AżTak Festiwal Dzień 1: SEN

We will begin the fes­ti­val by immers­ing our­selves in sound, thanks to a remark­able instru­ment: Sono­ra Sound Tube. The main part of the evening will be filled with music by the fes­ti­val’s com­pos­er-in-res­i­dence — Wojtek Blecharz — in two dis­tinct, spa­tial guises.

Pro­gram:

18:00

B383, Bars­ka 38 m.3

Sono­ra Sound Tube opening

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Performers:Katarzyna Suber­lak Sono­ra Sound Tube­Mar­ta Grzywacz voice­Mar­ta Piórkows­ka vio­lin­Paweł Janas K‑droneWojciech Błaże­jczyk zithers

Bar­tosz Parad­ows­ki viola

15:00–18:00

B383, Bars­ka 38 m.3

Sono­ra Sound Tube

Katarzy­na Suber­lak — Sono­ra Sound Tube

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Exhi­bi­tion of works by Mag­dale­na Lenartowicz.

19:00

Hash­tag Lab, Bars­ka 29

Woj­ciech Blecharz Axis.B**world premiere

Masashi Yamamo­to (Japan)

20:00

Woj­ciech Blecharz Field 6. Dream Notes

Hash­tag Ensemble:Kamil Stan­iczek vio­li­nAlek­san­dra Demows­ka-Made­js­ka vio­laMichał Bień cello*Mateusz Los­ka dou­ble bass­Paweł Janas accor­dion, K‑droneWojciech Błaże­jczyk elec­tric gui­tarA­nia Kar­pow­icz bass fluteŁukasz Nędza saxophone***Akademia PRO**guest

The con­cert will be pre­ced­ed by a con­ver­sa­tion with the creators.

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Pro­duc­tion:

Sound engi­neer­ing: Kos­ma Stander­aPro­duc­tion: Alek­san­dra Demows­ka-Made­jskaV­i­su­al iden­ti­ty: Alek­san­dra Ołdak

About the programme:

The theme of the first day of the fes­ti­val is the con­cept of the dream. The phys­i­cal­i­ty of sound, musi­cal explo­ration of space and move­ment, will cre­ate illu­so­ry planes of sound in which each lis­ten­er will per­ceive and feel some­thing dif­fer­ent. Shifts of role and unusu­al arrange­ments will build a phan­tas­magor­i­cal space for new musi­cal experiences.

From the very start, lis­ten­ers will be able to enter a state of relax­ation — the fes­ti­val will open with short sound mas­sages using the Sono­ra Sound Tube, an inno­v­a­tive instru­ment designed for sound ther­a­py. The bass sounds pro­duced by the device will induce a state of relax­ation and qui­etude in the patient-lis­ten­er. Book­ings for mas­sages are open for all three days of the fes­ti­val. The Sono­ra can also be heard on the first evening as part of an impro­vised con­cert in the B383 space.

Fur­ther events will cen­tre on the work of the com­pos­er-in-res­i­dence, Wojtek Blecharz. On the first day we will hear as many as two of his com­po­si­tions — Axis.B (2025) for dou­ble bass and 7 wire­less speak­ers, and Field 6 (2020) for eight instru­ments. The first is a con­tin­u­a­tion of Blecharz’s ear­li­er work from 2016, Axis.A, for cel­lo, rhythm gen­er­a­tors, and ana­logue syn­the­sis­ers. Axis.B was cre­at­ed in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Japan­ese dou­ble bassist Masashi Yamamo­to dur­ing the com­poser’s artis­tic res­i­den­cy in Tokyo in May 2025. Both Axis pieces com­ple­ment each oth­er. Where­as Axis.A is a son­ic “ver­ti­cal axis,” per­formed in a ver­ti­cal space con­sist­ing of a min­i­mum of sev­en lev­els, Axis.B is a “hor­i­zon­tal axis” divid­ed into sev­en sec­tions, each of which must be per­formed in a dif­fer­ent part of the con­cert hall while main­tain­ing an arrange­ment that forms a straight line. The use of wire­less speak­ers is intend­ed to com­pose the space in the man­ner of a son­ic mem­o­ry map, based on the spec­u­la­tive the­o­ry that no sound in a space ever com­plete­ly fades away. Like a dream, the acoustic waves gen­er­at­ed are meant to per­sist even after the sound source has left the room. The dou­ble bass, slow­ly tra­vers­ing the con­cert hall, leaves a son­ic trace behind it, also recall­ing some of the motifs present in Axis.A, becom­ing the bind­ing ele­ment of all the musi­cal threads.

The result of Blecharz’s search for a new type of nar­ra­tive is the com­po­si­tion Field 6 (2020–21), writ­ten spe­cial­ly for Hash­tag Ensem­ble. The work, intend­ed to be per­formed by eight musi­cians, is an invi­ta­tion for the per­form­ers to increase the role of shared impro­vi­sa­tion, build­ing the piece by respond­ing in real time to the parts played by the oth­er musi­cians, and through deep lis­ten­ing to the indi­vid­ual ele­ments of the com­po­si­tion. To bet­ter under­stand this idea the com­pos­er includes an excerpt from the sce­nario from the fourth move­ment of the “Field” cycle, “Field 4. Nexus”: “Each solo con­tains many fer­matas, which allow for lis­ten­ing to and con­tem­plat­ing the play­ing of oth­er musi­cians, as well as for find­ing the right moment to return to ensem­ble play­ing. Although each solo is in a sense inde­pen­dent, they all share the same basic tem­po. The musi­cal nar­ra­tive should be shaped as a dia­logue between soloists, based on action-reac­tion, call-and-response, and a coher­ent flow of son­ic ener­gy among all the musi­cians. Always react to oth­er musi­cians by start­ing a new phrase in response to what you hear in the space: con­tin­ue, repeat, join in, break the nar­ra­tive, con­clude, cre­ate echoes or con­trasts — all in order to cre­ate a deep musi­cal under­stand­ing among the solo voices.”

The title Field becomes a mark­er for the son­ic dra­matur­gy: the musi­cians par­tic­i­pate in cre­at­ing a kind of “son­ic field,” a ter­rain in which sound is present and moves through space along many tra­jec­to­ries. Each of the eight works enti­tled “Field” has a sub­ti­tle, with the excep­tion of the sixth field… As the com­pos­er him­self says: “To this day I do not know where this music came to me from, where it ‘heard itself’ into being, where its some­times dark char­ac­ter and son­ic, eso­teric spleen came from. Is it a requiem writ­ten in advance for a friend, a son­ic coin­ci­dence (syn­chronic­i­ty), notes from a dream/vision, or anoth­er les­son from Pro­fes­sor Bad Trip…?”

The Son­ic Field cycle con­sists of:

FIELD 1–3. Feel­ing Feel­ings for vio­lin, con­tra­bass clar­inet and per­cus­sion (2018)

FIELD 4. Nexus for 9 per­form­ers (koto, shamisen, cel­lo, dou­ble bass, shakuhachi, daegeum, vio­la, vio­lin, gongs) (2018)

FIELD 5. Aura for 1 lis­ten­er, 1 per­former and 7 wire­less speak­ers (2019)

FIELD 6. for 8 per­form­ers (bass flute, sax­o­phone, vio­lin, vio­la, cel­lo, dou­ble bass, k‑drone/accordion and elec­tric bass)

FIELD 7. Delta for 10 per­form­ers (bass flute, clar­inet, bas­soon, sax­o­phone, trum­pet, vio­lin, vio­la, cel­lo, per­cus­sion and key­boards) (2021)

FIELD 8. Elixir for orches­tra in 10 groups (2022–2023)

In all the activ­i­ties offered to audi­ences on this day, the organ­is­ers togeth­er with the com­posers invite the lis­ten­er to sur­ren­der to the music in the man­ner of deeply fol­low­ing dream visions, which will sure­ly take each per­son on a unique, indi­vid­ual son­ic journey.

text: Natalia Górecka

***

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.

Media patrons:

Dwój­ka Pol­skie Radio

Gaze­ta Wyborcza

POLMIC​.PL

Tickets

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