for 3 grand pianos, sound installation and orchestra; 45-60 min
The non musical idea of this piece is the Rush of modern-day living and The Toxicities of Our Culture as the author physician Gabor Maté expresses in his latest book The Myth of Normal. The tempo of current society ignores the human as whole biopsychosocial being with wholeness of body and mind. The declining soundness of society influences the individuals in matter of chronical illnesses, cancer, mental conditions, additions etc. As Gabor Maté states ‘We know that chronic stress, whatever its source, puts the nervous system on edge, distorts the hormonal apparatus, impairs immunity, promotes inflammation, and undermines physical and mental well-being.’. The most stressful stimuli in our society are uncertainty, conflict, lack of control and lack of information, which strongly activate the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. Further Maté writes ‘Culture acts on our well-being via all manner of biopsychosocial pathways, including epigenetic causes; stress-induced inflammation; impairment of telomeres and premature aging; how and what we eat; toxins we ingest or inhale.
It exerts its influences through many other outside-in mechanisms, too: through effects passed on from parents to children; from one person to another; from social, political, and economic conditions to individual bodies- “from society to cell,” in the words of the molecular scientist and researcher Michael Kobor. Contra the Blairite view, it also powerfully influences and constrains nearly all the “individual decisions” most of us make with regard to our well-being.’ The fast tempo, expectations, unavoidable obligations, deadlines, fear of missing out and more are the factors that we do not take time for present, for ourselves, our needs, the balance and to be in tune with our nature. Ever when a sickness occurs, we tend to rush though the ‘ill state’ so we can go back to fill the requeries. Very visible reflexion of current society’s way of living we see also in a mass post-Covid Syndrome.
The piece contains this rushed energy of today’s society. On one hand we have the Orchestra, as the machine who keeps the wheel spinning, on the other hand we have the individual being, the pianist, who is trying to keep with its tempo. The idea is that the piece starts with the pianist playing fast pace on the glass panel, which is placed in the front of the stage between the Audience and the Pianist. The audience sees the human figure turned towards them, the fingers moving in contrary-motion scale on the panel, out-in-out-in, etc. The panel is amplified with two contact microphone. The tempo of the hands started to differentiate, the accents create the tense rhythm. In some point, the orchestra takes over the rhythm. After the dense beginning, the performing installation on two Grand pianos start to appear. This is done by multiple E- bows on the strings with different shapes and strengths of magnets, which influence on the pitch, timbre and resonance. The vibrations of the magnets influence each-other, creating organically changing sculpture. The piece contains also intense performance on the main, third grand piano. The concrete piece is still in a process. I am interested in a new dynamic of the orchestra and pianist in the classical form of Piano concerto. The idea calls for finding this uniqueness of the relationship and connection. The piece is also very Visual, performative. I envision the piece in cooperation between Music and Performance Art, which tends to be my art language in recent years. The project requires a Research phase, where I want to work on along with the pianist Rei Nakamura.
Petra Strahovnik (SI/NL): ‘Esoterically speaking I see myself as a passenger in current time and space, open to appearing thoughts, creating ideas, collecting pieces for artistic work, which quivers minds.’
Petra was born in Celje, Slovenia in 1986 and has been living in the Netherlands since 2011. Since her beginning Petra has been following her path of searching for new sounds and she has never been barred by traditional way of how we think about sound and music. Many times, the source of her inspiration comes from topics outside of Music, such as the issues of modern society and human experiences. While attending her study of Composition and Music Theory with Uros Rojko, at the Academy of Music in University Ljubljana, Petra attended festivals and seminars across Europe, where she gained new knowledge and opened her views and philosophies. She finished Master in Composition with Martijn Padding and Peter Adriaansz at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague.
Petra collaborated with outstanding musicians such as Rei Nakamura, Saskia Lankhoorn, Luka Juhart, ensembles like Ensemble Modern, Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, Nieuw ensemble, Ives ensemble, Asko|Schönberg, neuverBand, Slagwerk Den Haag, WESPOKE, Slowind, MD7, Kompulz, Slovenian Percussion Project STOP, RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra, choirs like APZ Tone Tomšič, Slovenian Philharmonic Choir, conductors as Steven Loy, Rossen Milanov, Bas Wiegers, Gregory Charette, Matina Batič, Jerica Bukovec and more. Commissioned among others by Diamant Fabrik, Experimental studio SWR, Gaudeamus Music week, Dag in de Branding, Orgelpark Amsterdam, RTV Slovenia, Festival Slowind and performed on podiums, festivals as Ultraschall Berlin, Muziekgebouw, Slovenian Philharmonic, Music Biennale Zagreb, International Ankara Music Festival, LSO St Luke London, ECCO festival Brussels.
In the Netherlands, where Petra has lived and worked since 2011, she is known for her pervasiveness and uncompromisingness in creating her visions. In 2013, her first opera entitled ‘Becoming the System’ came to life, which received rave reviews in Amsterdam and experienced three more repetitions, including at the Gaudeamus Festival in Utrecht. In 2018 Petra was selected as ‘Nieuwe Makers’ by the Fonds Podiumkunsten for her 4 years project ‘disOrders’ with Ensemble Modelo62 on the topic “Mental DisOrders”. The Dutch National Theatre described the project as: “The composer uses music, sounds, performance art, video and electronics to paint the implications of afflictions such as ADHD, autism, anxiety, depression and bipolar disorder. She confronts her audience with the inner world of a person who is forced to walk a different path through life than most of us. Can we find it in ourselves be emphatic and redefine our concept of ‘normal’?” The final artistic work of this collaboration, the opera project BallerinaBallerina, was successfully premiered at theatre Vaillant in The Hague in June 2022. Petras’ first audio-video release is her piece Amaranthine, that was written specially for Dutch pianist Saskia Lanhoorn. For this release the video medium was chosen in order to bring the immersive experience to the listener beyond the live performance. The piece was filmed and recorded within the magnificent concert hall of Villa Concordia in Bamberg. One of the unique and special aspects of this release is the binaural version of both film and album.
Her creative mind and unique art works brought her several grants and awards. Petra’s piece Prana, for symphony orchestra, won the 66th international ROSTRUM of composer prize, organized by the International Music Council, in Argentina in 2019. It was selected by the delegates as the most outstanding. The work was premiered by RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra with Rossen Milanov as a conductor. The inspiration for this work stems from the idea of creating and capturing the atmosphere of attraction between two contrasting poles. The concept of capturing “Prana” as inspiration; in Hinduism, it represents the breath of the life force. “Prana is understood as a universal energy that flows in currents in and around the body.”
Her achievements among others brought her Fellowship and Art Residency at Villa Concordia Bamberg, granted by Bavarian State Ministry of Science and the Arts and the BERLIN ART PRIZE for Music 2021, awarded by the Academy of Arts – Akademie der Künste Berlin.
Rei Nakamura is an internationally recognized pianist specializing in the performance of contemporary music. In 2007, she started the project Movement to sound, sound to Movement for piano, multimedia and performance. Working in close collaboration with composers such as Malin Bång, Annesley Black, Wojtek Blecharz, Christian Winther Christensen and Andreas Frank, innovative acoustic-video performances have been created and performed worldwide.
As a Soloist she has premiered piano concertos with orchestras such as the SWR Symphonieorchester, WDR Synfonieorchester and Radiosinfonieorchester Berlin with conductor as Brad Lubman and Bas Wiegers. She performed in music festivals in Germany including Eclat Festival Stuttgart, Ultraschall Berlin, Festival Acht Brücken Colon, Warsaw Autumn (Poland) , Sound of Stockholm (Sweden), Klang Festival (Denmark), Monday Evening Concerts (USA) among others.
She is a member of the Ensemble Experimental from SWR Experimentalstudio Freiburg. Her improvisation project for piano and live electronics with the artist Peter Vogel (*1937-2017) in 2003 until 2012.
Rei Nakamura also develops theoretical approaches and concepts from her artistic experience. She is interested in the relationship between performance, music and art. This has resulted in published articles in NZfM and MusikTexte and a radio show in Deutschlandradio Kultur. 2021 she published the book Movement to sound, sound to Movement – Interpreting Multimedia Piano Compositions by Wolke Edition.
Currently she is in an artistic research program on interpretation classical music with the insight of contemporary music led by George Kentros in KMH Stockholm. She gives seminars and master classes at various universities and colleges, in particular on piano music of the 20th and 21st centuries as well as multimedia repertoire.
Rei Nakamura was born in Japan, grew up in Brazil and is based in Germany.
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