Public People at Radialsystem V / Sunday, 28.10.2018

A collective composition by Alwynne Pritchard and members of Splitter Orchester, ‘Public People’ is not only a piece for Splitter Orchester and ensemble mosaik, but a piece about their individual structures and methods developed in handling musical material. While Splitter Orchester is deeply rooted in free improvisation and working collectively, ensemble mosaik often engages in dialogical processes with composers to create new works. Both approaches lead to different aesthetics, work forms and conclusions. ‘Public People’ questions both ensembles as institutions and plays with the dialectic relations of their distinct structures, also dealing with approximation and differentiation in a broader social context.

The concert centers around the question for a composition that musically reflects two ensembles, who – both in terms of structure and aesthetics – work fundamentally different, while corresponding to their specific qualities and practice. How do both ensembles incorporate material outside of their repertoire, without dismissing their own identity and developed structures and strategies? As institutions, both ensembles have acquired varying methods to handle such situations:

Splitter Orchester is an improvising and composing orchestra, deeply rooted in free improvisation, currently consisting of 23 members. The orchestra works with flat hierarchies as a democratic compositional organism. All members are equally entitled to make artistic decisions. The interaction and interdependency between composition and improvisation is constantly reflected in the orchestra’s working process. All members are autonomous and highly specialized composer-performers, who have chosen individual paths of musical education and who are inspired by divers musical aesthetics.
When working with composers, Splitter Orchester is interested in an mutual exchange happening on eye level. Resulting works have shown to feature the particular sound of the formation as well as playing techniques, especially developed by members of Splitter Orchester.

ensemble mosaik also works dialogically, developing projects together with composers. The specific knowledge and instrumental abilities of the musicians regularly informs the new pieces, often specifically written for the ensemble. The importance of the score, however, resembles the inner core of the ensemble’s working method: the engagement with it and the contemplating on it decisively shapes the projects of the ensemble. In the moment of the performance, ensemble mosaik usually follows written defaults, creating a literal »performance« of a piece with a mostly predetermined form and structure. Often working with interdisciplinary approaches, ensemble mosaik continuously pushes the boundaries of composed contemporary music.

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Both ensembles thus reach fundamentally different aesthetic positions, which are in equal shares informed by the aspect of personal cooperation and interaction. In the music of Splitter Orchester, the personal relationships of the musicians, their improvisational habits, strenghts and preferences directly influence the microstructure of the music they play together. In addition, reflections on the form and diffusion of the provide coordinates in the frame of which musicians freely make their individual choices. Each decision can lead the music to an unforseen, new direction.

With ‘Public People’, Alwynne Pritchard and members of the Splitter Orchester make these differences and their dialectic interrelations the origin of a new composition. In three parts and two transitions, the two ensembles will first be presented with their individual presence and quality of sound, to be then heard as a 35-piece meta-ensemble, which dissolves the borderlines between composition, improvisation, interpreting ensemble and improvising orchestra.

Conductor: Ilan Volkov. Composition: Alwynne Pritchard, Julia Reidy, Chris Heenan & Simon James Phillips.