10 Jahre neuverBand !

neuverBand Ensemble for New Music was founded in 2013 over lunch in the cafeteria of the Basel Music Academy. The members of the Master of Contemporary Performance Programme felt that together they could offer a new perspective and approach to the performance of new music in Switzerland. Since then, the ensemble has performed around 40 programmes of about 120 works in Switzerland and abroad. The ensemble has premiered around 50 works in Switzerland and commissioned and premiered 25 works from composers around the world.

In keeping with our ensemble's commitment to expanding new chamber music repertoire, particularly by commissioning works from composers whose works are relatively unknown to Swiss audiences, this programme will present the world premiere of a new work by New York-based composer Alec Hall (in collaboration with the SOCAN Foundation). Through the use of field recordings and objets trouvés sonores, Hall creates dense networks of sound that are, at their core, critiques of contemporary Western politics and economics.

One of the most important activities of our ensemble is the "Construct-Radiate" biennial composition competition. This initiative has been instrumental in expanding the reputation of our ensemble internationally. In each edition of the competition, we receive about 400 applications from composers all over the world. This has also enabled us to come into contact with remarkable up-and-coming composers whose works were previously unknown to us. In our 10th anniversary concert programme, we would like to perform works by two of the previous winners, Yu Kuwabara and Michele Sanna (winners in 2018 and 2016 respectively).

Due to the pandemic, Leonardo Idrobo's s n er a de (commissioned by neuverBand, composed in 2019) has never been performed in front of a live audience (it was premiered at SMC Lausanne in a live stream concert). The work is a majestic sonic portrait of the composer's memories of musical evenings at home (usually with trios consisting of three plucked instruments: the Colombian tiple, the guitar and the requinto) organised on days of personal significance as offerings to loved ones.

To conclude the programme, we will present the Basel/Bern premiere of Donnacha Denney's powerful industrial/minimalist Glamour Sleeper.

-Paul Clift, neuverBand Artistic Director