green&blue dreamin’

When nature falls into sleep, we ask: will it be giv­en the chance to awak­en once more after the next win­ter? Can we afford to dream of a future filled with green­ery, the eter­nal song of forests and rivers? 

This inter­twin­ing of anx­i­ety for the Earth and long­ing for the pure force of nature was the inspi­ra­tion for the con­cert pro­gramme, in which a space of sounds and images will ren­der the fragili­ty of the world around us — with­out, how­ev­er, rob­bing us of hope for renew­al.
In Alek­san­dra Kaca’s Coal, a son­ic image of black­ness becomes a sto­ry about the ten­sion between destruc­tion and light. Sound, like a stroke of Kline’s brush on can­vas, takes the form of a pul­sat­ing con­trast in music. In Woj­ciech Błaże­jczyk’s Aether, invis­i­ble elec­tro­mag­net­ic waves are trans­formed into a son­ic land­scape that makes us aware of the per­va­sive nature of tech­no­log­i­cal pol­lu­tion. In green&blue dreamin, Katarzy­na Krzewińs­ka con­fronts us with the dis­so­nance between the noise of the city and our need for con­tact with nature — she col­lides sounds from field record­ings with the per­for­ma­tive ges­ture of musi­cians touch­ing branch­es, water and flowers.

The two pre­mieres of the evening — Jeanne Artemis’s Ash­es on my tongue and Aled Smith’s Scream­ing Flesh — car­ry a direct ques­tion about the plan­et’s future. Artemis’s work, writ­ten spe­cial­ly for Hash­tag Ensem­ble, com­bines pes­simism and hope in a poet­ic image of touch­ing soil and dust that simul­ta­ne­ous­ly crum­bles and endures. Smith takes us into a vision of the future in which forests exist only in dreams, and the scream­ing body remem­bers wounds inflict­ed on the Earth that can­not be healed.

Each of these works is like a sep­a­rate frag­ment of a larg­er sto­ry — about loss, about the omnipres­ence of tech­nol­o­gy, about the unceas­ing need to find new forms of coex­is­tence between human­i­ty and nature. Togeth­er they cre­ate a space in which music becomes an instru­ment for pre­serv­ing the mem­o­ry of a world unspoiled by tech­nol­o­gy: a warn­ing, but also a ten­der act of love for what we can still save.

Programme:

Alek­san­dra Kaca Coal (2020)
Woj­ciech Błaże­jczyk Aether (2020/2024)
Katarzy­na Krzewińs­ka green&blue dreamin (2024)
Jeanne Artemis  Ash­es on my tongue  (2022)*
Aled Smith Scream­ing Flesh** (2025)*

*world pre­miere
** “Co-financed from funds of the Min­is­ter of Cul­ture and Nation­al Her­itage from the Cul­ture Pro­mo­tion Fund under the ‘Com­pos­er Com­mis­sions’ pro­gramme, imple­ment­ed by the Nation­al Insti­tute of Music and Dance”

Performers:

Mar­ta J. Bogusławska voice
Łuc­ja Chyrzyńs­ka flutes **
Adam Eljasińs­ki clar­inets
Łukasz Nędza sax­o­phones **
Nadia Mikoła­jczyk per­cus­sion *
Paweł Janas accor­dion
Mar­ta Piórkows­ka vio­lin
Alek­san­dra Demows­ka-Made­js­ka vio­la
Doro­ta Mal­mor vio­la*
Antoni Majew­s­ki cel­lo *
Mateusz Los­ka dou­ble bass
Woj­ciech Błaże­jczyk elec­tric gui­tar
Lil­ian­na Krych con­duc­tor

*  Akademia PRO
** guest

Production:

pro­duc­tion: Mar­ta Piórkows­ka and Alek­san­dra Demows­ka-Made­js­ka
visu­al iden­ti­ty: Alek­san­dra Ołdak
sound engi­neer­ing: Kos­ma Standera
pro­gramme con­cept: Hash­tag Ensem­ble Cre­ative Group

Con­cert co-pro­duced with the War­saw Branch of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Pol­ish Musi­cian Artists

Hash­tag Lab Con­tem­po­rary Music Space is co-fund­ed by the City of War­saw.
The media patron of the Hash­tag Lab Con­tem­po­rary Music Space is POLMIC​.PL., Dwój­ka Pol­skie Radio and Gaze­ta Wyborcza

If you’d like to know more about the artists/works:

Aled Smith Scream­ing Flesh

The scream­ing body remem­bers the present from a dis­tant future in which forests have sur­vived only as dream-worlds that the Earth is no longer able to sus­tain. What remains con­sists of shad­ows and imi­ta­tions: swarms of insects devour­ing them­selves, cir­cling in end­less loops. Noth­ing grows. What has already been lost can­not be saved. And what endures are wounds that nev­er close.

About the composer:

Aled Smith (b. 1990) is a British-Irish com­pos­er and sound artist. His artis­tic inves­ti­ga­tions focus on the use of tim­bre and instru­men­ta­tion to cre­ate colour. His works dis­tort and com­bine per­spec­tives of processed objects along­side ana­logue elec­tron­ics and ampli­fi­ca­tion tech­niques. He cre­ates visu­al, spa­tial and son­ic works through decon­tex­tu­al­i­sa­tion and dis­in­te­gra­tion. His music has been com­mis­sioned and per­formed by Rage Trom­bones, Alek­san­dra Demows­ka-Made­js­ka, Con­cept Store Quar­tet, E‑Mex Ensem­ble, TAK Ensem­ble, Jason Alder, Goś­ka Ispho­rd­ing, Duo Alto, Miłos Dro­gows­ki, MCME, Fidan Aghaye­va-Edler and others.

Smith’s work has been pre­sent­ed at numer­ous fes­ti­vals world­wide: SYNTHETIS, Towards Sound Fes­ti­val, the WHAT MATTERS exhi­bi­tion, Kalv Fes­ti­valen, Trans­me­di­ale Fes­ti­val, Audio Art Fes­ti­val, impuls fes­ti­val, Darm­stadt fes­ti­val, CEME fes­ti­val, KCMD fes­ti­val, TENSO Days, Alba Music Fes­ti­val, Sev­en Gates Fes­ti­val and many more. His works have been per­formed in many pres­ti­gious con­cert halls around the world, includ­ing Roy­al Liv­er­pool Phil­har­mon­ic Hall, South­bank Cen­tre, MUMUTH, Llan­gollen Inter­na­tion­al Eisteddfod Pavil­ion, Roy­al North­ern Col­lege of Music, Lev­on­tin 7 and Gry­pari Cul­tur­al Centre.

Smith is a schol­ar of Junge Akademie (2021) at the Akademie der Kün­ste in Berlin. In 2017 he received the Gold Medal for com­po­si­tion from the Roy­al North­ern Col­lege of Music for the piano trio “Däm­merung”. His work “ex” was select­ed as win­ner of a Score Fol­low­er open call in 2020. In 2013 he won the Roy­al Phil­har­mon­ic Soci­ety’s “Mini-com­mis­sion” com­pe­ti­tion and received third prize at the British Harp­si­chord Soci­ety Inter­na­tion­al Com­pe­ti­tion. He has received numer­ous dis­tinc­tions in com­pe­ti­tions and open calls for scores. Smith holds a doc­tor­ate from the Roy­al North­ern Col­lege of Music (2018) and a Mas­ter of Music in com­po­si­tion (2014, with dis­tinc­tion) from the same insti­tu­tion. He holds a Bach­e­lor of Music (BMus Hons) from Liv­er­pool Hope Uni­ver­si­ty, which he com­plet­ed with First Class Hon­ours (2012), and is an Asso­ciate Fel­low of the High­er Edu­ca­tion Acad­e­my (2017). His prin­ci­pal teach­ers were Adam Gorb, Emi­ly Howard, Gary Car­pen­ter and Stephen Pratt, and he has also received tuition from Chaya Czer­nowin, Zyg­munt Krauze, Johannes Krei­dler, Clara Ian­not­ta, Mar­co Strop­pa, Toshio Hosokawa, Bri­an Fer­ney­hough, Liza Lim, Mark Andre, Pier­lui­gi Bil­lone, Franck Bedross­ian, Raphael Cen­do, Dmitri Kourliand­s­ki and oth­ers. He has par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Syn­thetis Inter­na­tion­al Com­po­si­tion Cours­es (2018, 2019 and 2022), impuls Fes­ti­val (2019 and 2021), Kalv Fes­ti­val (2021), MCME Acad­e­my (2021), Delian Acad­e­my (2019), CEME com­po­si­tion course (2019) and DME/Kyiv Days of Con­tem­po­rary Music (2018). He also com­pos­es for film and the­atre; his most recent project is: “Entuz­jast­ki, siły­cz­ki, bojown­icz­ki. Kobi­ety Mazowsza 1863–1918” (2023) for the Muse­um of Inde­pen­dence in War­saw. He cur­rent­ly col­lab­o­rates with the Music Gar­dens Foun­da­tion as an advis­er for the Syn­thetis Com­po­si­tion Course and is mak­ing a doc­u­men­tary film about the organ­i­sa­tion (2024), its his­to­ry and sig­nif­i­cance in Pol­ish art music. 

He is an enthu­si­as­tic crafts­man and inven­tor, often con­struct­ing elec­tron­ic devices and instru­ments. He is also cur­rent­ly devel­op­ing sev­er­al musi­cal projects under var­i­ous pseudonyms.

Jeanne Artemis  Ash­es on my tongue

For me, music is sto­ry­telling through emo­tion­al response to the things that sur­round us — the good and the bad. The cat­a­stro­phes that peo­ple bring upon the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment and upon oth­er peo­ple are a con­stant theme in my work. For instance, my piece Scher­ben (2015) for sopra­no and cel­lo express­es loss:

“Hands reach­ing through the ash­es, for the fragments,

that could no longer be put back together.”

In my piece titled Ash­es on my tongue, writ­ten for Hash­tag Ensem­ble, I con­tin­ued this line of work and jux­ta­posed hope­less­ness with hope, giv­ing expres­sion to long­ing and love for our Moth­er Nature. The touch of var­i­ous mate­ri­als — such as the earth­’s crust, soil, dust, rain — in their fragili­ty but also in their strength — was pre­sent­ed not as an image, but rather as the sen­sa­tion of fin­ger­tips touch­ing them and the emo­tion­al response that evoked.

“Ash­es On My Tongue” was cre­at­ed in response to the war against Ukraine. It is painful, how­ev­er, that the piece remains cur­rent — rather than becom­ing a mem­o­ry, as the com­pos­er had hoped. Through this work we send our warm thoughts to our friends in Ukraine.

The piece was writ­ten for Hash­tag Ensem­ble in 2022 as part of the “Vir­tu­al Part­ner Res­i­den­cy” col­lab­o­ra­tion and grant from the Goethe-Insti­tut in Berlin.

About the composer:

Jeanne Artemis 

Jeanne Artemis is a com­pos­er and elec­tron­ic sound artist based in Berlin. Her work focus­es on cre­at­ing spaces of solace and com­pas­sion in the face of the invis­i­ble suf­fer­ing of indi­vid­u­als and com­mu­ni­ties. The indi­vid­ual son­ic worlds she cre­ates in this way seek con­tact with those who expe­ri­ence darkness.

From an ear­ly age she drew inspi­ra­tion from Euro­pean mod­ernism, the lega­cy of non-Euro­pean cul­tures and inno­v­a­tive forms of under­ground music. Con­sis­tent­ly expand­ing the bound­aries of art across gen­res, she has gained recog­ni­tion and become an inspi­ra­tion to oth­er cre­ators. She has received fel­low­ships from the Goethe-Insti­tut, the Berlin Sen­ate for Cul­ture and Europe, Musik­fonds e.V., Neustart Kul­tur and the Ger­man Music Coun­cil. Her pro­file appeared in “Neue Zeitschrift für Musik” (issue 2/2021). Jeanne Artemis’s music has been per­formed world­wide — includ­ing in Argenti­na, Brazil, Cana­da, Chile, Colom­bia, Den­mark, Fin­land, Ger­many, Greece, Ice­land, Iran, Italy, Mex­i­co, Poland, Swe­den, the Unit­ed King­dom and the USA.

Katarzy­na Krzewińs­ka green&blue dreamin

The premise of the work was to com­bine the sounds of the nat­ur­al world with the sounds of the con­tem­po­rary city, and to cre­ate a com­men­tary on the rush of dai­ly life and our deep need for clos­er con­tact with nature.

The elec­tron­ics lay­er and the sounds of the musi­cal instal­la­tion were cre­at­ed entire­ly from field record­ings (sounds of nature and the city), giv­ing the audio lay­er an organ­ic char­ac­ter. These are sounds that sur­round us every day — often unno­ticed, over­looked, undis­cov­ered, and some­times unwanted.

The objects of the sound instal­la­tion sym­bol­ise our need for close­ness with nature (a branch, flow­ers, water), as well as our depen­dence on tech­nol­o­gy, rush and con­sumerism (a phone, a clock, coins). Musi­cians inter­act with these objects and draw sounds from them, which becomes an ele­ment of the performance.

About the composer:

Katarzy­na Krzewińs­ka is a com­pos­er and sound artist work­ing in instru­men­tal and elec­troa­coustic music, the­atre music and sound instal­la­tions. She holds a schol­ar­ship from the Min­is­ter of Cul­ture and Nation­al Her­itage. For sev­er­al years she has been engaged with the theme of field record­ings, cre­at­ing com­po­si­tions that use gath­ered sound mate­ri­als. In 2023 she launch­es the inter­na­tion­al project “Renew­able Music”, through which she devel­ops her inter­ests in this area. That same year she is invit­ed to the artist res­i­den­cy “com​pos​er​.pl”, dur­ing which she spends two weeks work­ing cre­ative­ly in Ice­land. The result of that res­i­den­cy was a col­lab­o­ra­tion with the NOSPR Acad­e­my, for which she cre­at­ed three short orches­tral forms in 2024. She is cur­rent­ly work­ing on her artis­tic project “Usłysz Mias­to” (“Hear the City”), which she is real­is­ing as part of the Kraków City Cre­ative Schol­ar­ship 2024. In addi­tion, she is a com­pos­er-in-res­i­dence in the “Com­pos­er Res­i­den­cies” pro­gramme organ­ised by the Asso­ci­a­tion of Pol­ish Cham­ber Musi­cians and the Authors’ Asso­ci­a­tion ZAiKS.

Woj­ciech Błaże­jczyk Aether [2020] for ensem­ble, elec­tro­mag­net­ic waves and live elec­tron­ics is a work based on sounds emit­ted by elec­tro­mag­net­ic waves sur­round­ing the con­tem­po­rary per­son. Their sources are radio waves, mobile phones, Wi-Fi net­works, com­put­ers, trans­form­ers, elec­tron­ic devices, and even microwave ovens. They sur­round us con­stant­ly — there is no escap­ing them. We can­not see this radi­a­tion, but let us imag­ine what would hap­pen if we could hear it. It turns out that elec­tro­mag­net­ic waves can be record­ed and con­vert­ed into sound. For this pur­pose I used the SOMA Lab­o­ra­to­ry Ether device, walk­ing the streets of War­saw, through shop­ping cen­tres, offices, the metro and so on, lis­ten­ing to the elec­tro­mag­net­ic land­scape of my sur­round­ings. These record­ings are used in the elec­tron­ics lay­er of the work, along­side trans­for­ma­tions of the live instru­men­tal sounds. The work was writ­ten for Hash­tag Ensemble.

About the composer: 

Woj­ciech Błaże­jczyk (b. 1981) — com­pos­er, gui­tarist, sound design­er. He grad­u­at­ed in com­po­si­tion from the Fry­deryk Chopin Uni­ver­si­ty of Music in War­saw in the class of Prof. Zyg­munt Krauze, in sound engi­neer­ing at UMFC in the class of Prof. Andrzej Lupa, and from the Fac­ul­ty of Jour­nal­ism and Polit­i­cal Sci­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of War­saw. He is an assis­tant pro­fes­sor at the Fac­ul­ty of Com­po­si­tion, Con­duct­ing and Music The­o­ry at UMFC, and direc­tor of the Stu­dio of Elec­tron­ic and Com­put­er Music. His works have been per­formed at many fes­ti­vals in Poland and abroad, includ­ing New Music Con­certs (Toron­to), Warsza­wska Jesień, Pol­ish Mod­ern: New Direc­tions in Pol­ish Music Since 1945 (New York), Visegard Por­traits, Musi­ca Mod­er­na, Musi­ca Elec­tron­i­ca Nova, Musi­ca Poloni­ca Nova, Poz­nańs­ka Wios­na Muzy­cz­na, Warsza­wskie Spotka­nia Muzy­czne, AudioArt, Afekt Fes­ti­val, by ensem­bles such as Musik­Fab­rik, the Pol­ish Radio Orches­tra, Lucilin, Fil­har­mo­nia Gor­zows­ka, New Music Con­certs Ensem­ble, Orkies­tra Wratislavia, Radom­s­ka Orkies­tra Kam­er­al­na, Kwadro­fonik, Sin­fo­nia Iuven­tus, Hash­tag Ensem­ble. In the 2014/15 sea­son he was com­pos­er-in-res­i­dence at the Aca­d­e­m­ic Choir of Prof. Jan Szyrec­ki at the West Pomeran­ian Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy in Szczecin, with­in the IMIT pro­gramme. He com­pos­es both acoustic and elec­troa­coustic music. He has com­posed music for 18 the­atre pro­duc­tions, 12 doc­u­men­tary and short films, the com­put­er game Hard Reset, and 2 audiobooks.

He is the recip­i­ent of numer­ous prizes in com­po­si­tion com­pe­ti­tions, includ­ing third prize at the 1st Inter­na­tion­al Com­po­si­tion Com­pe­ti­tion K. Pen­derec­ki Arbore­tum, first prize at the 52nd Tadeusz Baird Young Com­posers’ Com­pe­ti­tion (2011), and sec­ond prize at the 51st Tadeusz Baird Young Com­posers’ Com­pe­ti­tion (2010). His work War­saw Music reached the final of the Euro­pean Broad­cast­ing Union EBU Palm Ars Acus­ti­ca 2016 com­pe­ti­tion. In 2013 he par­tic­i­pat­ed in the IRCAM Forum Work­shops in Paris; in 2017 he took part in the Com­pos­er Col­lid­er pro­gramme with the ensem­ble Musik­Fab­rik. He has released four mono­graph­ic albums: Muzy­ka strun (Chopin Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 2022), Gen­er­al The­o­ry of Rel­a­tiv­i­ty (2021, KAIROS), Trash Music (Requiem Records, 2018) and Loopow­iz­a­c­je (2013, For Tune), as well as a series of albums of impro­vised music (with Hash­tag Ensem­ble and The Intu­ition Orchestra).

Woj­ciech Błaże­jczyk is also an active gui­tarist. He per­forms new and impro­vised music on elec­tric gui­tar and using elec­tron­ics, as well as objec­to­phones — instru­ments he has built him­self (every­day objects whose sound is processed live).  He has per­formed at fes­ti­vals includ­ing Warsza­wska Jesień, Sacrum Pro­fanum, Musi­ca Poloni­ca Nova, Musi­ca Elec­tron­i­ca Nova, AdLi­bi­tum, Musi­ca Mod­er­na, Audio Art, Ankun­ft: Neue Musik, Olym­pus Jazz Fes­ti­val, Visegard Por­traits, Meri­di­en, and Poz­nańs­ka Wios­na. He per­forms with the new music ensem­ble Hash­tag Ensem­ble. He also per­forms impro­vised music (he has appeared with, among oth­ers, Kawalerowie Błot­ni, Elec­tro­n­ish­es Gluck, Adam Pierończyk, Aga­ta Zubel, Krzysztof Knit­tel, Joëlle Léan­dre). He co-leads the impro­vis­ing trio Sonofre­nia and the ensem­ble Niemy Movie, which per­forms live music to silent films.

As a sound engi­neer he spe­cialis­es in record­ing and sound pro­jec­tion at new music con­certs and cre­at­ing sound design for films. He has led work­shops in elec­troa­coustic music at the Syn­thetis Inter­na­tion­al Com­po­si­tion Course in Radziejow­ice. He also runs work­shops for chil­dren relat­ed to elec­troa­coustic music and the use of objects in music.

Alek­san­dra Kaca  Coal for flute, clar­inets, vio­lin, cel­lo and electronics 

In 2018 I saw the exhi­bi­tion “Pol­lock and the New York School” at the Com­p­lesso del Vit­to­ri­ano in Rome. Among the dynam­ic works of Jack­son Pol­lock, my atten­tion was caught by a black-and-white paint­ing by Franz Kline. It was Mahon­ing. The strik­ing inter­ac­tion between the broad black lines on a con­trast­ing ground proved to be an inter­est­ing musi­cal idea.

About the composer:

Alek­san­dra Kaca

In her work she focus­es pri­mar­i­ly on tim­bre, reach­ing for unusu­al instru­ment com­bi­na­tions such as harp and piano in Smu­gi cienia (The Shad­ow Line) or sopra­no and bari­tone sax­o­phone with elec­tron­ics in Argu­ment snu (The Argu­ment of Sleep). She is the win­ner of first prize at the 56th Tadeusz Baird Young Com­posers’ Com­pe­ti­tion and a ben­e­fi­cia­ry of the “Muzy­ka Naszych Cza­sów” pro­gramme, with­in which select­ed works were record­ed by DUX and scores pub­lished by the Pol­ish Music Pub­lish­ers. In 2020 she under­took an artis­tic res­i­den­cy in Ice­land (organ­ised by Aga­ta Zubel and Michał Moc).

Her com­po­si­tions have been per­formed in the USA, Nor­way, Den­mark, Spain, France, Israel, Ger­many and Poland — at fes­ti­vals includ­ing Warsza­wska Jesień, Sacrum Pro­fanum, Warsze­Muzik, Mix­tur (Barcelona), Man­i­Feste (Paris), Pul­sar Fes­ti­val (Copen­hagen), as well as at the Nation­al Phil­har­mon­ic, Nowy Teatr and the Krzysztof Pen­derec­ki Euro­pean Cen­tre for Music. Her music has been pre­sent­ed by ensem­bles and artists includ­ing Ensem­ble inter­con­tem­po­rain, the Nation­al Pol­ish Radio Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra (NOSPR), Hash­tag Ensem­ble, Esb­jerg Ensem­ble and Kebyart.

From 2019 to 2021 she served as man­ag­er of Hash­tag Ensem­ble. She worked on events includ­ing the Kwartes­enc­ja Fes­ti­val (Roy­al String Quar­tet) and the Kwadro­fonik Fes­ti­val. On behalf of the Nation­al Cen­tre for Cul­ture she coor­di­nat­ed, among oth­er things, a con­cert by Leszek Możdżer at the Coper­ni­cus Sci­ence Cen­tre Plan­e­tar­i­um and Sławek Jaskułke’s project “Europa 67/21” (a con­cert on Pol­ish Radio and album release). Since 2022 she has been Vice-Chair of the Seri­ous Music Sec­tion of ZAiKS.

She holds degrees in Ital­ian stud­ies from the Uni­ver­si­ty of War­saw and in com­po­si­tion and post­grad­u­ate stud­ies in music man­age­ment from the Fry­deryk Chopin Uni­ver­si­ty of Music in War­saw. She also stud­ied com­po­si­tion at the Roy­al Acad­e­my of Music in Aarhus in the class of Simon Steen-Ander­sen and Niels Røn­sh­oldt, and cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion, jour­nal­ism and mul­ti­me­dia at LUMSA Uni­ver­si­ty in Rome.

Select­ed works: seems for harp and elec­tron­ics (2024), Neve for elec­tric string quar­tet and elec­tron­ics (2023), Spaces (a cycle of elec­troa­coustic minia­tures, 2022), Envers for ensem­ble and elec­tron­ics (2021), abisal for sax­o­phone quar­tet (2021), Inner for flute, alto recorder, live elec­tron­ics and video (2020), rilie­vo for orches­tra and elec­tron­ics (2020), Coal for flute, bass clar­inet, vio­lin, cel­lo, sam­pler and live elec­tron­ics (2020), Com­mon Ground for ensem­ble and elec­tron­ics (2018), Argu­ment snu for sax­o­phones and elec­tron­ics (2017), Volière II for clar­inet, cel­lo and dou­ble bass (2017), Flar­lægur for vio­lin and vio­la (2016), Mémoire de l’om­bre for cel­lo (2015), Smu­gi cienia for harp, piano and cel­lo (2014).

Tickets

40 PLN