Usmaradio presents

Crown Quartet

𝐀 𝐍𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭

Sound Art in Four Countries

Resonances IV - NaturArchy: Towards a Natural Contract

Broadcasted live on:

➥ usmaradio.org and a radio network across Europe:

➥ Radio Raheem (Milano)

➥ Neu Radio (Bologna)

➥ Orange 94.0 (Vienna)

➥ Fango Radio (Firenze)

➥ Kanal 103 (Skopje)

𝐂𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐐𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐭

Live from:

Croatia: Zahra Mani - double bass, bass & electric guitars, field recordings, live electronics

Italy: Roberto Paci Dalò - clarinet, bass clarinet, voice, live electronics

Hungary: Tibor Szemző - voice, bass flute, flute

Austria: Mia Zabelka - electric violin, vocals, live electronics

Station Manager and sound engineer: Alessandro Renzi

Technical direction at JRC: Denis Novello and Andreas Aschberger

We are pleased to announce the new sound art project A Natural Contract by the Crown Quartet. The project is supported by the festival Resonances IV - NaturArchy: Towards a Natural Contract.

To know the world is to breathe, to breathe is to savour the world. An interspecies dialogue where you find yourself human, vegetable, animal and mineral, in the name of fusion. A world composed not of objects but of streams that penetrate us and that we penetrate, of waves of varying intensity and in perpetual movement. We can no longer perceive the world as a simple collection of objects or as a universal space containing all things, but as the site of a veritable metaphysical mixture. Towards a “multispecies storytelling” (Donna Haraway).

A Natural Contract is created for Resonances IV and it crosses borders through the simultaneity of music and language in a musical exchange between four different European countries. The four countries in the Alps-Adriatic-Region have been barely accessible due to the Corona pandemic. The idea of this live sound art concert at a distance is to invoke notions of memory, a discourse, a call to the most basic elements of humanity and society.

A Natural Contract is a new project for the Crown Quartet, conceived and directed by Usmaradio. In addition to the rich instrumentation of the quartet, A Natural Contract has a textual layer embedded in the compositional structure (which leaves room for spontaneous improvised exchange). As with field recordings in music, the linguistic elements are subjected to selection, processing, reproduction and abstraction of text fragments that acquire new significances in connection with the sounds and the music.The multilingualism of the text fragments reflects the diversity of the musical languages and approaches of the four musicians.

Thus vocal modes of expression are explored and contrasted in their diversity. There is a musical transformation of semantics, reflecting the absurdity that arises when you repeat a word for a long time, highlighting the transitions between language and sound, from noise to music. These processes in turn reflect the shifting meanings of terms such as borders and freedom in theCorona-shaped cultural-political landscape.

All four ensemble members have been working in the field of radio art for many years and have participated in diverse live stream project formats. So far, due to the technical challenges and complexity, these projects have always been implemented in cooperation with public institutions.

The radio as an artistic stage or platform is a unique performance and communication space. It is always a special moment to play live on the radio and to come into intimate contact with listeners in their own four walls. In times of physical distancing, the radio in connection with the internet offers a new enhanced platform for communicative exchange.

A Natural Contract is about overcoming borders through music and language.

A Natural Contract overcomes boundaries that have closed at an astonishing speed due to Covid-19. The long-term social, economic, socio-political implications of the events of the last few months are not yet foreseeable - just as...