Cemetery Chapel Concerts - Velvele / The International Nothing

Cemetery Chapel Concerts is a concert series featuring musicians from Berlin’s Echtzeitmusik scene and international guests. From May to September, various chapel spaces of the Evangelischer Friedhofsverband Berlin Mitte open for the first time as venues for improvisation, experimental music, and sound art.

The large chapel at Sophien II Cemetery offers a unique setting in which architectural stillness meets the slow breathing of sound. For more than two decades, The International Nothing has refined a practice of precise composition intertwined with intuitive interplay, in which two clarinets merge into a single breathing sound body. Their music, situated between apparent stasis and subtle movement, resonates with the contemplative atmosphere of the chapel.

In contrast to this, and yet in deep affinity with it, the Velvele Duo—Merve Salgar and Anıl Eraslan—moves within a space between orthodox forms and contemporary content. Alternating between plucked and bowed gestures, tanbur and cello create a crystalline bridge where simultaneity and restlessness meet, share the sonic space, and come together again. Their performance focuses on the liminal space between tradition and experiment, through the acoustics of the chapel and extending into the surrounding cemetery.