AżTak Festiwal Dzień 2: ZANURZENIE

Immer­sion is a con­tin­u­a­tion of the dream — a jour­ney inward. On this day we invite you to a med­i­ta­tive jour­ney through new com­po­si­tions from Colom­bia, Ire­land, Poland, and the Unit­ed States. Between sound and silence, between con­cen­tra­tion and dif­fu­sion, between what is known and what is only just com­ing into being — we gath­er to lis­ten more deeply.

Pro­gram:

15:00–19:00

B383, Bars­ka 38 m.3

10-minute sound mas­sages in Sono­ra Sound Tube

Katarzy­na Suber­lak — Sono­ra Sound Tube

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Exhi­bi­tion of works by Mag­dale­na Lenartowicz.

19:00

Hash­tag Lab, Bars­ka 29

Con­cert

James Diaz In her dream songAlek­san­dra Słyż Iri­des­cence IIGreg Caf­frey These are the clouds above the fall­en sunAmy Rooney Flow state

***break***Max Vinetz Her­eRyan Mol­loy Gort­na­garn IILe­na Micha­jłów once again**world premiere

Per­form­ers:

Hash­tag Ensemble:Marta Piórkows­ka vio­li­nAg­niesz­ka Guz-Tarnows­ka vio­linGabriela Graboń viola*Dominik Pło­cińs­ki cel­loAd­am Eljasińs­ki clarinet(s)Wojciech Błaże­jczyk elec­tric gui­tarPaweł Janas accor­dionLil­ian­na Krych conductor*Akademia PRO

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Hard Rain Soloist Ensem­ble (North­ern Ireland):Aisling Agnew flute(s)Daniel Brow­ell piano, keyboards

21:00

Hash­tag Lab, ul. Bars­ka 29

Screen­ing of the film The Artist and the Per­vert. Dir. Beat­rice Behn, René Geb­hardt, music Georg Friedrich Haas­The screen­ing will be pre­ced­ed by a con­ver­sa­tion with the directors.

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Pro­duc­tion:

Sound engi­neer­ing: Kos­ma Stander­aPro­duc­tion: Mar­ta PiórkowskaV­i­su­al Iden­ti­ty: Alek­san­dra Ołdak

About the programme:

The sec­ond day of the fes­ti­val is a time of awak­en­ing from sleep. Immer­sion will allow us to con­tem­plate nature, the rela­tion­ship between our inner world and the exter­nal envi­ron­ment. We will hear com­po­si­tions per­formed by Hash­tag Ensem­ble and Hard Rain Soloists Ensem­ble (North­ern Ire­land) — a Belfast-based con­tem­po­rary music ensem­ble that, through its activ­i­ties, pro­motes the music of local com­posers along­side works by glob­al­ly lead­ing cre­ators. This time will be no dif­fer­ent — the group will present native works, Pol­ish pieces, and com­po­si­tions from across the Atlantic. Changes and para­dox­es will per­vade the music, and the evening film screen­ing will invite us to enter the mind and emo­tions of an artist.

In the pro­gramme we will find works that allow entry into a med­i­ta­tive state, the con­duct­ing of intro­spec­tion, and the find­ing of an answer to the ques­tion: what is deep con­cen­tra­tion. Immer­sion, the bind­ing ele­ment of the pro­gramme, is the process of going with­in one­self while main­tain­ing sen­si­tiv­i­ty to one’s sur­round­ings. The state thus achieved, akin to mind­ful­ness, allows for deep recep­tiv­i­ty both to exter­nal stim­uli and to sig­nals sent by one’s own organ­ism. Its exten­sion is flow state — going beyond self-aware­ness and mov­ing into absolute atten­tion devot­ed to the activ­i­ty being car­ried out in that moment. Dur­ing AżTak Fes­ti­val this will be the recep­tion of music, and per­haps even — in keep­ing with the idea of active lis­ten­ing — a spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ence and inner co-par­tic­i­pa­tion in the pre­sent­ed performance.

The first item of the evening will be the com­po­si­tion by Colom­bian com­pos­er James Diaz, In her dream song (2018), writ­ten with­in the Loret­to Project with a ded­i­ca­tion to the piano trio Lon­gleash. In his work the com­pos­er cre­ates unique sound planes, which in the case of In her dream song is achieved through the mutu­al orbit­ing of instru­ments around each oth­er. They enter into dis­course, pass­ing from sep­a­ra­tion to coop­er­a­tion — there­by cre­at­ing a son­ic kalei­do­scope. The next point in the pro­gramme is a com­po­si­tion with a sug­ges­tive title — here (2018). Max Vinetz responds in it to the dual­ism of the con­tem­po­rary world, where one is expect­ed to main­tain care­free com­po­sure in a noisy, chaot­ic envi­ron­ment. Accord­ing to the com­pos­er, the basis for func­tion­ing in such a world is cat­e­gori­sa­tion, which is sup­posed to enable the achieve­ment of calm and func­tion­ing in the face of con­tra­dic­to­ry emo­tions. The com­po­si­tion is accom­pa­nied by record­ings from equal­ly con­tra­dic­to­ry sources: on the one hand, excerpts from self-help guides explain­ing how to be healthy, calm, and hap­py — on the oth­er, reports of ter­ror­ist attacks in the USA and Great Britain.

The fol­low­ing Iri­des­cence II (2020) by Alek­san­dra Słyż is a trans­po­si­tion of the phe­nom­e­non of iri­des­cence — the appear­ance of appar­ent colours on rough sur­faces and thin films — into a mul­ti­chan­nel com­po­si­tion. Iri­des­cence can be relat­ed to the guid­ing theme direct­ly: a change in the angle of inci­dence of light caus­es its mod­u­la­tion, just as a change in per­spec­tive results in a dif­fer­ent under­stand­ing of the sit­u­a­tions in which we find our­selves. The next three com­po­si­tions will be direct­ly relat­ed to the activ­i­ty of Hard Rain Soloists Ensem­ble. The hyp­not­ic flow state (2022) by Amy Rooney reflects the per­form­ers’ way of think­ing dur­ing a con­cert. The result is a work flu­id in char­ac­ter, aimed at show­ing grad­ual change. Gort­na­garn II by Ryan Mol­loy, com­mis­sioned by Hard Rain Soloists Ensem­ble and inspired by a sense of attach­ment to place and land­scape, is a reflec­tion on belong­ing to a spe­cif­ic loca­tion on earth. The trip­tych clos­es with These are the clouds above the fall­en sun by Greg Caf­frey. This is an ele­gy ded­i­cat­ed to the com­poser’s deceased broth­er, being an inter­pre­ta­tion of a W.B. Yeats poem of the same title. The com­pos­er aban­dons the com­mon inter­pre­ta­tion of the text as a requiem for the decline of tra­di­tion­al val­ues in favour of a per­son­al expres­sion of grief and an immer­sion in painful emo­tions. The con­cert will be crowned by the world pre­miere of once again (2025) by Lena Micha­jłów, in which the com­pos­er refers to her expe­ri­ence of learn­ing to play the piano. The com­pos­er treats mis­takes made dur­ing prac­tice as equal­ly valid form-gen­er­at­ing mate­r­i­al, there­by ques­tion­ing the dri­ve towards per­fec­tion imposed by the edu­ca­tion sys­tem. The title of the com­po­si­tion refers to the phrase pre­sum­ably heard most fre­quent­ly dur­ing prac­tice: “once again” — once frus­trat­ing, now bring­ing atten­tive­ness and con­cen­tra­tion. The for­mal back­bone of the work is the split­ting of the com­po­si­tion into ele­men­tal par­ti­cles and the slow­ing of tem­po in ref­er­ence to the act of prac­tis­ing. The com­pos­er asks her­self: “What can be revealed in repeat­ed mate­r­i­al when lis­ten­ing becomes increas­ing­ly focused and the struc­ture of sound begins to disintegrate”?

“It’s not too late for us to have bod­ies,” so Jen­nifer Wal­she end­ed her man­i­festo of a new dis­ci­pline. For a decade Georg Friedrich Haas, the sub­ject of the evening screen­ing, an Aus­tri­an com­pos­er of dense micro­ton­al music and split sounds, could also have sub­scribed to this. That was when the com­pos­er, acknowl­edged by an inter­na­tion­al pan­el of crit­ics as the most out­stand­ing cre­ator of the 21st cen­tu­ry, made a very pub­lic com­ing out on many lev­els. He con­front­ed the Nazi his­to­ry of his fam­i­ly, and also began to realise his deep­est, repressed erot­ic desires. In the can­did doc­u­men­tary The Artist and the Per­vert by Beat­rice Behn and René Geb­hardt, Haas speaks about his turn­ing point togeth­er with his wife, Mol­lena Williams. This kink edu­ca­tor, stand-up come­di­an, and per­former also grap­ples with a dark past and a his­to­ry of addic­tion. The cou­ple unveils their dai­ly life and inti­ma­cy before us, from brew­ing fif­teen cups of cof­fee a day, through com­pos­ing naked on the floor, to ses­sions of con­sen­su­al BDSM. These expe­ri­ences are the can­vas for their joint work, Hien­ah, but also for a bet­ter under­stand­ing of one­self and of art. The pre­lude to the film will be a pre­sen­ta­tion of a short piano trio ins Licht (2007) for piano, vio­lin, and cel­lo. The title Towards the Light, togeth­er with the emo­tion­al inten­si­ty of the com­po­si­tion, will serve as a first step in the dis­cov­ery of the self. After the screen­ing we invite every­one to a shared con­ver­sa­tion with the film’s direc­tors, to be host­ed by Jan Topolski.

text: Michał Grze­siuk, Jan Topolski

***

The Hash­tag Lab Con­tem­po­rary Music Space is co-fund­ed by the City of Warsaw.

Co-fund­ed by the Min­is­ter of Cul­ture and Nation­al Her­itage from the Cul­ture Pro­mo­tion Fund under the “Music” pro­gramme, imple­ment­ed by the Nation­al Insti­tute of Music and Dance.

Co-fund­ed by the Min­is­ter of Cul­ture and Nation­al Her­itage from the Cul­ture Pro­mo­tion Fund — a state-pur­pose fund — under the “Com­po­si­tion­al Com­mis­sions” pro­gramme, imple­ment­ed by the Nation­al Insti­tute of Music and Dance.

The fes­ti­val was cre­at­ed thanks to the col­lab­o­ra­tion and sup­port of: B383 Art Space, Sono­ra Sound Tube, Adam Mick­iewicz Insti­tute, Glis­san­do, ZAiKS, Stoart, Hard Rain Solois­t­Ensem­ble, War­saw The­atre Asso­ci­a­tion, Pol­ish Myco­log­i­cal Soci­ety, British Council.

AżTak Fes­ti­val is sup­port­ed by British Coun­cil as part of the UK/Poland Sea­son 2025.

Media patrons:

Dwój­ka Pol­skie Radio

Gaze­ta Wyborcza

POLMIC​.PL

Tickets

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