Charles Uzor's work is critical and challenges our ears to listen beyond the audible and the familiar. My very first encounter with Uzor's music provoked the questions that originally drew me to this art form. These questions could be described as existential, political, social, individual, cosmic, and much more. His music engages in a critical exploration of life itself, through sound. […] Uzor's music invites us to think and speak about the world. Uzor's music teaches us that the unspeakable must be expressed and brought into an (imperceptible) relationship with that which we can speak about. This also involves the question of whether we need to listen to the inaudible voices, the voices that have been erased, like Black lives. […]
If Uzor’s music is political, then it is a kind of radical emphasis on Demos – a Greek word that describes both those lives for which politics is meant to exist, those it is meant to serve, and those whose voices have so far been neither thinkable nor audible. Perhaps Uzor wrote political music because his own experiences were repeatedly unthinkable in the existing world, this world of controlled and limited existence. Or perhaps it has always been the task of music in modernity to make us question what can become audible to us. In any case, what his work shows is that such an inaudible positioning, a standpoint expressed behind the veil of audibility as radical inclusion through the recognition of shared experiences – if the marginalized cannot speak, they can nevertheless hear the invisibility of the Other, or so it seems.
Jessie Cox
Can music improve the world?
Charles Uzor answered the question of what politics is with the striking counter-question: "How are the others doing?" If one follows this rhetorical argument, all the resulting further tasks serve the purpose of finding a satisfactory answer to his question for all involved, or rather, a solution to the corresponding problems. [...]
Socially and ecologically, the world is not in the best shape. In terms of poverty, oppression, the way we treat migration, and the environment, the pace of deterioration is accelerating at an alarming rate. Rescue is urgently needed. Many people are aware of this, which is why politicians, entrepreneurs, hedge fund managers, and technocrats have initiated a wide variety of projects to solve the misery. Unfortunately, most of these activities can barely conceal their underlying motivation, which is focused on power, money, and fame. Therefore, they should be treated with great suspicion.
So, as a composer, you ultimately ask yourself what your own music can contribute to alleviating or improving the situation we live in. Is that possible? Composers have learned music and are passionately imbued with it. Music is an excellent lubricant for manipulative purposes, a magic carpet for all sorts of extra-musical promises of salvation. The question of whether it can continue to be (mis)used for such purposes is rhetorical. So: no agitprop, no setting of political texts to music, no propaganda for a political utopia, no matter how promising!
Rupert Huber
Charles Uzor was born in Nigeria in 1961. He came to Switzerland during the Biafra War. After graduating from high school in St. Gallen, he studied oboe and composition in Rome, Bern, and Zurich. From 1986 to 1990, Uzor studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London with Gordon Hunt, graduating with a concert diploma and a master's degree in composition with Hans Werner Henze. He then wrote a dissertation on melody and inner time awareness at Goldsmiths, University of London. In connection with electronics, Charles Uzor explores the phenomena of identity and deception as harsh metaphors for the situation of refugees. Nri/ mimicri Bird songs are deepened by 8 octaves and imitated by the Ondes Martenot. Created between 2016 and 2023 Ave Maria, Hier in diesem zierl’chen Prunkgebäude according to Robert Walser, the cycles Mothertongue and George Floyd in memoriam (8'46'', Bodycam exhibit 3, catharsis calculation), as well as the orchestral works Qualia, Parmenides Prooimion and Breaking of the Vessels. Merrusch after Astrid Kaminski and George Floyd in memoriam show influences of Derek Parfit's philosophy and Uzor's increasingly political stance. Ensemble PTYX, œnm, London Sinfonietta, KammarensembleN, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Ekmeles, ensemble amaltea, Duo Aventure, the SWR Vokalensemble, the Bavarian Radio Choir, and the conductors Rupert Huber, Christian Karlsen, Ilan Volkov, and Mariano Chiacchiarini have performed Uzor's works at the Bern Music Festival, Rümlingen Festival, Time of Music in Viitasaari, the Festival for Other Music in Fylkingen, Wien Modern, Lucerne Festival, MaerzMusik, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, and Tectonics Glasgow. Uzor has been working on the opera since 2015. Leopold II.exhibit and directs the forum contrapunkt. new art music.
The composer, conductor and performance artist Rupert Huber was born in 1953 in the Innviertel region of Upper Austria. The two pillars of his conducting career are, on the one hand, the a cappella literature of the 19th and 20th centuries, and, on the other, New Music in all its ensembles and facets. Hundreds of premieres by composers such as Mark Andre, Maria de Alvear, Nikolaus Brass, John Cage, Antonio Caprioli, Jani Christou, Edisson Denissow, Beat Furrer, Vinko Globokar, Georg Friedrich Haas, Klaus Huber, Nikolaus A. Huber, Klaus Lang, Nikos Logothetis, Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf, Benedict Mason, Robert Moran, Fabio Nieder, Luigi Nono, Helmut Oehring, Klaus Ospald, Matthias Pintscher, Wolfgang Rihm, Rebecca Saunders, Giacinto Scelsi, Martin Smolka, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Charles Uzor, and Samir Odeh-Tamimi testify to this. He has worked with ensembles such as the SWR Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, the WDR Symphony Orchestra, the SWR Symphony Orchestra Baden-Baden and Freiburg, Klangforum Wien, Ensemble Recherche, Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Musikfabrik, Ensemble Resonanz, œnm, the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, the Royal Oman Symphony Orchestra, Neue Vocalsolisten, the SWR Vokalensemble, the WDR Radio Choir, the BR Chorus, and the Vienna State Opera Chorus. He has conducted concerts at the Salzburg Festival, the Donaueschinger Musiktage, the Witten Days for New Chamber Music, musica viva, ECLAT, the Paris Automne Festival, the Strasbourg Music Festival, NDR das neue werk, aspekte SALZBURG, Wien Modern, the Ruhrtriennale, the Venice Biennale, documenta 14, and many more. m. In the field of vocal music, he has been advocating for decades for authentic vocal writing, or rather a style of composition that is not primarily instrumentally oriented as in New Music since Schoenberg, but rather takes into account the conditions of the larynx and its vocal-mental disposition.