2022 «Get Going!» Portrait Series 

The egg becomes a word, the word a sound, and ultimately a work of art called “Ei.Gen.Klang” – a multi-sensory performance of sounds, words and images created by Jul Dillier, Flora Geisselbrecht and Bernhard Hadriga. A «Get Going!» grant from FONDATION SUISA helped see it come to fruition.

Jul Dillier is a sound researcher. To sit opposite him is to look into eyes that blaze with curiosity and passion. The world as a playground, as a place of adventure that invites topographical wanderings through words and sounds. Needless to say, this occasions questions of a philosophical nature. “I wanted to explore the origin or the beginning, both in the musical and the linguistic sense. But also the beginning of the world, the beginning of life, the beginning of humanity,” says Dillier, explaining the project’s driving question.

Dillier was born into a family from Canton Obwalden with a strong affinity for language. “My father directed radio plays, my brother’s a bookseller, my sister’s a theatre educationalist and my mother’s a speech therapist.” Laughing, Dillier describes himself as the black sheep of the family through his devotion to music and by becoming a pianist and drummer. Despite this, he’s never lost his love of things word-related – nor of the sounds they make.

When the Covid-19 pandemic stopped him commuting between his adopted home of Vienna and central Switzerland, he decided to pursue a master’s degree in jazz and improvised music in Linz. That’s where he came across viola player, vocalist and lyricist Flora Geisselbrecht and guitarist-cum-video artist Bernhard Hadriga, who was studying microbiology and genetics alongside music. When they sat down together to decide on a starting point for the project, it was Geisselbrecht who sparked their creative juices with a simple notion: “the egg”. “It felt like a ‘big bang’ moment, and perhaps it’s no coincidence that the Big Bang theorist, George Lemaître, coined the term ‘cosmic egg’,” explains Dillier.

There followed a succession of associations: the egg – incorporated as a diphthong (“Ei” – pronounced as in “eye” in English) in countless German words – opened up innumerable linguistic, musical, but also philosophical and historical dimensions, in which improvisational possibilities presented themselves like a stroll through a mirror maze. As the three admirers of linguistic acrobats such as Ernst Jandl and Kurt Schwitters embarked on their own vocal gymnastics, other horizons began to beckon: “The shape of the egg, the hen’s egg as food, the female ovum,” says Geisselbrecht. “The egg offers a vast array of points of reference with a wide variety of meanings.” Dillier adds: “It’s also the origin of countless creation myths, which we explored.”

With a creative explosion like this, there’s a risk of not seeing the wood for the trees. Everyone was aware of that. “We subjected ourselves to a rigorous system relatively early on,” explains Hadriga. “The FONDATION SUISA grant meant we could create a kind of art laboratory for experimentation and research.” Dillier adds: “We used compositional and improvisational techniques to think about how we wanted to realise certain aspects: playfully or as a narrative, sonically or visually.”

The name of the piece also served as orientation: “Ei.Gen.Klang”, a play on the German word “Eigenklang” [individual/personal sound] composed of the three words for egg, gene and sound; the suggestion is that the egg (in its form and meaning) is always moving towards sound. It was also clear from the outset that the project would culminate in an hour-long performance. The three-dimensional sound and stage space was deliberately constrained by the time factor to avoid letting the universe expand ad infinitum. And although “Ei.Gen.Klang” celebrated its successful premiere in Lucerne in December and in Vienna in January, the trio continues to play with the work’s “aggregate states” (a concept of physics) to ensure its continued evolution.

Rudolf Amstutz

juldillier.ch
instagram.com/ei.gen.klang
youtube.com/@EiGenKlang

arttv-Portrait
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JUL DILLIER

21.03.2022

«Get Going!» has existed as a FONDATION SUISA funding offer since 2018. With this new form of a grant, creative and artistic processes that do not fall within established categories are given a financial jump-start. At monthly intervals, we present the eight recipients of the 2022 «Get Going!» grant individually.

2022 «Get Going!» Portrait Series 

The Kaleidoscope String Quartet refuses to let itself be confined in the straitjacket of classical chamber music and in recent years has dared to push the boundaries in many directions in recent years and has thus also attracted attention at the most varied of festivals (including Cully Jazz and Murten Classics). The pandemic interrupted her latest project “Five” which is now gaining momentum again thanks to the «Get Going!» grant. Bandoneon player, Michael Zisman, is not just a fifth member who wants to keep venturing into unexplored territory. With the new violist, Vincent Brunel, an important personnel change has also been made, with which “Five” is to be transformed into a follow-up project on the basis of new compositional developments.
www.ksq.ch

arttv Portrait
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KALEIDOSCOPE STRING QUARTET

27.11.2023

«Get Going!» has existed as a FONDATION SUISA funding offer since 2018. With this new form of a grant, creative and artistic processes that do not fall within established categories are given a financial jump-start. At monthly intervals, we present the eight recipients of the 2022 «Get Going!» grant individually.

2022 «Get Going!» Portrait Series 

The ear as a microphone and an instrument; the brain as a mixing desk and the body as an individually perceptible subwoofer: with her new project “Coiled Continuum”, Céline-Giulia Voser – alias Cégiu – wants to turn music into a physically tangible experience. FONDATION SUISA is supporting her with “Get Going!” funding.

In Cégiu’s music, the texture of the surface features only briefly – merely in the first few seconds of a song, when it first comes into contact with the listener’s ears. After that, the music transforms into a vortex, into an intricately woven, meandering labyrinth that wends its way deep inside the subconscious of the listener and juggles with their emotions. Over the course of three albums, Cégiu has now got this down to a fine art: on “Skinny Souls” (2016), “Restless Roots” (2019) and “Glowing Goodbyes” (2021), her use of several languages not only topples the tower of Babel but also creates new and more intricate acoustic wefts along the way, which have the power to sound some unusual notes on the listener’s keyboard of emotions. In this way, the 39-year-old native of Central Switzerland, who has roots in Friaul and West Switzerland, manages the great feat of transferring the catharsis inherent in her music onto others.

One of her songs on “Restless Roots” is called “Il Silenzio – n’existe pas”, and it contains pretty much every element that makes a Cégiu composition so distinctive: she has experienced this non-existent silence with her own body when her family moved to an apartment building that sits adjacent to a castle park and is exposed to a vast amount of traffic noise.  “Suddenly”, Cégiu says, “I could hear my own body, the rushing of blood in my ears”. The despair that follows in the footsteps of this insight is vocally transformed into sound through whispers and shouts, and verbally born aloft in four different languages. “Growing up in a multilingual household, I noticed from a young age that certain states of mind or feelings can be expressed more eloquently in one language than in another.” “Dream on mon coeur”, she whispers over an abstracted, perennially circling cello that wanders through all the states of matter during the course of the piece.

The effect of music on our brain, on our body – this is also Cégiu’s focus in her current project, for which FONDATION SUISA will support her with “Get Going!” funding. She calls it “Coiled Continuum”, and the name says it all. Within this sealed, ever-revolving continuum, Cégiu wants to work with other cultural creators by passing on the products of her creative endeavours to others for them to process further and then in turn play the results back to Cégiu. 

“I am fascinated by the image of a continuously revolving spiral”, she says. “I want to integrate this approach at all levels of the project, whether that’s my own workflow, the collaborations themselves, or at the level of critical engagement. A constant back and forth, not least also in reference to how our lives actually work.” She is already in dialogue with the musician and producer Anna Murphy and the slam poet Dominique Macri, as well as the photographer Gian Marco Castelberg and – for the visual concept – with Bartholomäus Zientek. Others will follow. “Because we now live in a world strongly defined by visuality, I am also seeking interdisciplinary dialogue in this arena.”

In terms of its content, the theme of the project revolves around psycho-acoustic perception, something that the composer and installation artist Maryanne Amacher (1938–2009) engaged with intensively. “The ear”, Cégiu explains, “can not only perceive sounds but also generate its own, something that can be provoked with a stimulus”. The aim is to stimulate the ear and the brain to develop their own sounds when listening to music: “The hope is to create a new physical experience so that music becomes physically tangible.” This should be possible not just when streaming music (using headphones), but also live: “My dream would be that I can utilise the respective space and people’s behaviour in such a way that they in turn influence me on stage and that the audience thereby becomes part of the band.” In this context, and as with all of Cégiu’s work, beats play a defining role. For this purpose, she used the sounds of trolley suitcases in “Restless Roots” and the noise of insects on “Glowing Goodbyes”; now, the incidental noises made by the mouth when leaving voice messages are to be used to create the complex rhythms of the music.

Even though the result of “Coiled Continuum” is to become a complete work in the form of an album, Cégiu wants to use the possibilities afforded by digital technology to create a kind of audio diary during the work process. She feels that this visibility facilitates dialogue with others and thus also becomes part of the continuum.This form of working, this intensive engagement with the theme, all requires time and money. “This form of support from FONDATION SUISA, where no end-result and no timeframe have to be defined at the outset, provides incredible creative freedom that allows you to take risks”, Cégiu says when outlining the benefits of “Get Going!”. She feels that this is the only way to deeply engage with the work.

Rudolf Amstutz

cegiu.com

Portrait arttv
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CÉGIU

17.10.2023

«Get Going!» has existed as a FONDATION SUISA funding offer since 2018. With this new form of a grant, creative and artistic processes that do not fall within established categories are given a financial jump-start. At monthly intervals, we present the eight recipients of the 2022 «Get Going!» grant individually.

2022 «Get Going!»Portrait Series 

Singer-songwriter, Louis Jucker, from La Chaux-de-Fonds has created a completely independent world in recent years. With his sparingly intoned, experimental songs, he creates a soothing anachronism in the midst of a hectic everyday life. The «Get Going!» grant is now supporting him in a multi-year project that will culminate in the construction of a recording machine that is supposed to work without the use of electricity. The aim is to respond to the state of the world by creating local and simple ways of producing music.
louisjucker.ch

«Get Going!» has existed as a FONDATION SUISA funding offer since 2018. With this new form of a grant, creative and artistic processes that do not fall within established categories are given a financial jump-start. At monthly intervals, we present the eight recipients of the 2022 «Get Going!» grant individually.

2022 «Get Going!» Portrait Series 

The Ticino harp virtuoso has made a name for herself with her cross-genre compositions, in which she constantly explores and expands the possibilities of her instrument. The «Get Going!» grant now allows her to research the development of an additional element for the acoustic harp. This extension aims to overcome the limits of the tonal spectrum of the harp. This creates new scope for expanding the harp in order to create a new hybrid instrumental language.
ketyfusco.com

«Get Going!» has existed as a FONDATION SUISA funding offer since 2018. With this new form of a grant, creative and artistic processes that do not fall within established categories are given a financial jump-start. At monthly intervals, we present the eight recipients of the 2022 «Get Going!» grant individually.

2022 «Get Going!» Portrait Series 

Bern resident Hasan Nakhleh works with his brother Rami in the duo TootArd on a symbiosis between global dance music and Arab cultural heritage. Thanks to the «Get Going!» grant, he now finds the time and space to take an even more detailed look at this balance between East and West.

In our interview, Hasan Nakhleh keeps raving about Bern. About its beauty and the tranquillity, he found here. Nakhleh has been living in the Swiss capital since 2014 – love brought him to Switzerland. He has had a Swiss passport since 2021. This is not insignificant for someone who grew up in the Golan Heights. The Arab population is de facto stateless in the territory annexed by Israel. “Golan,” says Nakhleh, “is a homeland that is not a true home, whereas Bern is a place that is far from my own homeland.” 

The 35-year-old draws the creativity for his music from this field of tension. Together with his brother Rami, he has been making music since childhood. When they formed a band to perform in local clubs, they called themselves TootArd. Hasan laughs because the name means “strawberry” in English. “We did not want to be suspected of spreading political messages in our texts, and strawberry seemed like a harmless enough name to us.”

The duo has already released three albums. They called their second work “Laisser passer” – that is the name of the document they received instead of a passport. “This allowed us to leave the Golan Heights, but if we wanted to travel abroad, this always required tedious visa applications.”

As a Swiss national, he can now travel wherever he wants without any difficulty. While Hasan appreciates Bern’s tranquillity for his work, his brother Rami has remained in his home village. “This does not prevent us from working together,” he explains. While Rami is responsible for the beats, Hasan is responsible for the rest – including the vocals. And as “Migrant Birds”, the title of their most recent album, suggests they want to spread their infectious dance music with hypnotic beats, Arabic and oriental-inspired melodies and socially critical texts with a poetic touch like migratory birds around the world.

“I now want to perfect what we started on our last album,” he explains, by which he means he wants to create global dance music that is understood everywhere, but at the same time does not deny its origins. Thanks to the «Get Going!» grant, he now has the time, among other things, to retune his analogue and digital synthesisers so that he can play quarter tones with them. “These quarter tones are an integral part of the Arab tone system, but they are not playable on keyboard instruments. I therefore use tuning boxes that communicate with the instruments via “MIDI”. This allows the mood on the keyboards to be changed.” As a composer, on the other hand, the challenge is to strike the right balance between East and West, between his cultural home and the world in which he now lives and works.

Hasan Nakhleh describes the experiences he and his brother regularly have at the concerts, whether in Switzerland, London, Toronto, Tokyo or Cairo. “At our performances, people of the most varied origins come together to dance. This promotes tolerance because music generally has a unifying effect. In addition, we also thus help to reduce certain stereotypes, because we integrate Arab cultural heritage into contemporary musical robes.”

The «Get Going!» grant is “the best form of support you can get,” he emphasises. “If you enable artists to have financial freedom, there will always be a result.” He also considers the fact that no concrete result is associated with the grant as a source of motivation: “There is no external compulsion. So I don’t have to, which gives rise to the question: Do I want that?” With «Get Going!» – he emphasizes at the end of the interview – he is trusted as an artist. That is something utterly extraordinary. “This aspect alone gives me enough of a sense of personal duty to create something good.”

Rudolf Amstutz

tootard.com

«Get Going!» has existed as a FONDATION SUISA funding offer since 2018. With this new form of a grant, creative and artistic processes that do not fall within established categories are given a financial jump-start. At monthly intervals, we present the eight recipients of the 2022 «Get Going!» grant individually.

2022 «Get Going!» Portrait Series 

Simone Felber, a singer, is working on numerous projects to make Swiss folk music suitable for the modern era. And with the «Get Going!» grant she has been awarded, she now also wants to revive the dance of the dead.

She started making folk music at a late stage – actually only during her studies at the Lucerne School of Music. There Simone Felber met Schwyzerörgeli (a type of diatonic button accordion invented in the Canton of Schwyz) player, Adrian Würsch, and the double base player, Pirmin Huber, with whom she now forms the trio “Simone Felbers iheimisch”. Previously, she was mainly active in classical music; her participation in the choir molto cantabile, which is dedicated to contemporary music, influenced her greatly. As a city-dwelling nature lover, the Lucerne native discovered something in folk music that met her very personal needs: “We always strive for perfection in music. However, whereas classical music is about the perfect performance of sound, jazz and folk music offer you the opportunity to find your very own sound.”

This personal sound manifests itself not only in the trio “Simone Felbers iheimisch” but also in numerous other projects, such as in the women’s quartet “famm” or as the director of the choir “Echo vom Eierstock”. The trained mezzo-soprano is therefore not only concerned with finding a completely contemporary expression in non-verbal singing and yodelling, but, as a 30-year-old, also with expressing a stance which appeals to her generation. Modern Switzerland is multicultural, urban and faces societal, social and political problems, while at the same time nature is rising up and challenging the places of popular origin where climate change is concerned. Felber wants her music to reflect all of the above, whereas she frequently suspects folk music of being too far removed from everyday life. “Folk music sometimes reminds me of a glossy brochure,” she says before adding: “I, on the other hand, prefer recycled paper.”

She has joined forces with the jazz pianist, Lukas Gernet, for her latest project entitled “hedi drescht”. This involves jointly looking into the question of “What is home?” and setting their pictures to music with a stylistic kaleidoscope of classical, yodelling and jazz. On stage, the collection of songs “äinigermasse dehäi” becomes an interdisciplinary audiovisual performance in collaboration with the theatre collective Fetter Vetter & Oma Hommage, the video artist, Jules Claude Gisler, and the theatre-maker, Stephan Q. Eberhard.

For her «Get Going!» project, Felber is now going one step further by addressing the topic of death, which she has recently faced first hand due to the loss of some loved ones. She is particularly fascinated by the act of the dance of the dead. But who dances this dance? In folk music, the “Tänzli” exists: do the living dance there without sparing a thought for death or in order to celebrate life before death? Or is it death that dances, as on the baroque motifs that can be admired on the Spreuer Bridge in Felber’s hometown of Lucerne? Or even someone who is doomed to die and dances on their journey to another world? Felber has been exploring these questions for a long time. “In many cultures, life and death is a circular process, while we consider our existence to be a linear event,” she explains. “I want the crippling feeling which comes over us in the face of death to be transformed into an emotion that can lead us out again.” 

She does not yet know in detail what this will look like in the end. “However, I rather imagine an audiovisual installation that allows people to be confronted with the topic very personally in an intimate setting.” The «Get Going!» grant – she emphasises – gives her the freedom and certainty that she can now make this project a reality without stress or having to make too many compromises.

Rudolf Amstutz

Current album: hedi drescht – “äinigermasse dehäi”
simonefelber.ch

Portrait arttv
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SIMONE FELBER

07.06.2023

«Get Going!» has existed as a FONDATION SUISA funding offer since 2018. With this new form of a grant, creative and artistic processes that do not fall within established categories are given a financial jump-start. At monthly intervals, we present the eight recipients of the 2022 «Get Going!» grant individually.