20:00, Walcheturm, Zürich
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SARAH DAVACHI (Calgary, Canada) Concert
As a composer of electronic and electroacoustic music, Davachi's compositional projects are primarily concerned with disclosing the antiquated instruments and forgotten sonics of a bygone era in analog synthesis, with concurrent treatment of acoustic sources – particularly organ, piano, strings, and woodwinds – often involving de-familiarization through processing. Her work considers the experience of enveloped sonic dwelling, utilizing extended durations, psychoacoustic manipulations, and simple harmonic structures that emphasize variations in overtone complexity and natural phasing patterns. Sarah Davachi holds a bachelor's degree in philosophy from the University of Calgary, and a master's degree in electronic music and recording media from Mills College in Oakland, California.
Her work as a music researcher concerns aspects of experimentalism, organology and archival study, and phenomenology and perception, and has been published and presented within Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Since 2007, Davachi has also had the unique opportunity to work for the National Music Centre (formerly Cantos Music Foundation) in Calgary as an interpreter, content developer, and archivist of their collection of acoustic and electronic keyboard instruments. Additionally, she has worked for the Western Front in Vancouver as an assistant in archival audio digitization, and has lectured at Simon Fraser University and Vancouver Film School. She has held artist residencies at The Banff Centre for the Arts (Banff, Canada), STEIM (Amsterdam, Netherlands), WORM (Rotterdam, Netherlands), EMS (Stockholm, Sweden), and OBORO (Montréal, Canada), and is the recipient of grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and SOCAN. Davachi currently resides between Vancouver, BC, Canada and Montréal, QC, Canada.
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CATERINA BARBIERI (Bologna, Italy) Concert
Caterina Barbieri is an Italian composer now based in Berlin.
She has composed music for old and new synthesizers as well as for string instruments. Her focus on minimalism in composition arises from a meditation on primary waveforms and exploration of the polyphonic and polyrhythmic potential of sequencers. By means of synthesis, pattern based operations and subtractive counterpoint, her music draws severe geometries in time and space. Her work explores themes of machine intelligence and object oriented perception in sound through approaching music practice as an integrative cognitive feedback between humans and technology. Repetition and pattern permutation as media to perceptual insight lie at the core of her current sonic research.
Since 2013 she has researched and produced music at the renowned Elektronmusikstudion in Stockholm, where she has intensively composed for the Buchla 200 system. Her debut album Vertical, composed for Buchla 200 and vocals, was produced between Elektronmusikstudion and the Royal University of Music in Stockholm and released via Important Records’ Cassauna offshoot (8 October 2014). Since then, her work has been presented in festivals and venues such as The Long Now, MaerzMusik and Atonal (DE), CTM Vorspiel (DE), Goethe Institute (JP), Norbergfestival (SE), Worm (NL), Angelica (IT), De Montfort University (UK), Manchester University (UK), EGH (IT), Les Urbaines (CH), 73rd Venezia Film Festival (IT), Paris Fashion Week 2016, NTS Radio, RBMA.
2017 sees her releasing the solo work Patterns of Consciousness (2LP, April 2017) on Important Records and the debut album of her collaborative project with Carlo Maria Punctum on Berlin’s imprint Summe (LP, May 2017).

«A pattern creates a certain state of consciousness. Once it is created, the pattern stands as an object exactly like the sound waves which generate it. We are at the same time inside and outside of the object. While being it, we observe it.Over time we become familiar with the inner structure of the pattern. We decode its gravitational centres, where our psycho-motor attention is attracted, where everything seems to be drawn. When a change in the pattern occurs it causes a perturbation of the previously established field of forces. This causes consciousness to fracture, potentially unfolding layers of perceptions we weren't aware of or simply suggesting that we access only a fraction of our psychic potential. The layered nature of consciousness and the relativity of perception are some of the biggest secrets we can experience through sound.» (Caterina Barbieri)
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GEA BROWN (Prato, Italy)
«28», Sound Performance
With a background in Art History, Gea Brown begins to take an interest in music and approaches djing by intertwining sounds of the past and present to create collages of sounds that acquire compositional autonomy. In 2012 she moves to Milan where her research deepens by the participation in workshops and the contact with Spazio O', a center for musical experimentation. She creates live sets and environmental soundtracks, collaborating with designers and artists working with dance, theater, performance and video art.
The experimentation she has carried out over the last year is characterized by the use of materials of a vocal nature: spoken words, sound poetry, concrete poetry, conversation pieces, comedy. The new projects go towards a performative approach: each live set tests in a different way the possibility of a balance between the narrative-semantic function of the vocal element of a spoken language and its intrinsic sound dimension, without one dominating the other. She currently lives in Prato, where she works as a sound artist and curator for visual art and sound projects, at SC17 and Lottozero Textile Laboratories.
Her live set and sound performances have been shown in Contemporary Art Centers and Cultural Institutions (Triennale di Milano, Palazzo Strozzi di Firenze, Istituto Svizzero di Roma, Villa Romana, Museo Marino Marini) and Festival (S/V/N, Terraforma, Hand Signed, Transart, Sonic Somatic, NODE).
In 2016 she was artist in resident at Hotel Pupik (Scheifling, Austria).

Sarah Davachi
Sarah Davachi Listen!
Caterina Barbieri
Caterina Barbieri Listen!
Gea Brown Listen!