Isabel Anders: „24 IMPROVISED PRÉLUDES“ & Julia Biłat: „Improvisation in the context of a contemporary XX and XXI classical Cello repertoire“

• Kindly supported by the GEMA Foundation.

PROGRAM

Set 1:

Isabel Anders – „24 IMPROVISED PRÉLUDES"

Isabel Anders is a pianist, composer, and improviser who presents a new cycle consisting of 24 Improvised Préludes for solo piano.

Marked by a distinctly composed character, the music moves between classical avant-garde, late Romanticism, and Impressionism. It evokes harmonic tension and expressive intensity through ambiguity, color, and inherent tension. Pages in different colors create a framework that mirrors the character of each section. The cycle unfolds in three parts: an opening, a central section, and a final group of preludes. From the central section onward, the atmosphere becomes increasingly intense. Rhythmic pulse and sharp accentuation emerge - urgent, vivid, and dramatically expressive.

The Project is strongly inspired by the composer Alexander Scriabin.

Set 2:

Julia Biłat „Improvisation in the context of a contemporary XX and XXI classical Cello repertoire“

Julia Biłat moves with the cello at the intersection of improvisation, composition, and performance.

In her solo work, she expands the instrument through voice and movement, developing intense musical forms, in which sound and performative presence become inseparable. In this new project, she combines her work with the 20th-century cello repertoire, building a bridge between improvisation, performance and the tradition of european classical music. The improvisational language of this project is inspired by composers such as Penderecki, Dutilleux, Cassadó, and Lutosławski. By uniting her various influences, the project not only revives a fading tradition but also contributes to the ongoing renaissance of the cello as an instrument open to new approaches, techniques, and styles-positioning improvisation as an essential and living part of its repertoire.

Biography’s

Julia Biłat is a Berlin-based classically trained cellist, improviser, and composer working across jazz, classical, performance and experimental scenes. She performs with Stegreif.Orchester, Camila Nebbia’s The Hanged One and Fabiana Striffler’s Archiotic Quintet among others. Commissioned by Stegreif.Orchester, Biłat has composed music for several productions, including a recomposition of Hildegard Von Bingen's “Ordo Virtutum” performed at the Alte Oper Frankfurt in 2022. Her solo work integrates improvisation, composition, and performance using cello, body and extended voice techniques.

Performances include Butohpolis Festival (Warsaw), Into The Open (Berlin), Intermittenze (Catania), Artacts (St.Johann, Austria). Julia Biłat is currently working on a new solo album, to be released in September 2026 by 'Relative Pitch Records' label.

Isabel Anders (*2001) is a German-Cuban pianist, composer, and improviser based in Berlin. She began improvising at an early age and started studying classical piano when she was six years old. Later, she continued her training with the concert pianists Prodromos Symeonidis and Vladimir Tropp.

Over time, her interests shifted from pursuing a career as a classical pianist toward contemporary music, composition, and improvisation. In 2019, she composed an album inspired by selected poems by Charles Baudelaire. She subsequently continued her studies with the composers Sascha Dragićević and Stefan Streich. Since 2022, she has collaborated with musicians, dancers, and poets in a variety of interdisciplinary projects.

Her performances have taken her to the United Kingdom, Asia, and across Europe, including Vienna, Warsaw, Athens, Paris, Marseille, Rotterdam, Zagreb, Tokyo, and Basel. She has performed with artists and ensembles such as the London Improvisers Orchestra, Ignaz Schick, Christian Lillinger, Marc Schmolling, Matthias Bauer, Biliana Voutchkova, Tobias Delius, Taiko Saito, and Yuko Kaseki.