Low Frequencies

In the first set, Beatrix Wagner plays the rare contrabass flute in G – an instrument that once also inspired Luigi Nono to compose his Duo A Pierre.

With Gerald Eckert on electronics, two pieces composed in 2024 will be performed:

Alessio Rossato’s *si’páame* and Gerald Eckert’s *Verschränkung – ins Offene*. Both works explore the instrument’s very distinctive timbre.

This is followed, featuring the American singer Andrew Munn, by Horațiu Rădulescu’s *These Occult Oceans* (1981): a pioneering spectral composition for solo bass voice and up to 17 pre-recorded bass voices, which utilises special vocal and consonant techniques to unleash the sonic power of overtones and undertones.

The programme concludes with BONECRUSHER, an ensemble comprising ten trombones and two percussionists. Active as a permanent ensemble since 2020, the group has developed its own sonic language that ranges from noise drones that sculpt sound, to crashing brass cascades, and delicate interweavings of breath, tone and overtones. The physical and acoustic possibilities of the instruments are explored to their very limits; the archaic sound apparatus is, as it were, put through a ‘bone crusher’, pulverised and breathed into with new life. It is within this framework that Ellen Arkbro’s expansive *Nightcloud Variations*, with their long-sustained, purely tuned tones, and Matthias Muche’s *Gleiter* unfold.