AGGREGATE Festival 2024

DAY 1
Fri 29. Nov 2024 – doors 7pm, concerts 8pm – Kaiser-Wilhelm Gedächtniskirche
Marcin Pietruszewski: Auditory Distortion Synthesis for Organ and Computer-Generated Pluriphonic Sound (30:00)
Maxime Denuc: a mix of tracks from »Nachthorn« and new pieces from his forthcoming album (50:00)

DAY 2
Sat 30. Nov 2024 – doors 7:30, concerts 8pm – Auenkirche Berlin
Arnold Dreyblatt: Corpula (30:00)
gamut inc: Whilst Enjoying The Balance Of The Winds (50:00)

TICKETS 15/10€ Festivalpass 25€: pre:tix

The AGGREGATE Festival is back with two days of hyperorgan music. We are delighted to present works for computer-controlled organ and electronics on two of Berlin’s most beautiful organs. With Marcin Pietruszewski, Maxime Denuc, Arnold Dreyblatt and gamut inc

The Berlin ensemble gamut inc (Marion Wörle and Maciej Śledziecki) presents the fourth edition of the AGGREGATE Festival at the Auenkirche and the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche Berlin on November 29 and 30.

There will be new works for pipe organs by Marcin Pietruszewski (Auditory Distortion Synthesis for Organ and Computer-Generated Pluriphonic Sound) and Maxime Denuc (Nachthorn +) in the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church and by gamut inc and Arnold Dreyblatt in the Auenkirche.

Together with outstanding composers from the fields of electronic, electro-acoustic and experimental music as well as new music, gamut inc will develop pioneering artistic strategies between acoustic and electronic music on internationally renowned organs as part of the AGGREGATE series. Thousands of notes and parameters are prepared, generated and manipulated using composition programs. The pipes are controlled by the computer, but the sound comes from the pipes as in traditional playing.

Maxime Denuc is an electronic music composer based in Brussels. For some years now, his solo work has focused on pipe organs. Among other things, he will present the hypnotic piece of music “Nachthorn”, in which the organ is the sole protagonist. It oscillates between dub techno and harmonic grooves. The record was highly praised by critics, especially by Boomkat, which included it in its list of the ten records of 2022. It was also chosen as the soundtrack for the Chanel Spring-Summer 2023 haute couture show.

Marcin Pietruszewski is a composer and researcher. He deals with sound synthesis and composition on the computer and explores specific formal developments in the tradition of electroacoustic music and contemporary sound art as well as non-musical fields such as auditory design, computational linguistics and psychoacoustics.

Arnold Dreyblatt (b. New York City, 1953) is an American media artist and composer. He has been based in Berlin since 1984. Dreyblatt is the Vice-Director of the Visual Arts Section of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. One of the second generation of New York minimal composers, Dreyblatt studied music with Pauline Oliveros, La Monte Young, and Alvin Lucier and media art with Woody and Steina Vasulka. He has invented a set of new and original instruments, performance techniques, and a system of tuning.

Media partner: D/B
Partner: MODARTT
Press work: Guido Möbius
Kindly supported by Aventis Stiftung and Bezirksamt Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf
A project by gamut inc (Marion Wörle and Maciej Śledziecki)

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AUTOMATED PIPE ORGANS / HYPERORGANS

Digitalisation advances ever further into areas beyond the virtual – for the pipe organ, this opens up new artistic possibilities. All of the instrument’s parameters can now be controlled by computer via interfaces, while the sound is still created in the pipes of the organ. In this way, a meshing of instrumental and electronic music, the possibilities of which are largely untapped, can be achieved. gamut inc‘s international concert series and festival AGGREGATE exposes this potential for artistic innovation in organ music of the 21st century. Composers with differing musical backgrounds and orientations create new pieces for automated pipe organs. Contemporary electronics, Neue Musik, avant-garde pop and noise music interweave with one another. Pioneering artistic strategies are explored, from purely automated organ concerts via combinations with instrumentalists to real-time control and synchronisation with electronics. AGGREGATE pursues the fundamental questions that computer controlled instrumental music poses: virtuosity and its overcoming, the limits of perception of highly compressed musical events, the crossovers and links between electronic and acoustic music, objective interpretation and the effects of mechanically precise reproduction.

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INSTRUMENTS

The internationally renowned organs in Orgelpark Amsterdam, the Stavanger Concert Hall, Kaiser-Wilhelm Gedächtniskirche or in the Kunst-Station Sankt Peter in Cologne all offer unique technical and sonic possibilities. The number of pipes, timbres of the register, additional striking mechanisms, wind pressure control and the acoustics of the spaces are all very different. The organ inaugurated at St. Antonius in Düsseldorf Oberkassel in 2017 was one of the first in the world to make use of SINUA control technology, in which the registration of the instrument is radically reorganised. The full potential of the organ as a synthesiser unfolds through the instrumentation of the timbres and the selection of pipe sounds. Unrestricted automation of the register makes the creation of completely new tonal palettes possible.

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COMPOSITION

The compositions explore artistic stylistic devices that only become possible through programmability: automated changes in register, concurrency of different tempos, extreme density of events, complex polyrhythms, aural-physical phenomena, or sliding transitions between tonal, noise and rhythmic. Through automation, the characteristics of the pipe organ as machine and acoustic synthesiser come to the fore, uncovering innovative artistic positions between acoustic and electronic music. Automation, which was already being applied at the beginning of the 20th century, reaches a completely new quality through computer control. Control is now significantly more reliable, register changes and note durations can be adjusted in millisecond intervals, meaning that new acoustic phenomena can be created.

AGGREGATE Festival Berlin 2023
Auenkirche Berlin, Nov 2
The AGGREGATE Festival for computer-controlled organ presents a one-day edition in 2023 as part of the inauguration of the restored organ in the Auenkirche. The many possibilities offered by computer control of Berlin’s second largest organ will be explored by Canadian artist George Rahi and the retro-futuristic ensemble gamut inc.