MADE IT – MOST LIKELY: Compositions by MCMG, Julia Wahren, Michael Emanuel Bauer and Yasel Muñoz

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MADE IT - MOST LIKELY
Compositions by MCMG, Julia Wahren, Michael Emanuel Bauer and Yasel Muñoz

MCMG & Julia Wahren
SNEEZING (Niesen) Infectious intermezzo after Kurt Schwitters
for ensemble and voice (2020)

Sneezing is thunderous droplet transmission, it was already like that during supposedly simple flu times. It was only recently recognized as a public health hazard. Otherwise, sneezing is more that: urge, desperation, explosion, relaxation - maybe even pleasure. Wilhelm Busch's short cartoon already bears witness to this the pinch. Niesen is sometimes brutally vital, musically an unparalleled sforzato. Nießscherzo: Sneeze the whole thing by Merz artist Kurt Schwitters makes the detonation, which Busch only depicts, sound poetic. The composition SNEEZING musically continues the satirical-dadaistic series of the two Hanoverian artists. In a free-tonal manner, with a bit of swing (which blossomed in the 1930s, just like Schwitters' poem), finally with the stark dynamics of the actual natural event. Sneezing is sometimes extremely dangerous, of course. Will that change again?

Michael Emmanuel Bauer
HUNGER:THREADS for voice, flute with live electronics and piano (2021)
with reflections by Christoph Reiserer, Georg Karger and Julia Wahren
Text: Julia Wahren

A definition of the term hope is given at the beginning of the text. What follows is a phonetic translation of this definition: with the vowels and their specific coloring in the word context being preserved, there are new words: an associative flow of words, sounding very close to the original text, but completely different in content.

The composition is divided into six sections, with #2, #4 and #6 being improvisational reflections for any instrumentation (here soprano saxophone, double bass, voice) based on the films Grave by Julia Ducournau Trouble Every Day by Claire Denis and on the photograph Hope by Erwin Olaf. Sections #1, #3 and #5 are fully composed. HUNGER:THREADS processes found footage from high and popular culture and stands in the tradition of appropriation art and the associated artistic questioning of fundamental categories such as original, originality, authorship, repetition, deception, difference. HUNGER:THREADS is a musical transformation of artistic techniques and aesthetic positions of diverse Appropriation artists such as Sherrie Levine, Cindy Sherman, Martin Arnold and Rodney Graham.

Yasel Muñoz, MCMG & Julia Wahren
ANHELO DE MALECON (Longing for the Malecón)
for ensemble and soundscape (2021)

Cuban musician Yasel Muñoz made field recordings in Havana in 2021, annotating them with flute solos. This resulted in three parts:

1. Sounds of Cola (sound of the snake): Cuba is famous for its queues. People are waiting in front of shops, at markets, talking, arguing, screaming - an ecosystem, suddenly there and then gone again. And louder than ever in the pandemic.

2. In Anhelo de Malecon the sea on the Malecón, the beach of Havana, can be heard to the improvisation of the flute: for many people there a place to clear their heads - and during the pandemic a forbidden place of longing. "We have the soul of islanders," says Muñoz. The existence of musicians in Germany also somehow mutated into island life during Covid: to the sound of the sea and the flute, there are scraps of dialogue from a rehearsal by MCMG in Munich.

3. Seafood: At a celebration of the »Regla de Osha-Ifá« the Afro-Cuban deities Shangó and Risa Oko are homaged to with drums. These festivals were also banned due to the pandemic. We hear how the joie de vivre returns to Cuban life.

ANHELO DE MALECON: Sound of a global longing.

MCMG
FROM FOLLOWER TO INFLUENCER for ensemble and live electronics (2022)

Influencers need a resonance space: their followers. Musical soloists too. You decide where to go and the ensemble resonates. But what if the followers realize their secret desire to become an influencer themselves? Then who influences whom? What interferences arise from the mutual influence?

A structure-borne sound converter, also known as a “body shaker”, transmits the frequencies of the flute, clarinet and double bass to the grand piano, thereby modulating its sound. That's the technical side. On the compositional side, similar things happen: the sound of an instrument can either be played with the intention of changing the sound of another instrument, or with the intention of becoming such a sound itself. The transitions are fluid, the roles unclear. Who is an influencer, who is a follower? A musical experiment with allegorical approaches.

MCMG & Julia Wahren
LOLOOP FOR JOHN DONNE for ensemble, loop, live electronics and voice (2020)
Lyrics: John Donne, No Man Is on Iceland

A consistent tone runs through the piece from beginning to end. This drone spans the musical arc and is triggered by a string with which the pianist continuously plays the dis- String activated in the grand piano, making the tone and its overtones iridescent. Above that, the music grows in layers: the flute plays a loop and several overdubs; their sound material is a whole tone scale, open, floating. On it is John Donne's text No Man Is on Iceland, the evocative reminder that people need people – and at the same time a sonorous literary composition. The voice musicalizes the text without actually singing, letting the sound of the word pulsate and penetrate. The entire ensemble takes over the loop of the flute, brings new nuances and variations, increases them to the climax, a flute solo. Wait, we know that... isn't there some Gershwin blowing through that? Summer time? A touch of carefree time.

MCMG & Julia Wahren
EXPERO (I hope) for ensemble, voice and soundscape (2021)
Text: Pepe Gavilondo

"Hope is necessity because it nourishes us, it nourishes us, it keeps us alive like oxygen ... it is a heart without fatigue that allows us to go through the world without falling." The text by the Havana musician Pepe Gavilondo is attached ANHELO DE MALECON another result of the collaboration between MCMG and Julia Wahren with the young Cuban avant-garde. Gavilondo's voice carries through the piece as if through film images - apocalyptic scenes in which only one thing helps: hope. Or is it more perseverance? Or just a good dose of naivety? Although - in the instrumental part it sounds more like a minor, not so free, not so cheerful. After all, this minor survives all cracking, rattling, whistling, bursting. Or does it somehow resonate with a major parallel? Maybe it's the two of them together who finally survive the ice age, the deluge and other more recent catastrophes. EXPERO is also a piece about opposites.

MCMG
CORONAVERSE #2 for ensemble and soundscape (2022)

A first version was created in 2020 as a reflective processing of the first Corona year. The sounds of elevators and church bells are joined by scraps of language from a Munich beer hall, the tram, a children's playground... These language-sound miniatures and the furnishings of individual world views expressed in them had a reach of little more than the length of a regular's table before social media. The music comments on these private metaphysics with motifs that are unmistakably from another world. Nevertheless, language and music combine to form a new meta-reality. From the middle of the piece, the theme of a Bavarian dance of death sounds from the off, 1998 for the film To die for composed. His motif seems to be constantly rotating around its own axis in 5/8 and 7/8 time. Using reverse studio technology and musical deconstruction, the theme is virtually painted over and decollaged.

MGMG, Julia Wahren, and Michael Emanuel Bauer

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