fbpx Biennale Musica 2023 | Morton Subotnick - As I Live and Breathe / Maryanne Amacher - Glia
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Morton Subotnick - As I Live and Breathe / Maryanne Amacher - Glia

AS I LIVE AND BREATHE:2020, 45', european premiere
Composition, live voice, performance, electronics:Morton Subotnick
Live video:Lillevan
(intermission):30’
GLIA:2006, 75', italian premiere
Musicians of Ensemble Zwischentöne, Contrechamps:Susanne Peters, Dorothee Sporbeck, flutes - Maximilian Haft, Akiko Ahrendt, violins - Lucy Railton, cello - Volker Schindel, Helles Weber, accordions
Artistic direction, conductor, electronics:Bill Dietz
In collaboration with:CTM Festival Berlin
Production:La Biennale di Venezia

Description

As I Live And Breathe is the title I have given to one of my last performance pieces.
The performance opens with the sounds of my breathing into a microphone: a single inhale, followed by silence, followed by an exhalation. Music and image develop in long phrases, simply at first and gradually transforming. The phrases grow more complex and animated as my breath becomes the trigger for new sounds, rhythms and electronic pitches, with and without my breath.
I think of As I Live and Breathe as a musical metaphor for my life in music. (Morton Subotnick)


GLIA is named after the brain cells which assist in neurotransmission between synapses. 
It was performed only once during Maryanne Amacher’s lifetime, at the TESLA Berlin media-art laboratory in 2005. This premiere performance was directed by Amacher, assisted by the former director of Ensemble Zwischentöne Peter Ablinger, and Bill Dietz, who succeeded him. As Amacher’s practise was vigorously in favor of experiential investigation, most of her works are near-impossible to recreate. This applies also to GLIA. Bill Dietz has conducted intensive research into reconstructing GLIA for future performance, facing the problematics of restaging a work never meant to be repeated head-on.


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Biennale Musica
Biennale Musica