Christina Vantzou - N°5 (try-out) + Mathieu Serruys

American, Brussels-based composer and filmmaker Christina Vantzou creates soft and highly refined music that floats between post-classical, ambient and experiment. Over the course of fifteen years she has built up her own audiovisual language and released four albums at Kranky (N°1 to N°4). For her upcoming album, N°5, Vantzou goes a step further and integrates sound, space and architecture into a multi-dimensional installation-performance. The creation takes place in STUK, where Vantzou will collaborate with an ensemble of top musicians: Lieselot De Wilde (voice), Neil Leiter (Echo Collective, viola), Margaret Hermant (Echo Collective, violin) and Ben Bertrand (bass clarinet). The first results of this process are presented during a free try-out with follow-up discussion.

Performed by:

Christina Vantzou (electronics)
Lieselot De Wilde (voice)
Neil Leiter (Echo Collective, viola)
Margaret Hermant (Echo Collective, violin)
Ben Bertrand (bass clarinet)

➤ This project is a production of Hiros, in co-production with STUK and AB, in collaboration with Echo Collective. Label: Kranky

Mathieu Serruys opens the night, presenting his new album Skin/Glove. Serruys is a composer, graphic designer and founder of the B.A.A.D.M. label. He creates intimate experimental music with tape recorders and other analogue synths. The resulting live sound is made of improvised sound landscapes that give a human form to formal experiments and deconstruction.

Christina Vantzou on N°5:

Turning the Labozaal into a morphing multi-dimensional sound sculpture, me and my ensemble will inhabit STUK and share the process of making and staging No. 5. Following a growing focus on choral work, experimental production techniques and spatialization of sound, No. 5 is both a sound art and a chamber work written for strings, bass clarinet, piano, voice, virtual percussion and synthesizers.

Researching links between the body, sound, architecture, time and memory plus the power of collective practices and deep-listening-feeling-states are the backdrop for this work. The poetry of decay and reverberations between the past and present are part of the dialog.

With soprano vocalist Lieselot De Wilde, the formation of words are explored for the first time. Drawing influence from Renaissance polyphony, minimalist 20th century composers and early electronic music, the power of speech and utterances is explored to intensify the already surreal landscape.

Multiple perspectives are encouraged as the piece will unfold in different parts of the venue. Both the ensemble and the invited public will be part of the creation of the presentation of this project through this try out / open exchange.