We are back from the winter break with episode 16 of Darmstadt On Air, a series of conversations hosted by the Darmstadt Summer Course tutors: Flute tutor Claire Chase met composer Marcos Balter with whom she has been working on several projects, for example the solo flute piece „Pan“ which also exists as a 90-minute music theatre for flute, electronics and participants. Starting from this piece, Claire and Marcos are discussing forms of collectivity and collaboration, scenarios of true exchange and shared knowledge within a framework where power structures are still at work. And they ask which tools we need for unthinking mastery and expertise. They are both based in New York, but met on Zoom on January 15, 2021.

The 15th episode of Darmstadt On Air is hosted by a new composition tutor of the Darmstadt Summer Course: Sarah Nemtsov. She invited the set designer Sebastian Hannak to be her conversation partner in this podcast. At the opera house in Halle he created „Raumbühne Heterotopia“ in 2017, a 360° stage installation conceived as a music-theatre-city where the borders between audience, orchestra and performers are blurred for the benefit of an immersive spatial experience and emphatic „Totaltheater“. In more than ten different formats such as opera, drama, dance, performance or concert, the space can be experienced from totally different perspectives. Sebastian adapted his Heterotopia stage for several theater and music theater productions like Sarah’s opera „Sacrifice“ (2016). That was when the two artists met in Halle some years ago. He started to work on his set design when he only knew parts of Sarah’s music. Maybe more than ever before he was forced to invent reality for a piece on stage. For both of them theater is an extraordinary moment of transition.

Episode #14 of the Darmstadt On Air podcast is dedicated to composer-performer collaborations. It is hosted by the Austrian double bass player and improviser Uli Fussenegger (*1966) who has been involved in the Darmstadt Summer Course as a tutor for many years. As a soloist and former longtime member of Klangforum Wien Uli has been collaborating with many different composers and has experienced a variety of approaches on how to work together. He talks to composer Andreas Eduardo Frank (*1987) for whom close collaborations with musicians and other artists are an essential part of his practice. Starting from two of Andreas’ recent projects, he and Uli talk about co-creation and collaboration, band playing as a training, authorship, and about being the pilot.

„Collaborating is the main life force for me.“

Two inspiring harpists have met for the Darmstadt On Air podcast #13: Gunnhildur Einarsdóttir is an Icelandic harpist based in Berlin, founding member of Ensemble Adapter and harp tutor of the Darmstadt Summer Course since 2014. She invited harpist and improviser Rhodri Davies, who is a based in Swansea, South Wales. He plays harp, electric harp, live-electronics and builds wind, water, ice, dry ice and fire harp installations. Rhodri has released five solo albums and is also working in different constellations with artists like John Butcher, John Tilbury, Michael Duch and many others.

Gunnhildur and Rhodri both studied with the Welsh harpist Sioned Williams and it was through her that they first heard of each other. The two harpists have both been doing pioneering work in order to invigorate the harp repertoire with new pieces. They also share an artistic approach that is very much based on collaboration and cooperation. Their conversation is about choosing collaborators, about ego and trust, about Rhodri’s collaboration with Eliane Radigue, who wrote the first of her OCCAM pieces for him, about verbal transmission of interpreters‘ knowledge, about the grey area between improvisation and composition, and about diving into a composer’s world and inhabiting in it with one’s own ideas and sounds.

Talking in the now now: Darmstadt composition and oboe tutor Cathy Milliken is interviewing composer Liza Lim for the 12th Darmstadt On Air podcast. Cathy and Liza, both born in Australia, have known each other for quite a long time. They appreciate each other’s work and share a big interest in collaborative practices. Both of them understand composing as a process of working with and being influenced by performers, contexts and the presence of whoever is in the space.

Cathy has done projects in South Africa from where she takes the idea of the now now, which can be understood as an intensified now. In her conversation with Liza, they reflect upon the plural now: "In our times there is this kind of expansion, there is this kind of generative thing that's going on: multiple times, multiple experiences, multiple formations of times and of course that's a really interesting thing as a composer”, Liza says.

They also touch on compositions like Liza's orchestral work "Mary/ Transcendence after Trauma" (2020) which is part of her "Annunciation Triptych" for orchestra, "Atlas of the Sky" (2020) and "Extinction Events and Dawn Chorus" (2017).

The discussion took place on 8 October 2020 while Cathy was starting her day in Berlin and Liza beginning her evening in Melbourne. A conversation crossing different time zones landing in the now now.

The New York based, Chinese born composer, multi-instrumentalist, vocalist and performer Du Yun will be teaching composition at the next Darmstadt Summer Course for the first time. She hosted the 11th edition of the Darmstadt On Air podcast and invited Raven Chacon to the talk, her collaborator in the opera production “Sweet Land” which was premiered in the beginning of 2020. Raven was born in Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation, Arizona, and is now working and living in Albuquerque, New Mexico as a composer, performer and installation artist. From 2009 to 2018, he was a member of the interdisciplinary arts collective Postcommodity, and since 2004, he teaches composition at the Native American Composer Apprenticeship Project (NACAP). In 2018, Raven visited the Darmstadt Summer Course as a lecturer and panelist.

He and Du Yun met online on 13 August 2020 and talked about their composer collaboration, about dealing with traditions, with representation, lazy curation and about the fluidity of identity.

„Some people drink a glass of whisky, some people probably sniff coke, some people drink a beer, I like dressing up.“

The 10th episode of the Darmstadt On Air podcast is about visibility in electronic music. Sebastian Berweck is a pianist and electronic musician who gives workshops on electroacoustic performance practice at the Darmstadt Summer Course. He invited the self-taught experimental electronics improviser and sound designer Korhan Erel to be his interview partner for this podcast. They met in September 2020 in Berlin-Neukölln in Sebastian's living room and talked about performing electronic music on stage and how to actually bring it beyond the stage and to the audience. In acoustic music, sound generation and body movement are corresponding. Electronic music is different because controller (e. g. a MIDI controller) and sound generator (e. g. the computer) are often two separate things. For Sebastian, this raises questions such as: "How do we interact with the instruments that we have? What decisions do we make by choosing these instruments and not others? How do we connect with the audience and how do we make clear that we are actually musicking and not just controlling? How do we deal with the virtually endless possibilities that electronics give us? And while we are talking about performance, we cannot leave out clothes, attitude, stage persona and the relationship with other musicians. Do we hide behind the music? And how do we present ourselves on stage?"

The 9th episode of Darmstadt On Air is dedicated to composer Annea Lockwood who is interviewed by music journalist and Darmstadt tutor Kate Molleson.

Annea was born in Christchurch/New Zealand in 1939 and moved to England in 1961to study composition at the Royal College of Music in London. In the same year, she took part in the Darmstadt Summer Course for the first time. Registered as Anna Ferguson Lockwood in 1961, 1962 and 1963, she attended classes by Olivier Messiaen, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luciano Berio and others. In Darmstadt, Annea also met Franco Evangelisti who became a close friend and it was him who recommended that she asked Gottfried Michael Koenig if she might study with him which she went on to do from 1963 to 1964.

A decade later, she moved to New York where she was in touch with Pauline Oliveros, John Cage, La Monte Young and members of the Sonic Arts Union.

With Kate Molleson she talks about her life as a composer, her early important experience in Darmstadt, about her glass concerts and long durational river recordings, about DIYness and the small scenes in New York.

Kate is a journalist and broadcaster, based in Edinburgh. She presents BBC Radio 3’s New Music Show and Music Matters. Her articles are published in The Guardian and The Herald, BBC Music Magazine or Gramophone. She teaches music journalism at Dartington and Darmstadt.

Kate recommends: "It’s so worth spending time with Annea's music. 'Tiger Balm' is just wonderful, and the 'Glass World' album, and her later river maps. Also more recent pieces like 'Wild Energy' and 'Dusk'."

In the 8th episode of Darmstadt On Air Alexander Schubert, multimedia composer and tutor of the Darmstadt Summer Course, spoke to the German theater director Susanne Kennedy via Zoom. They both share an interest in digital tools and the artistic potential of virtuality in a performative setting. As the starting point for their discussion, each of them describes one of their recent works: Susanne’s piece “Ultraworld” investigates the human consciousness as a virtual construction and inner simulation of the world. It was premiered at the Berlin Volksbühne in January 2020. Alexander discusses his project “Genesis” where he created a seven-day installation as a real life computer game in which the audience created a virtual world via online interventions. It was shown in April 2020.

In the 7th episode of Darmstadt On Air we are witnessing the start of a new artistic collaboration between two extraordinary musicians: Marco Blaauw, trumpet player of Ensemble Musikfabrik, soloist and Darmstadt brass tutor has started a series of seven commissions that take the human breath as their main idea and inspiration.

Ayanna Witter-Johnson will contribute one of the new pieces for trumpet. Born in London into a family with a Jamaican background, Ayanna's musical expression is taking many different shapes: she is a singer-songwriter, composer, cellist, pianist and performer who embraces various musical cultures and, as she names it, navigates transnational identity within her music.

After a first e-mail and Skype exchange, they met in person on 4 September 2020 in Cologne on the occasion of the premiere of Ayanna's commission for Gürzenich Orchestra and conductor François-Xavier Roth. Sitting in the Musikfabrik studios (with musical rehearsals in the background), they had also listened to Marco's interpretation of Georg Friedrich Haas' lament in the memory of Eric Garner from 2015 with the title "I can't breathe".

In their conversation they touch topics like belonging and background, everyday experiences of being a black woman, being a black female artist and the burden of having to represent that group. They talk about white privilege, about one's personal sound, about being on the fringes of may worlds and about bringing other people into the space.