Important: CTM-Festival-Tickets and Accreditations are not valid for this concert.
Under the starry skies of the Zeiss Planetarium dome Mexican Electro musician, Fernando Corona aka Murcof will make a Berlin debut presentation of his third album Cosmos, recently released on the Leaf Label. Corona describes his musical approach as "expanding the potential of acoustic instruments by electronic means". His source material for the compositions on Cosmos therefore almost exclusively comprised recordings of classical instruments that he merged with micro-programmed digital sounds. Cosmos demonstrates an immensely dynamic range and epic proportions; it conjures with sweeping gestures a noble universe and simultaneously magnifies minor details dramatically, by recourse to fine textures, precisely choreographed styles and exact tonal arrangements.
Yet Corona was inspired to make Cosmos by an act as simple as turning his eyes to the stars: "Cosmos basically comes from that state of wonder and mystery and joy and humbling that you get when you let your mind wander freely on a starry night, away from the contamination of city lights. From the realization that there's an infinite universe outside the man-made world and how silly this latter one seems in comparison". The forces of nature and the power of experience unleashed reflect one another in the macro- and micro-universes of Corona’s music: these are musical reflections in the best sense of the word.
Sebastian Meissner, a Berliner by choice, will also present his third album tonight: Dedications, released under his Klimek pseudonym. Klimek creates his music by processing samples of acoustic instruments, mostly taken from the work of artists who have influenced him over many years. He’s interested in the atmospheric and spatial qualities of music and, above all, in deceleration: "How slow can I go before losing the perception of a movement/rhythm?" he asks. His main focus is the moment when control is lost – in terms not of ecstasy but rather, the obliviousness that descends on the listener and makes him lose track of space and time, leaving him to while away the day in wait for the next transformation.
For the performance, "10 000 Peacock Feathers in Foaming Acid", artists Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand use laser light to scan and project onto the Planetarium dome the constantly changing surface of soap-bubble clusters, and thereby render visible the microscopic hydrochloric acid formations and electro-chemical effects generated by sound-waves. This procedure resembles in essence the Buran spying technique developed in 1945 for the KGB by ingenious Russian inventor, Lev Termen, which comprised a microwave-scanner used to tap conversations, for example by registering the acoustic vibrations of window-panes. Appositely, Andrei Smirnov, Director of the Theremin Institute in Moscow will accompany the performance by the Theremin invented by Thermen in 1920, one of the world’s first electronic musical instruments.
Presented in cooperation with the transmediale.
