Sofie Meyer

18th August 14:00 - 17:00 LIVE on NEKO3 YouTube Channel

In order to be able to keep a fresh mind and to think ahead and build a better connection with younger composers and artists, we introduce a new concept for our recently-established NEKO.Lab initiative: micro-workshops. Our micro-workshop #3 takes place on 17.-18.8. and features the Danish composer and violinist Sofie Meyer. She is currently pursuing her masters degree in composition at the Estonian Academy for Music and Theatre under the guidance of Helena Tulve. She has participated in master classes with teachers such as Toshio Hosokawa, Chaya Czernowin and Jānis Petraškevičs. Her works have been performed in various festivals such as Muriad Festival, Commute Festival and the Latvian Music Festival. She is active as an improviser and performer of new music as well as a keen player of traditional music.

“During the micro-workshop I would like to work with distortion in different ways. The sketch is created with gradual and slow transformations off distortion exploring sound synthesis. The sketch is a continuation of a piece of mine called “Which seemed, when dreamed, to mean so profoundly much”. My wish is to prolong the piece into a longer form. When writing it I had the wish to work with substances of sounds. Sound itself being a source of arrival and departure of both the physicality of things and off the utopian dreaming world.

The title I found in Sylvia Plath’s poem ‘The Ghost’s leavetaking’.
‘Enter the chilly no-man's land of precisely
Five o'clock in the morning, the no-color void
Where the waking head rubbishes out the draggled lot
Of sulfurous dreamscapes and obscure lunar conundrums
Which seemed, when dreamed, to mean so profoundly much’
(excerpt from the poem)

Also should be mentioned that the sketch encompasses ideas as well as instructions on how to play. The ideas are marked in pink and these are meant to be played as experiments during the workshop.”

For reference, check out our micro-workshop #2 ft. Athanasia Kotronia: https://youtu.be/qx05GNVO1HU

………………………………………………………………………………………………

Info about NEKO.Lab : micro-workshops

Each year our micro-workshops will feature a diverse, equality-respecting collection of young composers mainly still in the midst of their studies. Each workshop lasts for 2 days and circles around a micro-piece of 3-5min in duration, or a draft. It can be a technique or an idea for which the composer simply needs musicians, or a draft of a piece specifically written for our ensemble and has potential to become an “actual” commission in the future. The composer will submit a score/draft slightly before the first session and will then work it privately with us on the first day. The second workshop day will be a session open to the public (physically and via social media channels) to have a closer look at the process. At the end of the second day we will perform the result to the audience. The performance will be arranged like a pop-up concert and repeated multiple times during a time frame of a couple of hours so that people can walk in and catch the performance as many times as they want. Based on our experience in working with composers over the past few years we have come to the realisation that the active participation of musicians in the creative process is of high importance for composers. Throughout the process composers will carry many of their doubts with them, and each process will differ from the conception to the actual realisation. But if it was that the composers and performers were open to engage in a dialogue throughout the process and conduct preliminary experiments with some ideas, occasionally accepting that some ideas do not work would be much easier. The composers would be encouraged to find solutions and improvements in an early stage of the composition which would greatly benefit the future work, whereas the musicians would gain a whole different understanding about the work and its ideas and would thus be able to perform and work on it on a higher, personal level. We would like to extend our gratitude towards to the Danish Composers' Society for supporting this initiative.