Tectonics Athens '21 | 2nd Day

“A Sound Map of the Danube”

a sound installation by Annea Lockwood

Annea Lockwood has been recording rivers since 1970, “not to document them, but rather for the special state of mind and body which the sounds of moving water create when one listens intently to the complex mesh of rhythms and pitches.” “A Sound Map of the Danube” traces the second longest European river's run from the Black Forest in Germany to its delta into the Black Sea. The recordings comprise sounds from the banks, from above and below the water, animals, insects, and interviews with people who live by the great river.

Free admission

Annea Lockwood - artist talk

Annea Lockwood talks about her sound installation, “A Sound Map of the Danube,” but also about the whole range of her work, comprised from electroacoustic compositions to recordings of burning or even drowning pianos.

Free admission | Reservation is required

Marina Rosenfeld + Marino Formenti: "aABCb", 2021

Rosenfeld’s new work for pianist Marino Formenti traces the lines established in a recent exhibition’s objects and drawings, remusicalizing pathways that were previously established as feedback channels and abstract circuits of exchange between sculpture, architecture and sound. Drawing on their collaborative approach to Rosenfeld’s earlier “Deathstar project” (Shelter Press, 2020), Formenti will offer two non-identical performances of “aABCb”, proceeding freely through a non-sequential score and the amplified volume of the Onassis Center’s gallery space.

TETTTIX

“Thirteen Studies for Instruments” (Frederic Rzewski, 1977)
“Saba” (Nikos Galenianos, 2017)
“Traveller Song” (Cassandra Miller, 2017)

Renowned conductor Ilan Volkov joins forces for the first time with TETTTIX. an ensemble that has redefined contemporary composition’s place in the Greek music scene, in only four years of its existence, constantly incorporating various music genres and transdisciplinary practices in their live performances. The program opens with the Thirteen studies of the iconic composer Frederic Rzewski, a work balancing between predefined structures and free improvisation. Nikos Galenianos’s composition comes next, its title referring to the term Saba which in Japanese tradition describes the natural erosion of things; the work’s starting point are transparent and fragile textures, which gradually take embodied form and finally explode. The closing work is Cassandra Miller’s “Traveller Song” in a new orchestration made by the composer herself especially for TETTTIX. “Traveller Song” is based on a cart driver song from Sicily, recorded by the renowned ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax in 1954. Reproducing and re-recording this tune on several parallel levels, Miller documents a transition process with a wider reference to the concept of travel.

Conductor: Ilan Volkov
TETTTIX members: Ana Chifu (flute), Guido de Flaviis (saxophone), Rhea Pickios (bassoon), Panagiotis Ziavras (percussion), Mislav Režić (guitar), Katerina Konstantourou (piano), Stamatis Pasopoulos (accordion)
Guests musicians: Panagiotis Sioras (clarinet), Gogo Xagara (harp), Thanos Polymeneas-Liontiris (contrabass)

Klein

Klein's latest album “Harmattan,” recently announced on the renowned classical label Pentatone, has been described by Fred Moten as “a soundtrack of epic revolt against beginnings and ends,” expanding our idea of what classical music can be. Live, these explorations are taken further – her impulse to playfully experiment and push boundaries arrives center stage, inviting you into her unique sound universe. Adapted instruments, uncanny vocals, and distorted sonic artifacts collide to create a dizzying tapestry of surreal experimental electronics.

Cassandra Miller – “Epirotika”

“Epirotika” is a set of meditative pieces for solo voice and tape, based on recordings of Alexis Zoumbas. Originating from the Epirot village of Grammeno, Zoumbas emigrated to the United States in 1910. The recordings he made in New York carry a catastrophic longing for home. Miller's composition method involves meditating while singing along to these recordings, allowing both the music and herself to be transformed in the process. In this set, she inhabits Zoumbas’s laments, as if they are metaphysical spaces in which to dream. Though her voice is untrained, Miller has developed her singing through various bodywork practices, including this meditative ‘automatic singing’ – revealing not only her internal melodic impulses but also personal inconsistencies and vulnerabilities, celebrating a shakiness and shaked-ness within.

I broke the vase

What happens when you decide to organize a drawer? You may find many things you didn’t even remember they were there. You may find old tapes and handwritten poems. For their performance, “to organize a drawer,” I broke the vase will present compositions that combine recordings and poems with synths, wind instruments, and beats, while exploring the contents of the drawer.

Tickets 5 — 10 €

KMRU

Joseph Kamaru, aka KMRU, presents an electroacoustic set that extends across the entire acoustic spectrum creating an intense and ever-evolving frequency grid. Rooted on the ambient music tradition, KMRU builds the environment in which various narratives and different emotional or mental states can concurrently coexist.

Aya Metwalli

Using analog synthesizers to produce gritty textures and strange, unsettling soundscapes, Aya sings, heavily influenced by Arabic pop and classic melodies, modulating her voice with electronics to delve even deeper into a world of eeriness, and uses heavy drones and drum machines to create a distorted, industrial body of sound marrying noise with melody.

Ice_Eyes

Tickets 5 — 10 €