about by Stefan Thut

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Stefan Thut - about

Stefan Thut composed 'about' in 2017 for a sextet as a part of the first concert series of the art and music project ame, commissioned by Ryoko Akama, a UK-based sound artist/composer/performer and a co-curator of ame. Akama gathered four fellow musicians who were empathetic with Thut's aesthetics to perform and record the piece. The ensemble consisted of Akama (electronics), Stephen Chase (guitar), Eleanor Cully (piano), Patrick Farmer (metal percussion), lo wie (tingsha), and Thut (cello), who have diverse backgrounds in music, poetry and literature, and comprised a multilingual group.

Thut integrated both musical elements and non-musical elements in his piece 'about'. His score instructs three performers to make percussive, ringing, and electronic sounds while three other performers play short high register pitches on their musical instruments according to written scores, particularly paying attention to the decay of sound in the subsequent silence. It also instructs parallel activities in between playing the sounds; walking around the space, and uttering monosyllabic words quietly in their own languages. (The title 'about' derived from a sentence 'walking about'.)

By going back and forth between these two activities - one with playing the sounds as a group, and the other with individual activities of their own - standing up, making a few steps, and saying a word, the ensemble created a unique openness in the music while each keeping their own contemplative individual experience as a component. Through this piece, Thut also demonstrated the idea that "something vanishing creates a state of pure attentiveness", letting the performers and the listeners experience how the short sounds like hit, plucked, ringing or bowed sounds attribute a meaning to the silences before and after. These silences are soon getting replaced by something else - by the sounds from before, by the sounds in expectation, or by thoughts.

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FACTS

Swiss composer and cellist Stefan Thut is interested in processes and scores that invite both the performers and the listeners to delve into a world. He studied music at the Lucerne Conservatory and at Boston University School of Music. After experiences with new and experimental music, improvisation and noise, Thut started writing scores. Through his compositions he provides relatively determined systems in order to develop a praxis. In addition to instruments used in traditional ways, he also uses everyday materials as components in his work. As an interpreter he has performed a lot of music for solo cello written by his fellow and affiliated composers of the Edition Wandelweiser. Stations of his recent activities included Bilbao, Düsseldorf, London, Reykjavik, Saint Petersburg, Tokyo and Zurich among other towns. He has released albums as a composer, performer and cellist from Edition Wandelweiser and other international labels.

elsewhere music is a US-based record label founded in 2018 by Yuko Zama, focusing on new trends in contemporary classical music and beyond, specifically composed works.

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