Creaziun 2021–2022
What does it mean to compose for improvisers?
Creaziun is an artistic project I initiated and direct. In each edition, Swiss composers and the Slide Ensemble create new works together, in a process where the roles of composer and performer are open to negotiation.
A second edition, with other composers and a new line-up of the ensemble, is in progress: Creaziun 2026–2027. The two editions are separate projects that share the same question.
- Concept
- Diego Kohn
- Direction
- Artistic direction and production, call for composers, fundraising, venues, creative team
- Ensemble
- Slide Ensemble
- Next edition
- Creaziun 2026–2027 (in progress)
Edition I · 2021–2022
Katharina Weber · Christian Wolfarth · Annette Schmucki · Mathias Steinauer
Creaziun (Romansh for “creation”) began in summer 2020, in the middle of the pandemic. Four Swiss composers from different regions and language areas, Katharina Weber (Bern), Christian Wolfarth (Zurich), Annette Schmucki (Bernese Jura) and Mathias Steinauer (Ticino), received a carte blanche to answer the project’s question with a piece for the Slide Ensemble: two saxophones, viola and harp.
None of them arrived with a finished score. Each piece took shape in co-creation sessions with the ensemble in autumn and winter 2021/22, through dialogue, trying out, listening and shared decisions. The result was four very different works, each clearly its composer’s, and each made to measure for the ensemble.
The works were premiered in March 2022 on a tour through four cities in three language regions.
“The starting point was the question: what does it mean to compose for improvisers? At times the project came closer to co-creation than to improvisation, and that is fine. In the end, improvisation and composition were tools, statements and ways of working. What mattered most was doing something together.”
Diego Kohn, in the documentary
- Concerts
- La Voirie, Biel · 5 March 2022
Das Institut, Zurich · 8 March 2022
Spazio Elle, Locarno · 12 March 2022
Pakt, Bern · 25 March 2022 - Also
- Vier Wörter at the Zürcher Sax Fest
- Ensemble
- Gemma Galeano Ballestar, saxophones · Ferran Gorrea i Muñoz, saxophones · Marina Mello Andrade, harp · Diego Kohn, violin, viola
The film
The four pieces
A piece about separation and connection: strict rules keep the four players in their own systems, some sequences decided by dice, until improvisation draws them together.
Four words (Fremde, Hut, Flüstern, Fund) become a spoken text that each musician hears as an audio score. The voice generates entries, durations, pitches and rhythms, all decided together.
A piece that starts from water: the sound of real water and objects meets the instruments, with a refrain drawn from the brook accompaniment of Schubert’s song “Wohin?”.
(von Menschen und Räumen), for four improvisers. An imagined castle, room by room, from the lake to the tower and the forest.
Voices from the process
«Ich finde es illusorisch, wenn man denkt, man sei allein auf der Welt und hätte alles im Griff.»
“I think it is an illusion to believe you are alone in the world and have everything under control.” Annette Schmucki
«… dass ich nicht immer der grosse Komponist als ‹Diktator› im Zentrum stehe, das möchte ich eigentlich nicht.»
“I don’t want to always be the great composer standing at the centre as a ‘dictator’.” Mathias Steinauer
«Für mich hat das auch eine sehr wichtige soziale Komponente: dass man anfängt, das zu respektieren, was aus einem Kollektiv rauskommt.»
“For me it also has an important social side: you begin to respect what comes out of a collective.” Katharina Weber
Concerts and rehearsals
Visual identity
Credits
- Concept, direction
- Diego Kohn
- Composers
- Katharina Weber, Christian Wolfarth, Annette Schmucki, Mathias Steinauer
- Documentary
- Felix Hergert
- Graphic design
- Upset
- Photos
- Alicia Olmos Ochoa, Tobias Giezendanner, Helena Steinauer, Ueli Zysset, Slide Ensemble
- Supported by
- Fondation SUISA, Stadt Zürich Kultur, Pro Helvetia, Schweizerische Interpretenstiftung SIS, Swisslos / Kultur Kanton Bern, Oertli-Stiftung, Stadt Biel
- Press
- Hannah Frei, «Ein Knopf im Ohr gibt den Takt vor», Bieler Tagblatt, 2 March 2022
The second edition, with new works by Jürg Frey, Jacques Demierre, Lucas Niggli and Asia Ahmetjanova, has its own page: Creaziun 2026–2027 →