First up on the programme of St. Johann's artacts festival is the concert of Swiss Clementine Gasser and Mikołaj Trzaska from Poland, which takes place on the 9th of March. Gasser and Trzaska began their cooperation in 2003. The mutual understanding between the two artists bears some very interesting fruit. Gasser plays the five-string cello and Trzaska - the saxophone and clarinet. Together, they create a musical language which blends two seemingly contradictory trends: contemporary classical music and avant-garde jazz.
Gasser has been hailed one of the biggest discoveries of the Austrian improv stage. Her majestic figure and the mastery of skill she presents while engaging in making music makes an impression that audiences find hard to forget. Trzaska, on the other had is a notorious non-conformist. He began his adventure with free jazz quite early under the influence of John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman. He is also an significant figure of the Polish yass scene, a sharp and distinct phenomenon of the musical avant-garde. Their concert takes place at 8.30 pm.
Following the performance by the two artist from Switzerland and Poland, a Polish-Austrian duo Wacław Zimpel and Wolfgang Reisinger join their musical talents in the second performance at the 2012 artacts festival on the 11th of March. Zimpel is a young clarinet player who takes up various improv forms. His approach to making music, marked by both his classical education and his constant need to experiment make him one of the most universal artists of the generation. Partnering the clarinet player is Wolfgang Reisener - a percussionist and music producer. For over forty years of his musical career, Reisener has been performing in a wide range of settings, from big-band shows to solo performances.
For more on the concerts at artacts festival, see: www.muku.at
On the 10th of March, Austrian Akkordeon Festival hosts a performance by the Polish band Dikanda. The band's name, derived from an african dialect means family. And Dikanda's music - a mixture of Polish folk, oriental, balkan sounds blended with macedonian and romanian influences – is saturated with a familial bond. Audiences are taken on a unique journey around the world of music and each of Dikanda's shows is an emotional meeting full of energy, genuine passion and joy for the band and audiences alike. The band is: Anna Witczak (vocals, accordeon), Katarzyna Dziubak (violin, vocals), Katarzyna Bogusz (vocals), Daniel Kaczmarczyk (percussion), Piotr Rejdak (guitar), and Grzegorz Kolbrecki (base). Dikanda's concert at Reigen as part of Akkordeon Festival is made possible thanks to the support of the Polish Institute in Vienna.
Polish dance theatre also marks its presence in the Austrian capital in March with the Empathy Project by Magdalena Chowaniec. The performance is part of an ongoing series conducted by the artist since 2010, through which she attemps to delve on the phenomenon of empathy. With her first project in 2010, the artist investigated the influence of drug addiction on the human body. This time, she explores our body's capacity for acoustic reception. Influenced by documentary footage of tribes from Papua-New Guinea, Chowaniec began analysing their songs and music to move on with her research to contemporary forms such as Dancehall and Acid-rave tracks. In Pulse she seeks to pin down the moment when music is not only heard but also experienced corporally.
Magdalena Chowaniec is the author of the project's concept and she also performs the piece, together with Gabri Einsiedl. The music employed in Pulse consist of fragments from musical sets mixed by DJ Diaz (from Tubeklub, Salzburg), as well as tribal songs of the Toulambi and other tribes from the Amazon, Africa and Papua-New Guinea. The performance is shown on the 10th of March, 2012, at 9 pm at Brut's Konzerthaus in Vienna.
For more information and tickets, visit: www.brut-wien.at
Source: www.polnisches-institut.at