Back on Stage. Instrumente, die ich nie zu spielen lernte [Konzert]

Eloain Lovis Hübner (diverse instruments and objects)

Ever since I was gifted an old, leaky, clattering clarinet by a friend in 2018, my work directly at the instruments in my music has become a more and more important component of my compositional process. In the time since then, I have written many pieces based on my extensive experiments with instruments and parts of instruments: among them the clarinet, the (now inexplicably disappeared) clarinet mouthpiece, electric guitar, trombone, violin, grand piano, harpsichord, harp, and many more, besides a steadily changing group of everyday objects and materials. Starting in around 2021, I began working with analog synthesizers (instruments, that, without directly practical contact, are hardly able to be put to use in pure »deskwork«), as well as the development of different microphoning concepts.

During the process of doing these always more comprehensive experimental »routines«, my desire also grew to not have them be understood merely as a compositional means for the sake of formatting the score (for other performers, and thereby to leave the domain of invisible and silent processes), but instead to develop an individual, independent musical practice. My access to instruments that I »can’t play« (in the classical sense »never learned to play«), was thus largely free from rehearsed and habitual conventions precisely because of this technical dilettantism. I could, by being in contact with the instrument in a completely direct and unadjusted manner, free from biases—in all its haptic objecthood—achieve results that professionals would have to at least work very hard to reproduce through unlearning their instruments. It became clear to me that the transmission from experimentation to writing to reproduction through another person creates a renewed, noticeable distance, in which a particular charm of the direct and completely unconventional is lost.

In early 2023, I produced the hour-long album »n.o.t.i.o.n.s«, for which I, in a stratified process, improvised on violin, clarinet, trombone, accordion, electric guitar, Korg MS20-mini, and various objects, in addition to doing recording and post-production entirely myself. This method of work, like the result, were very satisfying to me in many respects. With this in mind, I now dare to take the next step, another experiment: I trust myself, after many years, to go »back on stage«.