Evening Concert 2B
This Evening Concert promises a special experience for both eyes and ears. At the center of this session is the saxophone, performed by one of the most distinguished artists of our time: Hamburg-based saxophonist Asya Fateyeva. Together with her talented students, she presents five works specially conceived for her and her instruments.
This instrumental focus is complemented by two striking video works, presented on the specially installed video wall in the FEH, which dissolve the boundaries between sonic and visual space.
This Evening Concert is open to the public. Those without a conference pass can purchase a ticket here.
Program Overview
Saxophone: Asya Fateyeva
Adaptive_Study#06 – Symbolic Structures Enhanced
Riccardo Dapelo
Expandiere
Ching Lam Chung
pan:individual, “come closer, come home”
Franz Danksagmüller
Silent “human bird language”
Yongbing Dai and Yiping Bai
Cor Ddiglwed (Unhearing Chorus)
Joe Wright
Jamshid Jam
Jean-François Charles and Ramin Roshandel
Setar: Ramin Roshandel
Live electronics: Jean-François Charles
Poetic Encounter with the digital shadow
Nicolas Kummert
About the pieces & the artists
Riccardo Dapelo : Adaptive_Study#06 – Symbolic Structures Enhanced
Adaptive_Study#06 – Symbolic Structures Enhanced (2025) is the sixth work in a series of compositional studies initiated in 2015, exploring musical forms that are not temporally fixed. The piece investigates adaptive processes based on symbolic structures, short-term memory, and performer–system interaction. The live electronics analyses performer input and generate responses through the transformation and recombination of symbolic data. Rather than functioning as an autonomous generator, the system acts as a responsive partner, shaping musical form through evolving interactions over time. Control of event density at micro and macro-structural levels plays a central role, preventing entropic saturation. The work is conceived as an open study, in which form emerges through the negotiation between performer and system, maintaining stylistic coherence while allowing variability across performances.
About the artist
Riccardo Dapelo (b. 1962) studied composition with G. Manzoni and A. Vidolin. His work focuses on acoustic and electronic composition, live electronics, and interactive systems, and has been performed internationally. He has published articles and lectured on voice analysis, spatialisation, philosophy of art, and musical time. He collaborates with visual artists on interactive works and sound installations for museum and exhibition spaces. He teaches Composition at the Conservatory of Piacenza.
Ching Lam Chung: Expandiere
This piece explores the different sound qualities of the baritone saxophone—from pitched materials to mechanical sounds—and its interaction with electronics, thereby investigating the sonic hybridity between the instrument and electronic media. Both tape and live electronics are used: the fixed electronics allow sound objects to be precisely organized within the spatial environment, while the live electronics serve as a bridge between the instrument and the fixed electronics, enhancing their connections.
Through this approach, the piece creates a unique sonic environment in which different sound objects interact and evolve with one another, offering the audience a varied auditory experience in which the instrument and electronics fully merge.
About the artist
CHUNG Ching Lam, Mavis (b.2003), was born and raised in Hong Kong. Mavis currently studies Master music composition at Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts, under the guidance of Orm Finnendahl and Ulrich Alexander Kreppein.
Mavis’s music thoughtfully explores timbre, transforming ordinary sounds into unexpected auditory experiences. Her compositions discover the beauty of melancholy as she creates a unique sonic landscape that reflects her philosophy and experiences.
She received third prize in the 2nd NC Wong Young Composers Award and was chosen for the electroacoustic composition fellowship at the Delian Academy 2024. She also participated in the URTIcanti contemporary music festival and the Internationales Digitalkunst Festival. Furthermore, she attended the South China Contemporary Creative Music Institute and has been selected for the Mixed Media category at the iISUONO Contemporary Music Week 2025. Her compositions have been performed in Greece, Germany, and Italy.
She studies Bachelor music composition at Hong Kong Baptist University, under the guidance of Eugene Birman, Camilo Mendez, Stylianos Dimou and Ka Shu TAM.
Franz Danksagmüller : pan:individual, “come closer, come home”
pan:individual is a participatory work for organ, live electronics, mobile phones, and audience that explores how individual perception, agency, and identity are transformed within digitally mediated collective systems. The piece examines how contemporary technologies shape experiences of belonging, guidance, and participation, blurring the boundary between individual action and collective behavior.
The performance unfolds as a distributed audiovisual environment in which audience members access individualized video streams on their mobile phones. Initially fragmented and asynchronous, these streams gradually align, forming a shared sonic and visual field. The organ part follows algorithmic and process-based instructions that guide constrained improvisation, functioning not as an authoritative voice but as one element within a larger collective texture shaped by live electronics.
As the performance progresses, audience members are invited to participate vocally, tuning into sustained pitches suggested by the audiovisual environment. Digital avatars address participants directly, encouraging alignment and proximity and culminating in the formation of a collective sonic organism.
Rather than presenting a narrative or explicit critique, pan:individual creates an experiential situation in which participants are invited to reflect on how digitally mediated systems influence collective identity, agency, and the desire to belong.
About the artist
Franz Danksagmüller (*1969) is an Austrian organist, composer, and media artist working at the intersection of instrumental performance, live electronics, rule-based improvisation, and participatory systems. He is Professor for Organ and Improvisation at the University of Music in Lübeck and currently Visiting Professor at the Royal Academy of Music, London. His works include music theatre, ensemble and vocal works, and participatory projects integrating digital technologies and audience interaction, presented internationally across Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America.
Yongbing Dai and Yiping Bai: Silent “human bird language”
This work, composed for saxophone and electronic music, uses the saxophone’s unique multiphonic harmonics, distinctive timbre, and various techniques such as tonguing to evoke an effect of ancient human “bird language,” akin to “abstract writing” incomprehensible to modern humans. It uses this to question the constant self-destruction that occurs on our shared planet. We can consider this: we have entered the age of artificial intelligence, with highly advanced science and technology. Yet, even in this civilized context, for their own benefit, humans can disregard and kill their fellow human beings. This is utterly absurd and tragic. How is this different from the barbaric slaughter of ancient times? What is the significance of the development of human technology and civilization?
About the artists
Dai Yongbing holds a doctorate in Electronic Music Composition from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. He currently teaches electronic music at the Art and Technology Department of the Composition Department of Wuhan Conservatory of Music. He was sponsored to study composition and electronic music composition at the Royal Danish Academy of Music, where he received a master’s degree in composition. In 2023, he studied sound art at the University of Music and Drama in Munich, Germany.In 2024, he was sponsored by the European Union’s Erasmus program to study electronic music composition with Professor Karlheinz Essl at the University of Music and Drama in Vienna, Austria. The electronic music work “Two Trembling Hearts” won the first prize at the Hangzhou International Electronic Music Festival. In June 2022, he was selected for the academic class of computer music design and performance at the IRCAM-Manni-festival Music Festival at Pompidou in Paris, France. His work “Two Worlds of Monks” won the first prize in the UPI-Sketch professional group at the 2022 Xenakis (CIX) Music Center in France. His wind band work “Non-Taoism” was premiered by the Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra. His works have been performed all over the world, such as Munich and Düsseldorf in Germany, Amsterdam in the Netherlands, Vienna in Austria, Lisbon in Portugal, Copenhagen in Denmark, New York in the United States, Tokyo in Japan, Seoul in South Korea.
Yiping Bai
Joe Wright: Cor Ddiglwed (Unhearing Chorus)
Cor Ddiglwed (unhearing chorus) takes inspiration from Daphne Oram’s ‘Bird of Parallax’, and was developed with the one-of-a-kind, Mini Oramics, developed by Tom Richards based on Oram’s designs for a revised version of her pioneering graphical synthesis machine.
In the piece, the author phrases/samples recorded with Oramics, alongside field recordings taken locally to his home in South Wales and live processed saxophone which uses the instrument as input to a phase vocoder designed to mimic the writing / replaying / overwriting process that Mini Oramics facilitates.
The piece was written in the context of a highly divisive by-election in which local communities in South Wales saw a hot rise in populist sentiment, and a rise in polarised rhetoric on and offline. While the technical inception of the piece draws heavily on Oram and the legacy of her synthesiser design, the field recording process at this time highlighted the importance shapes and forms in captured human and animal voices – seen through an Oramics lens. The piece explores the idea of diverse clashing narrative threads in a fight for attention – as a metaphorical mirror to the author’s recordings of local dawn choruses. Both in the piece and the context of its composition, these voices are, despite their differences, interconnected by common challenges and under-explored common ground, yet are broadly unheard by others.
The piece forms part of a broader body of recent work that explores Oramics in the context of Oram and Iannis Xenakis’ work, and the ways that their thinking and legacy can apply to contemporary musical composition, instrument design, and accessible musical tools and resources.
About the artist
Joe Wright is a musician and maker based in Cardiff, with an interest in collaborative music making, field recording, accessible music technology/practice, and creative code. As a saxophonist, Joe is currently playing across the UK and Europe with jazz/contemporary music groups led by Rob Luft, Corrie Dick, and in FORJ. He also has a long-standing collaboration – Onin – with experimental musician, James L Malone that explores unstable systems and atypical interactions. Recently, Joe has been exploring field recording with a focus on his local natural spaces in South Wales.
Nicolas Kummert: Poetic Encounter with the digital shadow
This proposal invites saxophonist Asya Fateyeva into an improvisatory performance that explores the encounter between acoustic virtuosity and real-time electronic transformation. The project centres on a live-electronics setup I have developed within artistic research contexts over several years—a system deliberately designed to be simple, flexible, affordable, and fast to deploy. It requires only a close microphone (ideally the Vigamusictools Intramic), a small audio interface, a laptop, and three compact controllers. Its purpose is not to impose effects but to extend the sonic and expressive possibilities of the acoustic instrument while remaining transparent and highly responsive.
The concept is straightforward: the saxophone produces the primary musical material, and I modulate that sound live through controlled timbral, spectral, and temporal transformations. The electronics behave as a reactive partner—what I call the performer’s digital shadow: a sonic counterpart that follows, shapes, questions, or briefly detaches from the acoustic gesture. The identity of the acoustic sound remains fully audible, while the electronic layer opens new directions within the improvisation.
The artistic foundations of this work draw on several research frameworks:
• Improvisation as assemblage (after Deleuze): the performance is approached as a self-emergent system in which performers, instruments, digital processes, acoustics, and feedback relations act together to shape the form in real time.
• Paulo de Assis’s Logic of Experimentation: the focus lies on what the instrument–electronics constellation can do when activated through exploratory performance, rather than on pre-defined material.
• Georgina Born’s theory of musical mediation: the setup foregrounds the interplay between acoustic sound, digital transformation, performer interaction, and audience perception.
• Laurent Cugny’s audiotactile perspective: the electronic layer functions as an extension of touch, gesture, and micro-timing rather than an external effect. The project treats improvisation as a co-embodied process that produces a hybrid sonic entity.
Musically, the performance is structured as a series of improvisatory episodes that examine different modes of relationship between acoustic and transformed sound:
– subtle extensions of timbre and resonance;
– interactive textures and rhythmical counterpoints between acoustic phrasing and electronic responses
– sections where Asya’s sound is heavily transformed in real time, while the unprocessed acoustic sound is replayed in the pauses of her playing, blurring the audience’s visual-aural connection, and questioning the musician’s immediate relationship to her own instrument.
Because the system is lightweight and adaptable, the collaboration requires limited rehearsal and can be shaped around Asya’s musical language and preferred improvisational strategies. The format proposes an accessible but conceptually rigorous exploration of improvisation, mediation, and electronic augmentation. It offers the conference audience an accessible example of how simple, flexible computer-music tools can generate rich musical dialogues and expand the expressive ecology of the acoustic instrument, shedding new light on various aspects of improvisation.
I propose to conclude the performance with a short discussion in which Asya can reflect on how the electronic shadow influenced musical decision-making, interaction, and perception—offering insight into the core research questions driving this work.
About the artist
Nicolas Kummert (1979) is a Belgian saxophonist, electronic artist, composer and researcher known for his melodic sense, openness and exploratory approach. He has recorded over 70 albums and performed worldwide with artists such as Lionel Loueke, Jeff Ballard, DRIFTER and many others. Active in hybrid acoustic–electronic projects, film and dance music, and interdisciplinary research, he develops innovative modulation processes and collaborates across jazz, poetry, contemporary dance and African music.
Jean-François Charles and Ramin Roshandel: Jamshid Jam
The sonic dust of a country that has been burned to the ground several times over the centuries and yet has formed some of the most elaborate and highly sophisticated musical structures to have ever existed. According to Persian myths, Jamshid, who ruled during several centuries, was responsible for inventions ranging from the manufacturing of weapons to the mining of jewels to the making of wine. He is also credited with the discovery of music. This is what brought the Jamshid Jam duet together: the search for music at the crossroads of the Radif tradition (Persian classical music) and the development of musical instruments such as the turntable and live electronics.
About the artists
Ramin Roshandel grew up in a family surrounded by artists; his luthier dad, his painter uncle, and his setar instructor Farshid Jam had strong influences on him as a teenager. Ramin worked with the renowned Mohammad Reza Lotfi at Maktab-Khāne-ye Mirzā Abdollāh and won second place in the 7th National Youth Music Festival in Tehran, Iran. As a composer, Ramin Roshandel works with improvisatory structures to contrast or converge with non-tonal forms.
Jean-François Charles is Associate Professor of Composition and Digital Media at the University of Iowa. He creates at the crossroads of music and technology. As a clarinetist, he has performed improvised music with artists ranging from Douglas Ewart to Gozo Yoshimasu. He worked with Karlheinz Stockhausen for the world premiere of Rechter Augenbrauentanz.
Ramin Roshandel & Jean-François Charles have worked on several projects together. Roshandel was the setār soloist for the premiere performances of Charles’ opera Grant Wood in Paris in 2019. They performed together as part of the live soundtrack composed by Charles and Nicolas Sidoroff to the 1923 Hunchback of Notre-Dame movie, a commission by FilmScene with premiere performances in November 2023 in Iowa. In 2025, they composed and performed a series of 13 concerts with the Red Cedar Chamber Music ensemble.
Setar: Ramin Roshandel: setar
Live electronics: Jean-François Charles