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 change: Unfortunately, the work “La Ville-Zizi” by Diana Soh cannot be shown.

Programme

Laura Bowler: Three

Sivan Cohen Elias
Who-He-Huh
solo multimedia piece for a singer and fixed electronics (2024)
Commissioned by Ralph Vaughan Williams Trust, Hinrichsen Foundation and Arts Council of England
World premiere

Nwando Ebizie
Dahlia (and you will be there forever and ever)
solo multimedia piece for a singer and fixed electronics (2024)
Commissioned by Ralph Vaughan Williams Trust, Hinrichsen Foundation, Diaphonique and Arts Council of England
World premiere

With
Laura Bowler – soloist, producer
Sivan Cohen Elias – electronics
Sam Redway – producer, dramaturg, movement director

Global Breath 2

Milica Djordjević
Monochrome, light blue darkness
for eight wind instruments (2024)
Commissioned by WDR and New Music Dublin

Edivaldo Ernesto
Intervention

Dai Fujikura
Shimmer
for trumpet solo, performed by two double bell trumpets (2025)
Commissioned by Marco Blaauw, sponsored by Musikfonds e. V. and Kunststiftung NRW

Liza Lim
Intervention

Liza Lim
Shallow Grave
for “Neolithic” ceramic horn and alto trumpet (2023)
Commissioned by Marco Blaauw, sponsored by Musikfonds e. V. and Kunststiftung NRW

Georg Friedrich Haas
I can’t breathe
for trumpet solo (2014)
in memoriam of Eric Garner
with a choreography by Ernesto Edivaldo
Commissioned by Ensemble Musikfabrik, supported by the Ministerium für Familie, Kinder, Jugend, Kultur und Sport des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen.

With
Marco Blaauw – alto trumpet, double bell trumpet, “Neolithic” ceramic horn, trumpet
Edivaldo Ernesto – choreography, dance
Liza Lim – speaker
Laura Vukobratović – double bell trumpet

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

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, Musikfonds Neustart Kultur and Kunststiftung NRW. 

Saturday, March 29
Betonhalle
5 pm until 8 pm
Tickets