Programme:

German premiere
Marta Śniady probably the most beautiful music in the world for ensemble, video and audio playback (2018)

Monika Szpyrka: collect.consume.repeat for 4 performers and audio-playback (2018)

German premiere
Rafał Ryterski: Genderfuck for percussion and video (2018)

German premiere
Paweł Malinowski: Robotron for ensemble and sampler (2018)

Conductor - Toby Thatcher
Curator - Simon Steen-Andersen
Moderator - Paul Cannon

This event has been organised by the Danish composer and teacher Simon Steen-Andersen. Although the programme was already announced corona restrictions made it impossible to perform, until now … come and enjoy his journey of discovery through Poland's lesser known contemporary music scene. The four young talents will also talk about their work and the current political and music situation in Poland.

Pawel Malinkowski (born 1994) is mostly interested in putting already existing musical material into other contexts; these could also be stories from everyday life. He likes to fall back on camp aesthetics. His Robotron was inspired by an East German computer producer who put his high-tech know-how at the disposal of the Stasi to spy on the people, while while the synthesizers made from Robotron products for experimental music remained hopelessly inferior in trying to reproduce human sound. This is demonstrated very well by his composition which makes use of historical recordings.

Rafał Ryterski (born 1992) is part of the composers' collective gen~.rate, which he co-founded, and appears at festivals and in the club scene. He incorporates operatic formats and installations into his work. Genderfuck is a video he made, a montage of already existing material and pictograms; the sometimes – typical for music video – extremely quick cut images react to compositions of electronic sound and percussion.

Marta Śniady (born 1986) mostly works combining video and music. Under the immodest-sounding but ironically intended title probably the most beautiful music in the world, she processes recent advertising slogans, which are quoted via audio feed as snippets of speech and synchronously inserted texts, set in relation to a video projection of a garishly coloured alienated female mouth and live music transforming the eye-popping slogans to absurdity in sound and vision.

Monika Szpyrka (born 1993) sees herself as a feminist and incorporates gender aspects in her works. Another focus is the fight against consumerism in a throwaway society. In her composition collect.consume.repeat, she mirrors the recycling of waste musically and structurally by reusing material from an earlier composition.

All discussions in English

The Happy New Ears series 2021/22 is a co-operation between the Ensemble Modern, the University for Music & the Performing Arts Frankfurt and Oper Frankfurt, in association with the ICCS' (International Composer & Conductor Seminars) curtain_call - the Ensemble Modern and International Ensemble Modern Academy for the promotion of young composers and conductors. the ICCS is made possible by the Aventis Foundation.