Christian Wolff has composed a new piece for us entitled "For 3 Brass Players & 1 Percussionist”. This new composition, commissioned with funds from Initiative Neue Musik Berlin, features the fantastic percussionist Robyn Schulkowsky. The premiere will take place on Friday 1 September 2023 at the Zwingli-Kirche in Berlin - the official opening concert of Berlin’s Month of Contemporary Music festival (Monat der zeitgenössischen Musik). The evening begins with an artist talk with Christian Wolff, Robyn Schulkowsky and Robin Hayward, moderated by Katharina Ortmann.

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Wolff's new composition combines notated music with elements that can be freely interpreted in various ways. Dynamics, phrasing, tempo, pitches and the positioning of the musicians are freely decided by the performers.

Wolff points out that the indeterminacies in his score allow a specific rhythm to emerge, which the players contribute to in their own individual way, giving them an active role in the emerging musical shape of the piece.

‘Zinc & Copper is all about microtonal music. It was a challenge to write for them because I have never dealt with microtonality as such in my work’ says Wolff.

‘I have previously used microtones as a articulation by asking people to play notes slightly out of tune in my scores, i.e. a microtone higher or lower. This idea returns in the new piece again. I have listened to a lot of microtonal music and I respond most strongly to the music of James Tenney. The combination of instruments playing microtonally, changes the timbre in quite a remarkable way. I found that interesting and I hope that in this piece something similar will happen.’

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