Back on Stage
Solo composer/performer show on instruments I never learned to play (2024)
trombone, violin, guitar, Korg MS-20 mini, voice, objects, electronics, composition:
Eloain Lovis Hübner
premiere: October 2, 2024, Fünfgezackt in die Hand: 25th anniversary festival of Edition Juliane Klein, Kunstpunkt Berlin
further performances: in the planning
Since I received an old, leaky, rattling clarinet as a gift from a friend in 2018, working directly with the instrument has increasingly become an integral part of my compositional processes. Many pieces were subsequently created based on extensive experiments with instruments and instrument parts: including the clarinet, the clarinet mouthpiece (which at some point disappeared in an inexplicable way), electric guitar, trombone, violin, grand piano, harpsichord, harp and many more, as well as an ever-growing pool of everyday objects and materials. Since around 2021, analog synthesizers have been added (instruments that can hardly be used reasonably without direct practical access, in pure “desk work”) as well as the development of differentiated miking concepts.
In the course of these increasingly comprehensive experimental “routines”, my desire grew to understand them not merely as compositional means for the purpose of creating scores (for other performers)—i.e. to leave them in the realm of the invisible and inaudible process—, but to develop my own, independent musical practice from them. Because my approach to instruments that I “can't play” (or “never learned to play” in the classical sense) was largely free of trained conventions precisely because of this technical dilettantism. This allowed me to achieve results in a very direct, unbiased and undisguised approach to the instrument—in all its haptic objecthood—the reproduction of which would possibly cost musicians who play this instrument professionally a great deal of effort, because they would have to “unlearn” their instrument to a certain extent. I realized that the translation from experimentation to writing to reproduction by another person creates a new, significant distance, in which a certain charm of the immediate and completely unconventional is lost. But this is precisely what I wanted to capture.
In spring 2023, I produced the one-hour album n.o.t.i.o.n.s with the help of a research grant from the Musikfonds, for which I improvised in a layered process on violin, clarinet, trombone, accordion, electric guitar, Korg MS20-mini and various objects and also carried out the recording and post-production entirely on my own. In spring 2024, another research grant from the Fonds Darstellende Künste allowed me to delve deeper into the use of voice in the context of climate protests and to learn a number of extended vocal techniques in the reproduction/re-enactment of protest recordings; these in turn I was able to transfer into short improvised pieces of music. These newly developed working methods as well as the results were convincing to me in many respects. These newly developed working methods as well as the results were convincing to me in many respects. Therefore, in October 2024, I undertook the next step, an experiment: after many years, I dared to go “back on stage”.