Północka

We meet just after sun­set on one of the longest win­ter evenings. The Decem­ber dark­ness will wrap us in mys­tery and hush us before a long jour­ney north, to Scandinavia. 

Our path will lead through the Nor­we­gian Hardan­ger, all the way to the hill of Kor­vatun­turi — which means “Ear” — where a cer­tain beard­ed gen­tle­man lives. Pst, can you hear the sleigh bells? There we will hear the Noc­turne by Kai­ja Saari­a­ho, Whis­pers by Eino­juhani Rautavaara and some­thing more… For it is to Ear Moun­tain that all the wish­es of chil­dren from across the world flow. 

As always at ĄsąBąble, we will stamp our feet togeth­er a lit­tle (to the rhythm of elves’ foot­steps) and more… we will touch on some­thing that can be heard in one of the works by Geirr Tveitt. We will also con­jure up a sto­ry about the north­ern lights and the lul­la­by car­ol Joul­u­laula by Toi­vo Kuu­la, to tune all lit­tle and big ears into the fes­tive sea­son. The nar­ra­tion is aimed at chil­dren aged 3+, but all the north­ern sounds will also be suit­able for the very youngest.

Performers:

Mar­ta J. Bogusławska voice

Mar­ta Piórkows­ka vio­lin

Krzysztof Kozłows­ki piano

Anna Sza­w­iel sto­ry­telling and script

Kos­ma Standera sound engi­neer­ing 

About the series:

ĄsąBąble are per­for­ma­tive con­certs of new music for fam­i­lies with chil­dren aged 0–7. Each one is based on an orig­i­nal script in which lis­ten­ing to music, inter­ac­tive play and edu­ca­tion­al val­ue car­ry equal weight. In a space friend­ly to the youngest, audi­ences can hear music by lead­ing con­tem­po­rary com­posers in a ver­sion and pro­por­tion adapt­ed to lit­tle ears. The the­atri­cal for­mat of the con­certs fos­ters con­cen­tra­tion and allows lis­ten­ers to be enchant­ed by sound, while the invi­ta­tion to shared impro­vi­sa­tion releas­es the nat­ur­al expres­sive needs of young peo­ple. In the spir­it of Janusz Kor­cza­k’s words “There are no chil­dren, there are peo­ple”, all par­tic­i­pants are treat­ed with respect and have a share in how the event unfolds. The series presents exclu­sive­ly music of the 20th and 21st cen­turies. A per­ma­nent fea­ture is the pre­sen­ta­tion of a record­ing of a sym­phon­ic work or a work from the sound design and elec­tron­ics tradition.

Although each edi­tion of ĄsąBąble takes musi­cal fab­ric as its start­ing point, it also abounds in non-musi­cal con­texts close to the prac­tice of Hash­tag Ensem­ble: lit­er­ary, visu­al and social. The events are inter­dis­ci­pli­nary in char­ac­ter: invit­ed artists who have long worked in close prox­im­i­ty to chil­dren’s imag­i­na­tion also take part — dancers, per­form­ers, illus­tra­tors and writ­ers. The­atre is a nat­ur­al domain of new music, and so the edu­ca­tion­al char­ac­ter of the ĄsąBąble series also encom­pass­es actor train­ing for the musicians.

The cura­tor and host of the series is Anna Sza­w­iel — an actress and nar­ra­tor who spe­cialis­es in inter­dis­ci­pli­nary cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al events. She likes to work at bound­aries: between con­cert and per­for­mance, edu­ca­tion and play, phys­i­cal­i­ty and abstrac­tion, always in con­nec­tion with chil­dren’s imag­i­na­tion. The con­cert pro­grammes are co-cre­at­ed by musi­cians of Hash­tag Ensemble.

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The ĄsąBąble project cre­ative­ly devel­ops the con­cept of the “Smykow­iz­je” series of the “Music Is for Every­one” Foun­da­tion, with­in the frame­work of which, from 2016 to 2022, Hash­tag Ensem­ble and Anna Sza­w­iel gave over 130 con­certs and mini-per­for­mances togeth­er, search­ing for the most inter­est­ing forms of pre­sent­ing new music. The con­cept and cura­tor­ship of Smykow­iz­je was cre­at­ed by Anna Kierkosz. It was the first series of events in Poland addressed to the very youngest, in which con­tem­po­rary music played the lead­ing role.