Ensemble Phœnix Basel

The work “UR” for five instruments and live electronics by Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg is the chamber music counterpart to the powerful orchestral work “Kraft” and combines the dense energy of Lindberg’s early work – inspired by punk rock and spectralism – with precisely controlled electronic sound manipulation. Rhythms, chord sequences, and harmonic processes were generated using mathematical calculations and the programming language “LeLisp.” The title “UR” refers both to the ancient Sumerian city of Ur and to the prefix commonly used in German and Swedish to denote something extreme, primordial, or primitive. Furthermore, the word “ur” means “clock” or “storm” in Swedish.

Drawing on Peter Maxwell Davies’ “Eight Songs for a Mad King” as an inspirational model for its compositional form, “over the threshold; right foot” by the Norwegian composer Tze Yeung Ho draws upon ancient Chinese poems about court ladies from various dynasties. Each text focuses on the relationship between a parrot and the person speaking to it, as owning a parrot is a symbol of courtly loneliness – since the bird would parrot back the thoughts directed at it.

The music of “Enigma” by Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir is inspired by the concept of “in-between” and juxtaposes flow and fragmentation. Pulsating stasis – the “whole,” an expanding and contracting foundation – contrasts with fragmented elements – shadows of things that exist as part of the whole. Harmonies emerge and fade away or disintegrate in various ways, leaving traces of elements that project themselves through different textures and nuances and gradually take on a form of their own. Some return to the core, others remain separate. Throughout the piece, the perspective constantly shifts between the two – the foundation and the fragmented shadows – yet the focus always remains on their relationship – the “in-between.”

A program that seeks to break through the boundaries of “absolute new music” through musical-theatrical and electronic means.

Program

The title of this program, “Micropolyphony,” was coined by the Hungarian-Austrian composer György Ligeti. The term describes a compositional technique in which a large number of voices (often 20 or more) are interwoven so densely and closely that the individual lines are no longer perceptible to the listener as melodies. In the case of a piano duo, the possibilities are naturally limited, but in the third movement, Ligeti manages – through the overlapping rapid thirty-second-note runs within the soundscape created by the sustain pedal – to create the illusion of a constantly expanding and changing “sound cluster” that, like a living organism, slowly expands, contracts, and becomes brighter or darker. The second movement is a resonant, humorous homage to the fathers of American minimalist music, Steve Reich and Terry Riley.

In his sextet “Satka,” French composer Christophe Bertrand employs repetitive, interlocking sound patterns and phase shifts that are strongly reminiscent of Steve Reich’s minimalist music and György Ligeti’s micropolyphony.

Georg Friedrich Haas writes about his work: “The weak interaction plays an important role in the proton-proton reaction that converts hydrogen into helium in the sun. The energy released during this process is the basis of the solar radiation reaching the Earth.”

Typical of Georg Friedrich Haas, the piece explores the microtonal inner world of sounds and translates this invisible yet life-giving physical phenomenon into a highly sensitive, hypnotic tapestry of sound. The work was commissioned in 2024 by the Israeli “Meitar Ensemble” and premiered in 2025 under the direction of Pierre-André Valade at the “Ultraschall Berlin” festival.

The German violinist and composer Friedemann Treiber is our “concertmaster” and, like his former teacher Hansheinz Schneeberger, reveres the music of Alban Berg. His distinctive musical language is inspired by the music of the Second Viennese School and moves between dodecaphony, limited aleatoricism, and free tonality and atonality, always driven by a strong desire for emotional expression.

Program

In 1990, French composer Mark Andre experienced a moment of revelation when he came across a score by Helmut Lachenmann, who would later become his composition teacher. For it was here that Andre discovered music of an unvarnished, existential urgency, sparked by a practical exploration of performance practices – a search for forms of expression beyond standardized playing techniques. Tapping, breathing, striking, tearing, plucking – the vocabulary of these almost physical states of musical aggregation has since become a crucial key for Andre, not only to unlock entirely new sonic spaces. As a devout Christian, he seeks through his compositions to “musically observe and bring to life the tender, fragile, comforting breath of the Holy Spirit.” For Mark Andre, the catalyst for this immersion and exploration of spartanly arranged sound spaces – which often seem archaic in their mysterious richness of gesture – was reading the text “The Curtain Is Torn” by theologian Margareta Gruber. In it, she examines the passage in the Gospel of Mark in which the tearing of the temple curtain upon the death of Jesus Christ is interpreted as a symbol of both God’s presence and God’s absence.

Mark Andre now explores the previously hidden worlds of sound through each of the “risses,” infusing them with familiar and unsettlingly foreign constellations of sounds that, in their subtlety and tension, compel the listener to pay attention. Whether this might reveal the breath of the Holy Spirit remains a secondary consideration. (Guido Fischer)

The composer prefaces the cycle with the following biblical quotation:
“On the seventh day, God completed the work he had created, and he rested on the seventh day after he had finished all his work.
And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy; for on it God rested after he had completed all the work of creation.” (Gen 2:2–3)

Before “riss 2,” which is divided into the sections I–XIV, he includes a quote from the aforementioned theologian Prof. Dr. Margaretha Gruber, a nun of the Franciscan Sisters of Sießen:
“Jesus chooses the rift as the setting for his life. And it will tear him apart; the place of his death, stretched between heaven and earth on the cross, makes this visible.”

The work “iv 6” for solo trombone was commissioned by our trombonist Michael Büttler, who performed with the Ensemble Modern at the world premiere of the “riss” cycle. “iv” stands for “introverted” and represents a series of very intimate, fragile, and mysterious works for solo instruments and chamber ensembles.

Program

Julia Hülsmann is one of the most distinctive voices in European jazz. Her piano playing combines clarity and depth, lightness and resonance. As part of a carte blanche project for the Ensemble Phoenix Basel, she is developing new music that bridges the gap between improvised jazz and contemporary classical music. Together with the ensemble, she is exploring new sonic territory: improvisation, open forms, and floating soundscapes meet the possibilities of an extraordinary ensemble – an inspiring challenge for the composer.

Program

In this program, the Ensemble Phoenix Basel presents three works that, in different ways, explore friction, resistance, and vulnerability. Zara Ali, Laura Bowler, and Hannah Kendall create sonic spaces in which technological systems, physical experiences of pushing boundaries, and social tensions overlap. What unites these works is music that does not soothe but challenges. It deals with pressure and overwhelm, with exclusion and belonging, and with the question of how the past shapes our present.

Zara Ali’s “Isolation Forest” is inspired by an anomaly-detection algorithm. From dense microtonal sound fields, individual instruments emerge as deviations, detach themselves from the collective, and are reintegrated into it. This creates a soundscape that lies between mathematical order and organic movement, raising questions about belonging and isolation.

Hannah Kendall’s “Even Sweetness can scratch the throat” takes its title from a poem by Ocean Vuong and refers to the dual meaning of sugar: it represents sweet pleasure, yet is simultaneously linked to the painful history of colonialism and exploitation. Kendall translates this ambivalence into multi-layered music.

At the heart of the program is Laura Bowler as a composer and soloist with her work “fff.” Emotional states such as anger, frustration, and exhaustion give rise to a musical and physical experience that pushes the boundaries. The voice grows increasingly intense, the energy increasingly immediate, until the expression culminates in an existential cry. In doing so, Bowler transcends the boundaries between composition, performance, and music theater.

For Lars Mlekusch, who conducted the world premiere of “fff” in 2017 at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, this performance also marks a personal reunion with one of Laura Bowler’s key works.

Together, the three works unfold a panorama of contemporary composition that makes technological, social, and historical interconnections audible, while coming across as both precise and immediate. (Lars Mlekusch)

Program

Collective composition is a definition still regarded today with some skepticism. Musical hierarchies encountered throughout the history of western music have turned musicians and composers into highly specialized entities, whose point of contact often gravitates on the materialisation of a score. In this collaboration, we propose a more horizontal approach, seeking to blur the traditional roles of musical agents – from performers and composers to audiences and all the participants in the process of creating and listening to a musical work. (Gustavo Costa)

To the untrained ear, every instrument has its own timbre. But what happens when you delve into the inner workings of an instrument?
Using contact microphones as well as microphones placed inside the instruments, Stanislas Pili makes the subtlest vibrations, resonances, and preparations audible and amplifies them in the concert hall. From the “microcosm” of sound emerges a musical “macrocosm” that offers the audience a new perspective on the Ensemble Phoenix Basel. (Stanislas Pili)

Program