Lange//Berweck//Lorenz is a Berlin-based trio specializing in electroacoustic music. Founded in 2014, the collective’s projects focus on the realization of electronic scores, the restoration and (re)performance of historical electronic works, and collaborations with contemporary composers on new pieces.
Today, Silke Lange, Sebastian Berweck, and Martin Lorenz perform as a trio on stage with a laboratory of analog and digital synthesizers and machines; their live performance on these instruments is enhanced by video and lighting design.
On 2 October Lange//Berweck//Lorenz will perform the opening concert of the brand-new festival ENSEMBLEFEST Berlin, which brings together fifteen established Berlin-based contemporary music ensembles for a three-day program of concerts and performances at the former CANK shopping centre in Neukölln. This festival also kicks-off the 10th anniversary season of the Month of Contemporary Music in Berlin, with countless concerts, performances, and sound installations at numerous venues throughout the city, offering an opportunity to experience the current trends in Berlin’s multifaceted contemporary music scene first-hand.
Questions and Answers:
3 FACTS
1: Noise is made from sines
2: Your sines are my overtones.
3: Sines are pure. Inharmonicity is the salt.
11 QUESTIONS
1. What is the biggest inspiration for your music?
Looking for new ways to bring composers’ ideas to the stage. Being true to their intentions while being true to our interpretation. The gap between the written score and the musical outcome is what drives interpretation. We see the world through this gap, just like an actor sees the world through their role.
2. How and when did you get into making music?
We’ve all been classically trained, academy and all, so we started our musical training really early. Electronics came much later though. We’re veterans at being beginners.
3. What are 5 of your favourite albums of all time? (yes we know it is difficult).
Nah.
4. What do you associate with Berlin?
Tension and relaxation. Everybody seems to be sitting in cafés, and at the same time everybody is working really hard. As an artist, you’re not the exception here. That’s a relief.
5. What’s your favourite place in your town?
Our rehearsal studio. The best place to focus hard and laugh a lot with friends. We actually have a CO2 meter that reminds us when to open the windows. After all, we’re in Germany. We lüften.
6. If there was no music in the world, what would you do instead?
We haven’t the faintest idea.
7. What was the last record/music you bought or listened to?
We agreed on Éliane Radigue’s Trilogie de la mort.
8. Who would you most like to collaborate with?
We’re actually in the lucky position of constantly collaborating with the people we want to collaborate with. So there isn’t that one unreachable person we’ve always dreamed of working with. Except maybe Wendy Carlos, but we’re probably just a little too late for that.
9. What was your best gig (as performer or spectator)?
Sound on stage is always difficult. It can be too loud or too harsh or too quiet or unbalanced. At a club in Gdańsk we had a technician who just did their thing and bang, it sounded great. That makes all the difference. If it sounds shit, the show is a drag. If it sounds great, it’s the best job in the world.
10. How important is technology to your creative process?
Since we come from acoustic instruments and chose electronics deliberately for our trio, technology is at the centre of our practice. Learning to turn a technical device into a tool for musical expression means building up muscle memory, and that takes a lot of time. But once you’ve mastered it, you can play the sounds just right: at the right time, at the right volume, with the right expression. That’s what we’re aiming for, just like a ballet dancer aims for the perfect pirouette.
11. What can we expect from your concert during the ENSEMBLEFEST?
Three pieces written for synthesizer trio, all relentlessly avant-garde and each one entirely its own. Florian Zwißler’s piece is energetic and whimsical at the same time, and we’re literally playing waveforms. Kerstin Reese’s composition mainly consists of evocative descriptions of sounds and how to play them together, and we added an analogue video to it. And Korhan Erel wrote a soundtrack for an imaginary film noir. The programme is as diverse as it gets, and at the same time united by the urge to make something totally new and different.
