GAMUT INC

For centuries, the early Church resisted its introduction because it feared competition from its powerful sound and associated the organ with vice.

With their new album Radiating, the Berlin duo gamut inc now returns to the origins of this ancient instrument.

In 2010, Marion Wörle and Maciej Śledziecki discovered that pipe organs could be controlled via MIDI. Using this technology—which had been in use since the 1980s but was scarcely utilized by the organ world—the duo fundamentally reimagined the instrument. Over the following fifteen years, as gamut inc, they developed sophisticated algorithms and control techniques that revolutionized the possibilities of the computer-controlled pipe organ.

The music on Radiating was created in preparation for the fifth edition of the Aggregate Festival in 2025. Over a period of several weeks, gamut inc worked on the organ in the Chapel of Reconciliation, located on the former death strip along the Berlin Wall. The limited sound spectrum of this instrument necessitated a compositional reduction to the essentials: form, structure, and gesture. The resulting compositions were subsequently adapted for the organ in the Auenkirche—Berlin’s second-largest pipe organ—and enriched with the colorful stops of this grand instrument.

On a computer-controlled pipe organ, algorithmic MIDI control accurate to the millisecond allows for interventions that would be impossible on a conventionally played instrument. In the opener, for example, circulating glissandi permeate the sound space—a continuous glide that dissolves the boundaries between tone and movement. In “Pulsing,” a sorting algorithm generates surprisingly emotional chord progressions. What begins as an abstract computational operation develops into sprawling structures of almost symphonic force. Percussive textures emerge beyond mechanical tempo patterns; blending effects transform the organ’s sound from within. A sound that multiplies and expands within the resonant space of the church.

In their pioneering work on the MIDI-controlled pipe organ, the duo was never primarily concerned with hyper-virtuosity or with showcasing what is possible beyond organ music playable by humans. Instead, gamut inc works intensively on expanding the instrument’s own sonic language. Radiating means exactly that: technology becomes the medium for a return to the very origins of this powerful instrument. And to a music that is sensual, physical, and ecstatic.

Marion Wörle - computer-controlled pipe organ

Maciej Śledziecki - computer-controlled pipe organ

• Friday, May 22, 2026
• Starts at 8:00 PM
• Auenkirche (Wilhelmsaue 118A, Berlin)
• Tickets: €10