Pony Says Trio
Concert
PROJECT ARTS CENTRE
Thursday 24/4/25, 8pm
Duration: 70 mins
PROGRAMME
Rob Canning, 1:10,560 (6 inches to the Mile)*, 2025, (intermedia score for electric guitar, synthesiser and e-drums) 20–40'
Maximilian Marcoll, NUT I LAC 5**, 2025, (for two Minimoogs, Electric Guitar and Live Electronics) 32'
*Commissioned by Pony Says with funding from the Arts Council.
**Commission by Pony Says with funding from Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation.
PERFORMERS
Lucas Gerin, e-drums, percussion, live electronics
Felix Nagl, keyboards/controllers, synthesisers, analog-tapes, live electronics
Thilo Ruck, e-guitar, ad-hoc, live electronics
Starting from the concept of the grid, Pony Says develops two large-format works in intensive collaboration with Maximilian Marcoll and Robert Canning, in which both composers transfer the theme of partitioning to the form and content of their works. Exploring the concepts of spatialisation, improvisation, or live-generated scores, both works break open the traditional concert framework.
1:10,560 (6 inches to the Mile) explores journeys through the metaphor of mapping, blending historical cartographic themes with contemporary digital parallels. The networked digital score invites performers to navigate a dynamic intermedia terrain inspired by Irish Ordnance Survey maps, encouraging reflection on how maps—both literal and metaphorical—shape our understanding of landscapes and identities.
"The gradually intensified drumfire, escalating to insane virtuosity, finally thinned out again until the performers once more froze into a photograph of themselves. The first wave of condensation was followed by three more circles of hell. The exercises proved to be true torture, a horror trip in a hamster wheel for the audience as well, an agonising ordeal of constant condensations, accelerations, and overwhelm under relentlessly heating electronic fuelling" Rainer Nonnenmannn, MusikTexte on Pony Says performance of Steven Takasugi's "Die Klavierübung"
Pony Says is a trio from Stuttgart that specialises in contemporary music and free improvisation. Since its founding in 2016, Felix Nagl, Lucas Gérin, and Thilo Ruck have been playing piano/keyboard, drums/e-drums, and guitar/e-guitar, integrating live electronics, lighting, and video into their multimedia performances. Music commissioned by Pony Says is created in close collaboration with composers and addresses current topics at the intersection of pop, high, sub, and club cultures.
Important impulses for Pony Says' work are rooted in the aesthetics of popular and electronic music, as well as in selected manifestations of New Music such as worldliness, music with music, conceptualism, and New Discipline. This underscores Pony Says' self-imposed commitment to integrating socially and politically relevant themes into their artistic work.
Furthermore, improvisation plays a fundamental role in Pony Says' work: It originally served to improve their interplay, expand their sound palette, and develop new pieces. Now, alongside the interpretation of their own repertoire, it is an integral and equal part of their concert programs.
The characteristic sound of Pony Says ranges between noise, electronic glitches, broken beats, and sound clichés from pop music. https://ponysays.de