The Futurist painter Luigi Russolo wrote, in his 1913 manifesto *The Art of Noises* , that modernity had generated a new palette of sounds: urban and industrial noises, which “had their own aesthetic value and could be set to music.” He put this into practice himself in his * Serenade for intonarumori *—a series of noise-generating instruments that he invented— and other works . This program explores precisely that: the relationship with noise and our time.

In the first work of his trilogy, conceived for the acoustics and architecture of the Moscow Art Museum designed by Renzo Piano, Russian composer Sergei Newski explores the relationship between music, tempo, and space. But reality always intervenes, and the pandemic and the war in Ukraine forced Newski to change his plans. The Berlin version—which will be performed at this concert—maintains the original idea of ​​exploring different temporalities and materials. Another event occurred during the composition process: the death of the celebrated composer Angelo Badalamenti. As a tribute, Newski wrote the percussion part in the style of the solos Badalamenti composed for the second season of one of the series that brought him fame: Twin Peaks, directed by David Lynch.

“Often, noises awaken my inspiration,” says composer Carola Bauckholt. Her work is an exploration of the phenomenon of perception, blurring the boundaries between visual arts, musical theater, and instrumental music. In Pacific Time , Bauckholt draws on these sonic experiences to fully embrace “the idea of ​​sound,” without resorting to extramusical aids such as samplers or videos. The piece opens with a dense, noisy haze, a kind of sonic fog that gradually transforms, “as if a ray of sunlight were shining, but we couldn’t see it,” explains the composer.

“I sing of the electric body,” wrote Whitman, a line that encapsulates the sonic universe of Fausto Romitelli. In Trash TV Trance (2002), he fuses the avant-garde with rock—from Led Zeppelin to Pink Floyd—and pushes the electric guitar to its extremes: saturation, distortion, and loops that portray turn-of-the-century society. “Digitized images, the artificial, the distorted: that is the nature of modern man,” the composer said.

The program concludes with one of Pauline Oliveros's most politically charged pieces—dedicated to two women: one who took her own life and another who attempted to take someone else's—in which she asks the performers for "a continuous circulation of energy" between listening and sound, in order to reclaim the relationship between oneself and others. The concert begins with an excerpt from the soundtrack of Eraserhead (1977), a sound collage created by David Lynch and Alan Splet using unusual methods—from blowing into a microphone to dragging objects—that accompanies one of the most fascinating films of the 20th century.