Asko|Schönberg in Holland Festival: Mutability

World premiere Sunday 23 June

Wandering in the music as among the trees of a forest. Intimate, vast and awe-inspiring at the same time. Twelve miniatures in the form of solo instruments come your way. They reflect musical characters, as changeable as life itself.

Pioneering multimedia work

For Mutability composer Yannis Kyriakides asked 12 other composers to write two- to three-minute miniatures. Some of them perform the music themselves, alongside the musicians of Asko|Schönberg. 'Each piece tells its own story,' Kyriakides says, 'which is not expressed in language but embodied by the musicians.'
The music sounds live, but also transformed by a series of algorithms that constantly mutate the pre-recorded image and sound of the soloists. Composer Yannis Kyriakides and Darien Brito who signs for the audio visual art, creative coding, decide which algorithms influence their compositions. This could be based on the harmonic spectrum, or the volume, for example.   

In a hallucinatory space designed by Theun Mosk | Spacetime, soloists, image projections and electronics meet. The audience moves freely through the concert installation that is constantly changing. Sometimes the identity of the instrument can be heard, other times not. From the 12 intersecting life paths grows an enchanting music to stay in for a while - the full six hours of the mutation process, or part of it.

The makers

You may come across Genevieve Murphy playing her composition on a bagpipe, or Andy Moor with his electric guitar. Other composers include Silvia Borzelli, Trevor Grahl, Claudio Jacomucci, Dmitri Kurljandski, Anna Korsun, Brigitta Muntendorf, Mayke Nas, Aurélie Nyirabikali Lierman, Martijn Padding and Jasna Veličković  

The projections were created by Theatre Utrecht's Innovation:Lab based on motion captures of the musicians.

Þ Mutability - Holland Festival 2024 - Asko Schoenberg (askoschoenberg.nl)

Sun 23 June - Muziekgebouw, Amsterdam

The concert installation Mutability consists of four parts that can be visited as a whole (with a passe partout), or separately. Each part lasts 1.5 hours and offers a full-fledged experience. During the performance, audiences may walk in and out and move freely around the hall. Food and drinks are available in the Muziekgebouw.

timeslots from 15:30, 17:15, 19:00 and 20:45.

Mutability is a co-production of the Holland Festival, Asko|Schönberg and Innovation:Lab