Eva Zöllner and Heather Roche

We are excited to continue a series of projects which started in 2017 with “Matter, Virtuality and the Expanded Body” in Malmö, with the purpose of establishing a close collaboration between composers and performers.

While this first experience was concentrated on a local dimension with a focus on the physicality of sound, in “That Damn Borderline” (2018) we invited international artists to collectively research on the threshold which defines the identity of sound art and music.

We’re now delighted to collaborate with the Zöllner/Roche duo on a project which will bring together composers from Sweden and abroad working on new music for accordion and clarinet.

The involved composers are stylistically diverse, considering their different backgrounds (sound art, electronic music as well as acoustic repertoire); two of them were selected from a worldwide open call for proposals. The jury, consisting of Hertzbreakerz (Alessandro Perini, Francesco Del Nero and Jonatan Sersam) and the involved performers (Eva Zöllner, Heather Roche) decided to choose Miki Manabe, Japanese composer living in Frankfurt, and Rachel Beja, from Israel and currently based in Italy.

After five days of rehearsals, the program will be premiered in Malmö. Four other concerts follow in four different Swedish cities (Lund, Helsingborg, Göteborg and Piteå), expanding our network and seeking new partnerships as we did in last year’s project “That Damn Borderline”.

We seek heterogeneity as a quality that naturally enriches the output of the project and will lead to interesting encounters between artists during the project week. Ideas and visions will be discussed while sharing common spaces and working sessions, and the outcome of these mutual influence will be an important side-effect of the project. To Hertzbreakerz, it’s important not only to deliver new music to performers who then interpret the work, but also to work hands-on with sound, directly shaping the material.