MaerzMusik: silent green 3

Laura Bowler // Global Breath 2

This year, we are once again hosting the MaerzMusik festival of the Berliner Festspiele. The 2025 edition focuses on unique percussion and brass constellations, participatory formats, post-digital music theater, and diverse perspectives on voice and breath.

Described by The Arts Desk as “a triple threat composer-performer provocatrice,” Laura Bowler opens this evening with three works for vocal, electronics and video commissioned from a trio of composers: Nwando Ebizie, Sivan Cohen Elias and Diana Soh. Each of these composers has chosen a very different starting point, ranging from French children’s stories through autobiographical rituals and on to the fragmentation of the self and the creation of avatars. After this, a variety of compositions for brass can be heard as part of Global Breath, the research project initiated by Marco Blaauw in which he undertakes an artistic exploration of the universality of trumpet sounds. Monochrome, light blue darkness by Milica Djordjević resembles an “immersive painting or a sculpture”: it is “a comprehensive study of crystallised tones.” In Shimmer, the Japanese composer Dai Fujikura explores how the trumpet can sound as sensual as possible without awakening the impression of a fanfare or a powerful brass sound. In Shallow Grave Liza Lim investigates music’s potential to connect people even beyond death and allows us to hear a “Neolithic” ceramic horn whose roots extend back over 3,000 years. Georg Friedrich Haas expresses solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement with the work I can’t breathe.

Programme

Laura Bowler: Three
Sivan Cohen Elias
Who-He-Huh
solo multimedia piece for a singer and fixed electronics (2024)
World premiere

Nwando Ebizie
Dahlia (and you will be there forever and ever)
solo multimedia piece for a singer and fixed electronics (2024)
World premiere

Diana Soh
La Ville-Zizi
for solo voice and electronics (2025)
World premiere

Global Breath 2
Milica Djordjević
Monochrome, light blue darkness
for eight wind instruments (2024)

Edivaldo Ernesto
Intervention

Dai Fujikura
Shimmer
for two double bell trumpet (2025)

Liza Lim
Intervention

Liza Lim
Shallow Grave
for “Neolithic” ceramic horn and alto trumpet (2023)
Commissioned by Marco Blaauw (Global Breath), with support of the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung.

Georg Friedrich Haas
I can’t breathe
für Trompete solo (2014)
In memoriam of Eric Garner
Commissioned by Ensemble Musikfabrik, supported by the Ministerium für Familie, Kinder, Jugend, Kultur und Sport des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen.

Besetzung 
Laura Bowler
Solist

Diana Soh
Electronics

Nwando Ebizie
Live video

Sam Redway
Producer, dramaturg, movement director, video in Nwando Ebizie’s work.

The Monochrome Project
Marco Blaauw, Christine Chapman, Mathilde Conley, Rike Huy, Bob Koertshuis, Nathan Plante, Markus Schwind, Laura Vukobratović
Trumpet

Marco Blaauw
Alto trumpet, double bell trumpet, “Neolithic” ceramic horn, trumpet

Laura Vukobratović
Double bell trumpet

Edivaldo Ernesto
Dance

Three by Laura Bowler is commissioned with funds from the Ralph Vaughan Williams Trust, Hinrichsen Foundation, Diaphonique and Arts Council of England. Supported by Britten Pears Arts. Global Breath is supported by Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung and Kunststiftung NRW. 

Saturday, March 29
Betonhalle
5 pm until 8 pm
Tickets