Maerz Musik 2025

Radialsystem/ Sophiensaele/Haus der Berliner Festspiele
Berlin, Germany
March 23-25 2025

Maerz Musik is organised by the Berliner Festspiele, the same venue that presents Jazzfest Berlin. This ten-day Maerzfest concerns itself with the spiky end of moderne composition, but frequently crosses the line into freely improvised spontaneity. Your scribe was in town for a mere three-day wedge of the avant-pie, attending performances at Radialsystem, Sophiensæle and the Haus der Berliner Festspiele itself.

His first night featured a pair of performances at Radialsystem, a cultural space that began its life as a sewer pumping-station in 1881, but since 2006 has been a multi— space arts venue. Nguyễn + Transitory (a duo who hop betwixt Berlin and Chiang Mai) presented their Drifting To The Rhythms At The Southeast Of Nowhere, a combination of dance and electronics, environmentally colonising Radialsystem's smaller room.

Ostensibly they combine folk traditions and electronic music, but the latter is markedly dominant in the movement soundtrack, and appears to be built via a touch— sensitive sampling instrument, in real-time. The five female dancers operate on a subtle, space-exploring level, with a circular dangler construct dominating the otherwise blank floorspace. Hand gestures are paramount, with each shape drawing the viewer close to detail, as the stately group parades, hands on each other's shoulders. A thrum builds as a cushion for solo display, as dancers pat the floor in ritual fashion, droplet ping-pong sonics dispersing. Another mover reacts to organ-like spurts, then a khaen-reed trundle, swaying against rickety percussion. It's here that the folkish qualities become most apparent.

Two dancers become entwined, like a swan-snake hybrid, throwing flex-arm shapes, working with long, thin sticks. As supine rollers they evoke a crunching spider meets preening duck scenario. Folk sonics are looped, as various permutations of dancers either rest or become active, in turn. As a fivesome, they climax with a row of waddle, barefoot for the hum. This was no radical performance, in either visual, sonic or movement ways, but it held a gently commanding sense of ritual evolution, gradually savouring and exploring existence in this Radialsystem space.

That same Sunday evening's following concert was more traditionally presented, although teeming with radically spiky recent music from a quartet of composers. Yarn/Wire are one of NYC's prime new music groups, so it was wonderful to see these Queens residents on a debut tour in Berlin. Their line-up matches two pianists with a pair of percussionists, but there is also much movement towards table electronics and other small shifts or embellishments.

Sarah Davachi's "Feedback Studies For Percussion" opened with some very soft piano exploration, with light tubular bell touches, creating an extreme sense of calm. Eventually snagging onto a piano cycle, the tenderness remained in place, with only faint touching allowed. This could be a Popol Vuh soundtrack. There was a sudden decisive rise to swollen activity, with a chiming density from the percussion, and keyboard runnels with low tones sweeping upward, making a subtle rumble. Gongs swung on their frame, building rapidly like a goth gamelan, with large cowbells, coyly arranged.

The second piece found all of Yarn/Wire lined up across a table of hard drives and other assorted clutter, for Jad Atoui's "In Memory," sounding like early Pan Sonic (Panasonic). The video backdrop closed in on their manipulative finger-work, showing the audience how they generate their sounds. Chirrups and cricket rubs issued forth from the knob-work, oscillations dropping or rising in tone, making curving whines. As the piece developed it looked like they left the (naked and exposed) hard drives alone, letting them live independently, riding unsupervised, fizzing like a firework display.

The third composition was the most exciting of the evening, "Glass And Stone," by Clara Iannotta, its staccato wildfire wedded to a juddery video, with big glass bowls bowed by the pianist and synther, the climax populated by sharp-strike explosions. This was compacted excitement unleashed.

The closing work was very disappointing in its minimalism, like a throwback to the days of intended shock in contemporary music, but merely seeming studied in its attempted transformation of the performing space and the performers (i.e., each player was ensconced at the four corners of the theatre, interacting with their synths and minimal percussion in the most extremely vestigial manner, almost to the point of complete inactivity). Far from being rousingly radical, this approach was quite simply tedious. This was Catherine Lamb's "Curvo Totalitas." Several folks departed, but your scribe remained rooted in a 'what might happen next' position. This was so environmental that zero applause was required, but nevertheless, this is what the audience gave the performers. Stripped of a climax, Yarn/Wire had fortunately already made an impressive showing during their first three selections.

Your scribe's second day shifted to the Mitte part of Berlin, for a pair of conceptual constructions that toyed with their environments, to certain extents. They happened (and they were indeed 'happenings') at the multi-floored arts centre of Sophiensaele. It helped to imbibe a glass of natural red juice, in advance, at the nearby Rocket Wine emporium.

Both of these works also involved improvisation, with The Art Of Camouflage being guided by free vocalist Ute Wassermann, co-opting a row of colleagues who had tiny tables set up with small tanks of water, all of them narrating in abstract fashion, while fiddling with added tiny objects. This wasn't actually as compelling as it sounds, idea-wise, for there was a sense of self-conscious kow-towing to ye olde history of 1970s free-form, and a kind of complacent smugness regarding the 'shock' of such impressionism. Nevertheless, it was entertaining, for a while, but presented in too formal a situation and setting (i.e. a rigidly sat, crammed audience, wrigging against the demand for a concentrated silence for an appreciative state, but failing, amidst fits of hacking-up and creaking-butts).

Far more evocative was the way-more-ambitious perambulatory adventure presented by the Synaesthesis ensemble, The Urban Tale Of A Hippo, composed by Panayiotis Kokoras. Most of the gathered (then subsequently dispersed) audience chose to amble around a misty space, dominated by a large transparent inflatable that seemed to represent said hippopotamus. Some musicians were placed inside this bloat, while others moved around, forming casual relationships, sometimes around the piano.

Audience participants were also invited to sit on chairs, to experience a fixed position around which the actions circulated. Then, it was best to stand up and maintain fresh postures, hovering between players, or observing them from a traditional vantage point. Further fog created mystery. Sonic repositioning altered the ear-angles. Space became relaxing. Most musical gestures were thoughtful, measured, and not too suddenly startling, so that an easing into meditation could be managed. Or at least a gazing out of the panoramic windows, bathed in the bright lights that stood outside in the gardens, on gantries, beaming through the frames with a harsh white flood.

A very different third evening at Maerz Musik involved the main concert hall of the Haus der Berliner Festspiele, just like we were at Jazzfest Berlin. This was a big gig that marshalled the forces of Les Percussions de Strasbourg, skin-soloist Steven Schick, and a new work by composer Chaya Czernowin, with electronic parts recorded at IRCAM in Paris.

The premiere of this single long work, "Poetica," made up the entire concert. Its central concern with the issuance of breath sounded very much like the continuance of an electroacoustic cliché, but the composition ultimately managed to transcend this flaw. For the percussion heads in the audience (surely almost its entirety), this was a feast of subtle skin-contact, with bonus metal frills. Schick was instructed (forced) to inhale and exhale a lot, and this seemed like an exercise in fatigue (for all) after around an hour. 'Oh, the sheer tedium of breathing,' your scribe sighs. Nevertheless, there was much quality stroking and thwacking coming from Schick and the Strasbourgians. The low lighting and the enveloping electronics completed an immersive atmosphere. Kettle drums held authority, governing a deep density, but light brushes could also tease skins sensitively. The percussionists used fingers and palms on bongos, then Schick conducted big bass ensemble booms. The IRCAM content was toned down most of the time, not as frighteningly rupturing or spatially flighty as anticipated. Despite any disappointments, there was much to revel in during this feast of drumming communion.

Even these selected three days illustrated the dynamic differences customarily presented by this adventurous modern music festival...

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