Between the Red and Black Halls of the luxurious Forum International de Musique (NFM), Wroclaw's MEN, directed by Pierre Jodlowski, is showcasing Polish creation in an evening dedicated to the Union of Polish Composers, inviting Vienna's Studio Dan on stage, and paying tribute to the immense composer Elzbieta Sikora.

Saxophone

With the Polish release of a book of interviews and an Anaklasis CD featuring three concertos, 2023 is an anniversary year for Lwow-born composer Elzbieta Sikora, who has lived in France for some forty years. For almost ten years, she has directed the MEN, which today welcomes her to the Black Hall for a monographic concert focusing on saxophone(s) and electronics. The composer trained early on in the studios of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales in Paris, as well as with the greatest Polish masters of instrumental music, such as Tadeusz Baird and Zbigniew Rudzinski. Music is everywhere," she tells us, "in the breath of the wind, in the drops of rain on the windowsill, in the sound of wheels on rails [...]". Commissioned by GRM in 1998, Lisboa, tramway 28, a tribute to Fernando Pessoa , is performed as the first part of a concert, accompanied by a lighting system as discreet as it is operational. Lisboa, tramway 28 is a mixed work for saxophone and fixed sounds, emblematic of the composer's work and a masterpiece of the genre. We embark with her on the famous yellow bus that passes through the main districts of the Portuguese capital: the creaking of the machine, the bell, the passengers' voices, braking and acceleration pass through the loudspeakers, while the saxophone line, slightly amplified and spatialized, traverses this living environment, with a touch of nostalgia and a great deal of poetry. We are charmed by the warm, enveloping sound of Władysław Kosendiak on soprano and alto saxophones.

Fifteen young saxophonists (from soprano to baritone) arc around their conductor, Władysław Kosendiak for the performance of Happy Valenciennes. The 2012 fifty-minute piece was commissioned by Art Zoyd for saxophone teacher Michel Supera and students from the Mons and Valenciennes Conservatories. Tonight they are young musicians from two music schools, Ryszard Bukowski and Karol Szymanowski, in Wroclaw, superbly prepared by Władysław Kosendiak and Agnieszka Jutkiewicz. The learning piece is of varying levels of difficulty, calling on the springs of electronics (fixed sounds and live transformation). Collective sequences alternate with three long solos, three impressive pages dedicated to the most experienced among them where playing techniques, exploration of registers and palette of sonorities are at work, magnified by electronic treatments (spatialization, reverberation and line demultiplication). Władysław Kosendiak joins the ranks of his students to perform the third solo before engaging with them in a duly refereed collective improvisation, a kind of refreshing soundpainting that puts a final energetic touch to this monumental fresco signed Elzbieta Sikora.

Studio Dan's dominant red

With a dozen instrumentalists on stage, they have conceived their concert as an audiovisual spectacle, with an almost continuous flow of sound and a luminous laser environment that changes colors and scenic perspectives with each new piece. Studio Dan is an undirected Viennese ensemble founded in 2005. It is committed to interdisciplinary projects, seeking to cross styles (rock, jazz and contemporary writing) and hybridize sounds via the electronic source.

Vibrant Duo Altera Nudos vacantes for electric bass guitar and ensemble by Mexican Juan Pablo Trad Hasbun gardens a theremin, a monodic instrument whose highly fluctuating sound is produced from an electrical signal generated by an electronic tube oscillator. The instrument is played with the hands, without contact with the structure. The solo electric bass brings its low resonance and depth of field to the ensemble's timbres (the violin-guitar is played under the arm!) within an increasingly abundant space. But one wonders about the true nature of the project, especially when a sequence of pulsating, iterative sounds reminiscent of Steve Reich appears.

The ten-piece ensemble is joined by an electronic section and muscular drums in Pawel Hendrich's Just a Little Beat , a world premiere commissioned by the festival. Somewhere between contemporary writing and rock energy, the composer fashions a moving, breathless material in which high-voltage sequences alternate with more suspenseful sections. With no direct impact on the quality of the timbres, the electronics add their rock touch and noisy emanations, which the composer leaves to "linger" in the final seconds of the piece.

Belarusian composer Oxana Omelchuk takes us further afield with Wow and Flutter (2016), summoning two tenor trombone soloists to center stage. Wow and Flutter are untranslatable terms to evoke the distortion of sound in the high and low registers, fluctuations/distortions that our two seasoned soloists, Daniel Riegler and Matthias Muche , will seek out on their infinitely rich soft brass instruments, with the help of mutes of course! The composer has chosen to pastiche, even anamorphose, different jazz eras and styles in which drums play a central role. Thus, we move from the over-vitalized brass band to the groovy colors of the 30s with the same agility and a good dose of humor to boot. The last sequence is intriguing, giving the illusion of diphonic singing coming out of the two horns, before the sensual voice of a Bessie Smith ends this retrospective in the coolest of swings.

L'éloge des cuivres

No lighting design or other scenography in this exciting Black Hall concert featuring six Polish composers from the Wroclaw and Posńam divisions of the Union of Polish Composers. The platform welcomes composers of all generations and aesthetics, as well as musicologists and music theorists, with a shared love of sound.

Six mixed pieces (instrument and electronics) lasting around ten minutes each are on the bill, including five world premieres, all dedicated to the same trumpet and trombone duo, Piotr Nowak and Wojciech Jeliṅski, either together (1 and 6) or playing alternately: a challenge for the lips of these two marvelous instrumentalists on stage for an hour of music! All present, the composers are at the controls of the console for the broadcast of their piece.

Chamber Music V for trumpet, trombone and electronics by Michał Janocha begins with breath, that universal energy principle (ch'i!) that initiates sound and will remain active throughout the piece. The three sources converge in a highly refined conception of sound layering, constantly modifying spectral perspectives. In Katarzina Taborowska's Frottage for trombone and electronics, the instrument seems magnetized by the electronic environment, which makes it travel, changing registers and sound emission via mutes and other playing modes, until the two sources interpenetrate and texture the space. Rafał Zapała 's Hybrida is a dialogue between the teasing trumpet and its modified alter ego (synthesized sounds), combining humor and stage play. The low notes of the trombone above which the sound spectrum unfolds, at the start of Dualabilis by Paweł Hendrich, evoke those of Partiels by Gérard Grisey. The abundant electronics iridesce the sonorities of the eminently virtuoso trombone until the resonant space is saturated. Mateusz Ryczek 's Alchemia (2019) transforms the sound of the trumpet live, introducing a new instrument with a broad spectrum and increased power, as well as layers of white noise from the player's breath. The electronic part introduces a polyphonic dimension to the writing, which calls for promising developments, but unfortunately cuts a little short.
Pianist, composer, performer and lecturer, Cezary Duchnowski, whose piece brilliantly closes the concert, helped found the Electronic Composition Studio at the Wroclaw Academy of Music. Together with composer and vocalist Agata Zubel (a native of Wroclaw), he formed the duo ElettroVoce , in which they have long practiced improvisation in pairs. cRossFAdE for trombone, trumpet and electronics belongs to a series of duets for various instruments, including electronics. Live transformations are effected by the pedals operated by the two instrumentalists, which Duchnowski wants to make visible and audible: exaggerated foot noises, bell movements, a shower of slaps, bursts of sound, an amusing dialogue between the two instruments looped by the software. The performance is as alert as it is muscular, and the ambiguity between real and fake is always maintained in real time: right up to the tragic-comic exchanges (the voice is crushed by the software) between the two soloists in the mouthpiece of their instrument. Piotr Nowak and Wojciech Jeliṅsky are all-round performers whose virtuosity and stage presence impress. Tonight, they reveal the full range of their talents.

Michèle Tosi

Musica Electronica Nova Festival, Wroclaw on 14-05-23
6pm: Red Hall: Elzbieta Sikora (b. 1943): Lisboa, tramway 28, Homage to Fernando Pessõa, for saxophone and electronics; Happy Valenciennes, for seven saxophones, fixed sounds and live electronics. Władysław Kosendiak, solo saxophone; Student saxophonists from the Ryszard Bukowski and Karol Szymanowski School of Music classes in Wroclaw; Maciej Michaluk, electronics; direction Władysław Kosendiak;
8pm: Red Hall : Juan Pablo Trad Hasbun (b. 1978): Vibrant duo Altera Nudos vacantes for electric bass guitar and ensemble; Oxana Omelchuk (b. 1975): Wow and Flutter, for two trombones and ensemble; Paweł Hendrich: Just a little Beat for 10 musicians and Studio Dan electronics; Computer music director, Werner Angerer; sound diffusion, Alexander Forstner.

Musica Electronica Nova Festival, Wroclaw on 15-05-23
Black Hall: Cesary Duchnowski (b. 1971): cRossFAdE for trombone, trumpet and electronics; Pawel Hendrich, Dualabilis III for trombone and computer; Mateusz Ryczek (b. 1986), Alchemia for trumpet and electronics; Michal Janocha (b. 1983), Chamber Music V for trombone, trumpet and electronics; Rafal Zapała (b. 1975), Hybryda for trumpet and electronics; Katarzyna Taborowska (b. 1974), Frottage for trombone and electronics; Piotr Nowak, trumpet; Wojciech Jelinski, trombone; Cesary Duchnowski, Paweł Hendrich, Mateusz Ryczek, Michał Janocha, Rafał Zapała, Katarzyna Taborowska : electronics.

Photos © Slawek Przerwa - NFM
Photos © Joanna Stoga - NFM