Our next Monday concert will feature the world premieres of the new works “အမှောင် – A Hmaung” by Hein Tint for Pat Waing, trombone and piano and “Aneignung” by Orm Finnendahl for Pat Waing, trombone and microtonal synthesizer. The pieces are embedded in a program of traditional music from Myanmar, electro-acoustic improvisations with the computer program “Quo” by composer Orm Finnendahl and miniatures for trombone and piano by György Kurtág.

The concert is the result of four preceding workshops with improvisational, compositional and medial parts and changing understandings of the roles of soloist, composer and ensemble. The outcome is a concert evening in which the diverse musical influences, origins and approaches of the participants become audible, in which common and different things can stand side by side and be heard anew in the juxtaposition.

Matthias Mainz: “Working with music from different stylistic contexts and especially with musicians from different musical cultures requires equal respect and attention to the other and their contexts. And contrary to the linear idea of a universalistic power of music, which automatically creates connection in exchange, the confrontation with differences presupposes knowledge of the contextuality of one’s own music-cultural knowledge and of what Donald Rumsfeld once called the “unknown unknowns”: the knowledge that not even the exact extent of one’s own ignorance of the culture, the contexts and the sensibilities of the other can be known. And if we are honest, this ignorance of the scope of the stranger also concerns an ignorance of our own inner changing contexts of thoughts and imprints, which are also never as linear and fixed in ourselves as we think ourselves to be.”

The Burmese Hsaing Waing master Hein Tint from Pyawbwe in Mandalay Province was a central actor of cultural exchange projects from Germany and France in the first years after the democratic opening of Myanmar. After moving with his family to Berlin in 2017, Hein Tint’s collaboration with his ensemble in Myanmar was now impossible due to the military coup of February 2021. The project is part of the effort to keep Hein Tint’s collaborations with Western musicians going and to explore the possibilities of his wonderful instrument Pat Waing in new contexts.

A cooperation of Ensemble Musikfabrik and Plattform für Transkulturelle Neue Musik e.V. with the kind support of the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia

Montagskonzert | 23. Mai 2022

Köln, Studio des Ensemble Musikfabrik

Orm Finnendahl – Aneignung (2022) world premiere
for Hsaing Waing, trombone, piano and electronics

Hein Tint – အမှောင် / A Hmaung / Darkness (2022) world premiere
for Hsaing Waing, trombone and piano

György Kurtág – Sechs Stücke für Posaune und Klavier (1999)

ထံတျာ / Htan Teya / trad. Children’s song

Orm Finnendahl/Ensemble – Quo – Improvisations/Signal-Processing for piano, trombone Pat Waing and Maung Zaing (Burmese gongs)

Hein Tint, Pat Waing
Bruce Collings, trombone
Benjamin Kobler, piano
Orm Finnendahl, electronics
Matthias Mainz, curatorial accompaniment