Opening Concert
Program Overview
Introduction
Alexander Schubert – SCANNERS (2013)
for string quintet, choreography, and electronics (12 min)
Nicole Brady – Ricochet (World Premiere 2026)
for chamber orchestra (10 min)
Anthony Paul De Ritis – Filters (2015 / 2026)
for alto saxophone, string orchestra, and live electronics (10 min)
Intermission (25 min)
Aigerim Seilova / Steffen Lohrey – Breath Mechanics (World Premiere 2026)
for two soprano saxophones, string ensemble, and live electronics (10 min)
Clarence Barlow – Im Januar am Nil (1985)
for ensemble (approx. 25 min)
Short break (10 min)
Closing & Conference Information (15 min)
Performers
Ensemble Resonanz – strings
Asya Fateyeva – saxophone
Vlatko Kučan – saxophone
John Eckhardt – double bass
Dulguun Chinchuluun – piano
Lin Chen – percussion
Conductor
Friederike Scheunchen
Find out more about the musicians playing at ICMC HAMBURG 2026 here.
About the pieces
Alexander Schubert
SCANNERS (2013)
for string quintet, choreography, and electronics
The piece SCANNERS copes with the physical qualities of instrumentalists in electro-acoustic music. It is a choreographed composition, that takes movement as important as sound. The string ensemble turns into a performing machine. The main focus is on the movement of scanning – as well in the interaction of bow and instrument when producing sound as also in purely artificial gestures. There is no difference between musically necessary or choerographically determined mouvement. The piece can be seen as a comment on the relationship of man to digital content: the direct consequences of action can’t be explained by simple cause and effect principles any more, the musicians become puppets or at least a part of a complex machine. At the same time the piece offers a special focus on the highly specialized genre of the string orchestra: the mechanizing emphasizes the accuracy of the interpreter and the elegance of the traditional movement, here being staged independently from the production of sound.
Scanners belongs to a series of compositions that deal with physicality, as there is e.g. Point Ones with interactive conductor or LaPlace Tiger with a sensor-wired drummer.
About the composer
Alexander Schubert (1979) studied bioinformatics, multimedia composition. He’s a professor at the Musikhochschule Hamburg. Schubert’s interest explores the border between the acoustic and electronic world. In music composition, immersive installation and staged pieces he examines the interplay between the digital and the analogue. He creates pieces that realize test settings or interaction spaces that question modes of perception and representation. Continuing topics in this field are authenticity and virtuality. The influence and framing of digital media on aesthetic views and communication is researched in a post-digital perspective. Recent research topics in his works were virtual reality, artificial intelligence and online-mediated artworks. Schubert is a founding member of ensembles such as “Decoder“. His works have been performed more than 700 times in the last few years by numerous ensembles in over 30 countries.
Nicole Brady
Ricochet (World Premiere 2026)
for chamber orchestra and live electronics
Ricochet explores the idea of deviation from an expected path after an initial impact, leading to new directions. Inspired by the ricochet bowing technique, this concept unfolds both physically and metaphorically within the ensemble.
A responsive electronic system listens to the orchestra and generates a parallel sonic layer. Energetic passages produce scattered, percussive textures, while quieter material leads to dense, sustained sound fields. The system alternates between listening and generative modes, interacting closely with the performers.
Subtle references to composers such as Couperin, Ravel, and Mozart connect historical material with contemporary sound, while the electronics act as an additional, autonomous voice within the ensemble.
About the composer
Nicole Brady is an award-winning composer and creative director whose work spans concert music, immersive installation, and video game franchises including Final Fantasy, Tekken, and Valkyria Chronicles. Her work has been honoured by the Peabody Awards and IndieCade, and her immersive sound album Lost Palace was released with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Recent commissions and performances include the Omega Ensemble, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Flinders Quartet, and Lyris Quartet. As creative director of WLDR studio, her immersive multisensory works have reached over 20,000 participants across Illuminate Adelaide and Spier Light Art Festival. Nicole is a researcher at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music and recipient of the Director’s Award for Exceptional Doctoral Research.
Anthony Paul De Ritis
Filters (2015 / 2026)
for alto saxophone, string orchestra, and live electronics
Originally composed for alto saxophone and electronic playback, Filters explores the layering and spatial diffusion of sound. Recorded saxophone material creates a “second” voice, blending with the live soloist into a unified, resonant field.
In this version for saxophone, string orchestra, and multi-channel electronics, the ensemble extends these layers, producing a rich interplay between live instruments and their electronically mediated “shadows.”
The solo saxophone remains at the expressive center, while the surrounding textures generate depth, movement, and an immersive spatial experience.
About the composer
Described as a “genuinely American composer” (Gramophone), “a bit of a visionary” (Audiophile Audition), and “bracingly imaginative” (The Boston Globe), Anthony Paul De Ritis has received performances around the world, including at Lincoln Center, Beijing’s Yugong Yishan, Seoul’s KT Art Hall, the Italian Pavilion at the 2015 World Expo in Milan, and UNESCO headquarters in Paris.
De Ritis’s 2012 release “Devolution” by the GRAMMY® Award-winning Boston Modern Orchestra Project, featuring Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky as soloist, was described as a “tour de force” (Gramophone); and his “Pop Concerto” (2017) featuring Eliot Fisk was lauded as “a major issue of American music,” (Classical CD Review) and his “Electroacoustic Music – In Memoriam: David Wessel” (2018) was cited as among the “Best of 2018” in the electronic music category (Sequenza 21).
He holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and is Professor at Northeastern University, where he co-founded the music technology program.
Aigerim Seilova / Steffen Lohrey
Breath Mechanics (World Premiere 2026)
for two soprano saxophones, string ensemble, and live electronics
This work is a composition for two soprano saxophones, string ensemble (4.4.4.2), and 8.1 live electronics, submitted for the ICMC Special Call 1: Ensemble Resonanz . The piece serves as a spectral dialogue with Clarence Barlow’s Im Januar am Nil, adopting his strategies of timbral fusion and hocketing but transposing them into the age of Machine Learning. The central material is derived from “ChordsNest,” a multiphonics palette extension for MaxScore, which is repurposed here as a training set for a neural network. The compositional core is an “AI Translation Error” in which the model was tasked with reconstructing the cylindrical bore spectra of the digital archive using the conical bore of the live saxophones and the acoustic textures of the string ensemble.
The resulting score is a transcription of the AI’s “hallucinations,” where the ensemble physically replicates the digital artifacts of the style transfer process. The 8.1 electronics mediate this through a dual-role feedback loop. They function first as a synthesized “externalized memory” of the source spectra and secondly as a live inferencing engine that generates “retrospective hypotheses” by attempting to recover source-states from the acoustic performance. This architecture stages a recursive friction between the explicitly presented digital archive and the machine’s error-prone attempt to reconstruct it through physical sound.
About the composers
Hamburg-based composer Aigerim Seilova integrates acoustics, electronics, and interactive media. A doctoral researcher at HfMT Hamburg, her works are performed by Ensemble Modern and the Norwegian Radio Orchestra at festivals like Tanglewood and Chelsea Music Festival. Awards include the Hindemith Prize, Leonard Bernstein Fellowship, and Radio France Prize. She serves as Deputy Chair of the DKV Hamburg, promoting contemporary music and interdisciplinary exchange.
Born in Gießen in 1987, Steffen Lohrey studied Digital Media with a focus on sound in Darmstadt and Multimedia Composition at the Hamburg University of Music and Drama (HfMT Hamburg). His work exists at the intersection of composition, installation, and code. He has been involved in a wide range of projects, including Picadero with the Haa Collective (presented at venues such as Deltebre Dansa and the Fusion Festival), Crawlers with Alexander Schubert (ZKM Karlsruhe), and Shibboleth by Aigerim Seilova at HfMT Hamburg. His work and collaborations have been featured at Blurred Edges, the Teatre Principal Terrassa, and the GREC Festival, among others. In addition, Steffen Lohrey works as an audio engineer and sound designer in Hamburg.
Clarence Barlow
Im Januar am Nil (1984)
for 2 soprano saxophones (1st+clarinet, bass clarinet), 4 violins, 2 celli, double bass, piano, percussion
Im Januar am Nil was written in 1981 for Ensemble Köln – the instrumentation: two soprano saxophones, percussion (five Japanese temple bells, a Korean gong, a crotale, a cymbal, a side drum and a bass drum), a piano, four violins, two cellos and a double-bass. In 1984 the completely revised piece was premiered in Paris by Ensemble Itineraire.
Through the piece runs a constantly repeated melody, increasing both in length and density – new tones appear in the expanding gaps, first in a purely auxiliary function, but gradually harmonically rivalling the older tones. A single note at the start develops into a flowing melody moving from transparent tonality through multitonality to a dense self-destructive atonality.
At first the melody is played almost inaudibly by the bass clarinet, amplified by overtones heard as natural harmonics in the strings: the resultant timbre is phonetic, based on a Fourier analysis of German sentences (as for instance the title itself) containing only harmonic spectra, namely liquids, nasals and semi-vowels. Ideally these “scored Fourier-synthesized” words should be comprehensible, but an ensemble of seven strings can only be approximative. After a few minutes of bass clarinet and strings, the piano enters in an explicit rendition of the melody, developing it as described above and timbrally coloured by “hocketing” soprano saxophones. The double bass now also explicitly plays the melody without further developing it – in a “frozen” state it is contrasted with the piano part and slows down during further repetitions due to its increasing length.
About the composer
Clarence Barlow (1945–2023) was a composer and pioneer of computer music, born into the English-speaking minority of Calcutta (now Kolkata), India. He received his early education there, studying piano, music theory, and natural sciences, and began composing at the age of twelve. After graduating in science from the University of Calcutta in 1965, he worked as a conductor and teacher of music theory at the Calcutta School of Music.
In 1968, Barlow moved to Cologne, where he studied composition and electronic music at the Hochschule für Musik, alongside studies at the Institute of Sonology in Utrecht. During this period, he began using computers as a compositional tool, becoming one of the early figures to explore algorithmic and computer-assisted composition.
From the 1980s onward, Barlow played a central role in shaping the field of computer music. He was closely associated with the Darmstadt Summer Courses, where he directed computer music activities for over a decade, and was a co-founder of GIMIK (Initiative Musik und Informatik Köln). He also held numerous academic positions across Europe, including at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, where he served as Professor of Composition and Sonology and later as Artistic Director of the Institute of Sonology.
From 2006 until his retirement, Barlow was Corwin Professor of Composition at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His work is characterized by a unique synthesis of mathematical rigor, cultural hybridity, and innovative approaches to musical structure, making him one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary music.