Digital Musics & Sound Art

Stories We Told Ourselves

Daniel Hutchinson (ZA), Reza Khota (ZA), Zorada Temmingh (ZA), Nicholas Aphane (ZA), Kyla-Rose Smith (US/ZA), Eugene Skeef (UK/ZA), Garth Erasmus (ZA)

Curated by composer and music educator Daniel Hutchinson, Stories We Told Ourselves is an online music series with new works in video format created in isolation by six outstanding artists: Reza Khota, Zorada Temmingh, Nicholas Aphane, Kyla-Rose Smith, Eugene Skeef, and Garth Erasmus. Through their works, the six participants reflect on the theme of isolation during the Covid-19 lockdowns, and the stories they told themselves to cope during this period. While the first three works showcase their improvisation approaches through the jazz guitar, pipe piano organ, and expressive dance, respectively, the latter three fuse original scores with photography, visual art and poetry.

Sonic Garden - Sun. Sep 12

Sote (IR/US), Kimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi (IR/CA), Navid Asadi (IR)

Ata Ebtekar aka Sote (b. Hamburg, Germany) is an Iranian-American electronic music composer and sound artist based in Tehran, Iran. In the past 30 plus years, his music has been published by various companies, such as Warp Records, Sub Rosa, Opal Tapes, Diagonal, Morphine and Repitch among others. (11 albums, numerous eps, singles and compilation appearances)

Sonic Garden - Sat. Sep 11

Rojin Sharafi (IR/AT), mHz (IR/NZ), Houman Hoorsan (IR)

Rojin Sharafi (IR/AT) is a Vienna-based, Tehran-born sound artist, performer and composer of acoustic and electronic music, freely crossing the borders between genres. She creates entirely unique musical textures using analogue, acoustic and augmented instruments, as well as digital tools of her own devising. She is currently pursuing her masters in sound engineering and composition at the Vienna University of Music and Performing Arts. Her debut album “Urns Waiting to be Fed,” with Zabte Zote, has been lauded as “one of [2019’s] most ecstatic and fiercely original hours of music.”

Sonic Garden - Fri. Sept. 10

Siavash Amini (IR), Active Listeners Club (IR), Sepand Jamshidy (IR), Dariush Sardari (IR)

Siavash Amini (IR) is a composer from Tehran, Iran. He has worked with renowned international labels Room40, Hallow Ground, Opal Tapes and Umor Rex for the better half of the past 10 years.

Sonic Garden - Thu. Sep 9

Saba Alizadeh (IR), Sohrab Motabar (IR), Reza Atashran (IR)

Saba Alizadeh (IR): Born in Tehran in 1983, Saba Alizadeh is an unparalleled figure at the forefront of contemporary Iranian music. Alizadeh subsequently studied experimental sound practices at Calarts in Los Angeles. He began expanding his musical cosmos utilizing different instruments and methods of composing. Apart from Kamancheh, no-input mixer, modular synthesizer, laptop have been the main instruments that Alizadeh has created his sonic cosmos with. Alizadeh also uses a lot of manipulated historic audio recordings and field recordings in a neo-musique concrète fashion. Treating sound as an object has always been Alizadeh’s fascination. 

Trip trough "We Tripantú" (Mapuche's New Year Celebration) - Chin Chin Tirapíe

Chinchintirapie (CL), La Fabulosa República de la Montaña (CL)

The “We Tripantu” it’s the traditional new year’s celebration for Mapuche People, normally celebrated on June 24th, when the shortest day of winter is upon us. The winter solstice, is the biggest celebration for Mapuche communities, welcoming the return of the new sun and the new life.

Aotearoa Concert Night

An evening of experimental electronic live musical performance.

Bee Composed: An Entomological Fantasy

Artist: Lily Hunter Green (GB), Collaborators: Computer Scientist: Karun Matharu, Molecular Scientist: Dr Eyal Maori, Violinist: Tom Moore, Film: Zoe Coldham (With support from Arts Council England)

A Talk + Q&A from the Artist Lily Hunter Green Online presentation/exhibition of extracts from ‘Silencing the Virus’ (STARTS PRIZE NOMINATION) Bee Composed: An Entomological Fantasy will provide a creative synthesis of what can be learnt from honeybees in terms of social cognition, collective living and ecological balance via a talk and presentation on a series of immersive interactive play-tests and installations.

Compositions Digital Indaba 21

Dimitri Voudouris (GR/ZA), Hannes Taljaard (ZA), Neo Muyanga (ZA), Waldo Alexander (ZA), Yonela Mnana (ZA), Tiisetso Mashishi (ZA), Morné Van Heerden (ZA), Magda de Vries (ZA), Lungiswa Plaatjies (ZA), Matthijs van Dijk (ZA), Graham du Plessis (ZA), David Lubbe (ZA)

For the Digital Indaba 21, NewMusicSA commissioned three South African composers. These new works were premiered monthly in a concert series in Johannesburg and Cape Town. Panda Rhei is a new commission for violin and electronics composed by Dimitri Voudouris and performed by Waldo Alexander on violin and Voudouris himself on electronics at the Trevor Huddleston Memorial Centre (Johannesburg, ZA) on Sunday 7 March 2021. Cool as the Shade is my Soul.

Urgent Since a Long Time Now

Luca Forcucci (CH/IT)

The power of the voice (s) allied with poetry and (deep) listening are perhaps ways to deal with urgent terrestrial and human problems caused to the biosphere, which have been urgent for a long time now. The work is a sonic collage, like a surrealist poem based on podcasts conducted since 2018.