthesizer in the world. But its sound has always been acoustic – physical, with real air circulation that allows the instrument to breathe […]. So we connect the instrument to a computer, controlling its valves and airflow through complex, seemingly endless rhythmic and harmonic patterns, while simultaneously combining acoustic sound with its electronic emulation and live electronic processing, thus using its inner potential to explore the essence of what music itself is: time and space. And we, the listeners, become, in Paul Valéry’s words: creatures <defying the wind, in the harshest air, / Receiving the call from the sea in the face>” is how Krüger describes his new project.
The sound layer of the work will be enriched by a pre-premiere video created live by Mira Boczniowicz with a multi-channel video installation …SOMETHING…
Tickets can be purchased at the National Forum of Music or online. The event is co-organized by the Musica Electronica Nova festival and the National Forum of Music.
Matthias Krüger is a composer of contemporary music based between Paris and Hamburg. Born in 1987 in Ulm (Germany), he grew up in Brussels and Trier. He studied music composition at Cologne’s Hochschule für Musik und Tanz, at Columbia University in New York City, and IRCAM in Paris, as well as French language at Cologne University and Sorbonne University (Paris). He is a doctoral candidate at Hamburg’s University of Music and Theatre, researching hybrid composition between music, dance, theatre, and video.
He has received numerous awards and scholarships, including from DAAD, the German National Academic Foundation, Berlin’s Mendelssohn competition in 2013, Cologne’s B.A. Zimmermann Award in 2015, the Chevillion-Bonnaud Composition Award (Orléans 2016), and a nomination for the 2018 Gaudeamus Award (Utrecht). Residencies and research trips took him, among others, to Istanbul, Paris, New Zealand, and Montreal, where he was a composer-in-residence at the Goethe-Institut and Le Vivier and a Graduate.
He was a researcher at McGill University Montreal/CIRMMT and Venice, where he was an Artist-in-Residence at the German Center for Venetian Studies in Venice, Italy. Electronic production residencies have led him to GRAME (Lyon) and GMEM (Marseille).
His music has been performed by the Klangforum Wien, the WDR Symphony Orchestra, ensemble Recherche, ensemble Aventure, Ensemble Ascolta, Ensemble Inverspace, Ensemble Hand Werk, Ensemble BRuCH, Fukio Ensemble, IEMA Ensemble, Slagwerk Den Haag and Oerknal, PluralEnsemble Madrid, and Meitar Ensemble Tel Aviv. Performances include countries all over Europe, the US, Canada, and Asia as part of festivals such as ECLAT Stuttgart, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Warsaw Autumn, Gaudeamus Muziekweek, Festival de Royaumont, Nuova Consonanza Rome, or the Shanghai New Music Week and in venues such as Konzerthaus Berlin, Palau de la Música Catalana Barcelona, Centre Pompidou Paris and Carnegie Hall New York.
Furthermore, he has a regular practice of holding lectures on his music at international institutions such as Harvard University, Manhattan School of Music, CIRMMT Montreal, CRR de Paris, CNSMD de Lyon, Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia, Conservatorio de Palma de Mallorca, Istanbul Teknik Üniversitesi, Bilkent Üniversitesi Ankara, Vienna University of Music, or German music academies such as Cologne, Freiburg, Essen or Karlsruhe, while teaching music theory at various conservatories in the wider Paris area.
His portrait CD ᴀɪɴ·ᴛ ɴᴜᴛʜɪɴ· ʙᴜᴛ ғᴀɪʀʏ ᴅᴜsᴛ, released in October 2021 on the label WERGO as part of the series “Edition Zeitgenössische Musik/Podium Gegenwart,” was longlisted in January 2022 for the German Record Critics’ Award. His follow-up, second monographic album, “Rosebud,” will be released in the Summer of 2025.
