Ensemble Garage

The Invisible Hand

Ensemble Garage, photo Alessandro De Matteis

Date: 8pm 23/4/22
Venue: PROJECT ARTS CENTRE
Duration: 1'20"

PROGRAMME:
Matthias Kranebitter (AT),
Concerto for the Invisible Hand (after Adam Smith)
(for soprano saxophone, e-guitar, piano and electronics), (2015, 15')

Natacha Diels (USA),
Sad Music for Lonely People
(for samplers, percussion, viola d'amore and video), (2018, rev. 2022, 13')

Roman Pfeifer (DE),
When I Say We I Mean My Tape Recorder and Me
(for saxophone, percussion, piano, viola and soundtrack), (2010, 12')

Brigitta Muntendorf (DE),
Public Privacy #4: Leap in the Dark
(for electric guitar and video), (2015, 7')

Andreas Eduardo Frank (DE),
YES YES, NO NO, YES, NO NO NO
(for saxophone, violin, accordion, sampler, and video), (2019, 10')

PERFORMERS:
Frank Riedel, saxophone
Annegret Mayer-Lindenberg, viola, viola d'amore
Yuka Ohta, percussion
Malgorzata Walentynowicz, piano, keyboard
Johannes Öllinger, electric guitar
Lukas Nowok, sound engineer

Ensemble Garage presents works involving inspirational quotes and messages from another world, in a programme that combines choreographed movement, video, instrumental practice and cynical play to create worlds of curiosity and unease.

These works create a relationship between current events, their representation in media and communications, and the material aspects of a musical work – or rather assume such relations while acknowledging that they are hard to discern.

An affair with a television and a marriage with a tape recorder, socio-sonic experiments, a ritual for sad people, private lives turned inside out to the public as an object of creativity, creating a dark comedy that shows the absurdity of life, love and politics – including the sacred music of late capitalism, worshipping the last remaining god – the invisible hand of the free market which transforms the egoism of the individual into the benefit and wealth of the community.

While maintaining a foothold in the abstract, the programme is conceived as an attempt to erase the disconnection between art and the experience of life – a compositional expedition to the border regions between reality and virtuality.

"I love the sound of Ensemble Garage. It's not lovely, it's fragile. It thrives on tension and vibration; it is fast forward and powerful. There is a depth in this sound and energy that can only exist because of strong personalities…who are able to communicate with each other and make this communication tangible through precision, power and the courage to be fragile. Just love it!" Brigitta Muntendorf

Ensemble Garage was founded in 2009 in Cologne, Germany. Its ten members are on a quest for answers on artistic, social, and aesthetic issues that define our time. In doing so, the Ensemble is exploring methods and means to create fields of expression through contemporary composition.

Since its foundation the ensemble has projected an innovative artistic impulse, shifting the focus on the reflection of the (post)-internet-society with its digital-medial manifestations, shaping the development in new music towards trans-medial, theatrical and performative forms of production.

An important part of the ensemble's work is the collaboration and exchange with other artists, particularly composers of the younger generation. Therefore Ensemble Garage has organized and curated numerous exchange-concerts with young composers from Germany, Poland, the USA, Finland, Turkey, and France, and others. The ensemble regularly collaborates with guest curators and artists from various fields such as video (e.g. Warped Type) and dance (e.g. Mouvoir/Stephanie Thiersch). In doing so it implements the "Community of Practice" – an artistic work method in which members of diverse artistic domains collaboratively explore their respective practice, which may result into a concrete artistic work.

Since Autumn 2019 the Ensemble Garage hosts its own concert series entitled Acts 'n Sounds several times per year, presenting diverse programmatic concepts with varying topics at different venues in Cologne. It also partners with the concert series FRAU MUSICA NOVA, developing trans-medial concerts which transgress boundaries of club-culture, experimental music theatre and performance, especially supporting the artistic work of women.

Ensemble Garage regularly performs at festivals throughout Germany and abroad, including Acht Brücken Festival Cologne, Eclat Stuttgart, Warsaw Autumn, Musica Strasbourg, Ruhrtriennale, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Kunstfestpiele Herrenhausen, SPOR Festival Aarhus (Denmark), GAIDA Festival Vilnius (Lithuania) and Mixtur Barcelona (Spain). Ensemble Garage is sponsored by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia.