As part of the Performing Arts Festival 2023

Antonia Baehr »Inside the Piano« (20‘) 

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Fernanda Farah »what draws are the eyes« (20‘) 

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Andrea Neumann »ip6« (20‘) 

Composer and musician Andrea Neumann has been playing the same instrument for 20 years: a self-made piano frame without a keyboard.  The instrument with its weight, materials, preparations and its sounds shape her life: the tempo when traveling, the posture when making music, the way of listening. Instrument and person influence each other, they have mixed in the past decades. For »Tossed Sounds« three pieces were written for Andrea Neumann – under one condition: The instrument is absent on stage. What remains of a musician without her instrument? What traces does it leave behind? What can you hear? Can one see the imprints that have passed into the body? Does the absent instrument choreograph the musician’s performance? Is it The Master of Ceremony – more present than if it were present?

The three pieces are informed by the respective practices of the three artists: Baehr – performance, Farah – acting/dance, Neumann – music. Each fills the void of the absent instrument with her individual skills. In the process, a meta-instrument emerges in each of the three works that, in reference to the absent instrument, expands into the concrete space, into new aesthetic spaces and other disciplines. Although absent, the instrument is present in all three portraits: as trace, foil, score, sound, impulse generator, and in the performer’s body archive.