Nikola Lutz

Nikola Lutz - Composer - Saxophone

Prof. Nikola Lutz is a composer-performer based in Stuttgart. Apart from her lively concert activities as a saxophone player, Nikola is composing electronic music and working with sonic extensions of the instrument. In sound sculptures between composed and improvised contemporary music electronic and acoustic sonorities are overlapping and newly connected to each other. She especially focuses on interdisciplinary concepts, for example in her work series „GraphicSound“, where she works with graphic scores as well as modified empty vinyls with the aim of exploring audiovisual perception and sound conception. Her works have been performed in festivals and concert series such as Eclat festival Stuttgart, K-R-A-M Stuttgart, Donaufestival Korneuburg (AU), Festival Plein les sens Mulhouse (F), Beijing Central Conservatory (China). Her music has been commissioned by SWR Stuttgart, Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kunst Baden-Württemberg, Musik der Jahrhunderte, State Theatre of Oldenburg, T-art productions and others. 2018 she premiered foco_2018, a multimedia music performance commissioned by Deutschlandradio.

Online works: www.nikolalutz.de/

Terra australis incognita I and II (2019)

for 4-channel tape and improvising ensemble

The piece is divided into two parts which are self-sufficient, they are not necessarily meant to be performed successively. The audio tape is based on a field recording of a pontoon which is located in the backyard of the famous opera house in Sidney as well as other every day noises. The pontoon croaks and squeaks as if it were about to break apart from its task of connecting two worlds together - the realm of the water and the one of the land. The resulting sounds are electronically examined as if they were filmed by an underwater camera which suddenly reveals strange creatures popping up from the deepness, frightening, alien and rare, that disappear again after a quick appearance. Every perspective points to the ambiguity of the space that inhabits its existence between two worlds. This material forms a 4 channel tape, which the musicians encounter using improvisation. In part II it is connected to a Korean poem by Yi Sang, mirroring the ambiguity of the space in a different way.

The Darkroom of the Map (2019)

for 4-channel tape, live electronics and improvising ensemble

This piece is related to text fragments from a book with the same title by Yi Sang. Samples of a Korean drum (Buk) and a European instrument (grand piano) encounter each other in such a way that they are not immediately recognized. Gestures seem to be identical for both sound sources but the influence of the different cultural attitudes becomes perceptible in a subliminal way. However, it is not a piece for drums and piano; the instruments are randomly chosen as a metaphor for the accidental encounters life bears. In the context of a global culture that becomes increasingly delocalized and overlaps different cultures in an unforeseen way, The Darkroom of the Map reaches out to use this phenomenon in order to create new connections that make sense in spite of their accidental origin just like the neuronal network in our brains that works as an automatic non-stop rule extracting machine.

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