Recordings of the 32nd MBZ concerts published
The concerts that delighted the audience of the 32nd MBZ are now available in form of videos.
Whether you attended live performances and wish to repeat the experience or missed and regretted it, the concerts of the 32nd MBZ are now available on the festival's website. Read about which concerts have been made available and where to find them below.
Marko Ciciliani, composer and intermedia performing artist, born in Zagreb but matured in Germany, the Netherlands and England, created five compositions, or, as he calls them, the augmented reality miniatures for the 2023 MBZ. This world was unlocked to all interested passers-by via a QR code on posters placed in public spaces in Zagreb. In order to appeal to all types of audiences, from the most knowledgeable to those just discovering experimental and alternative forms of art for the first time, Ciciliani put on the posters the abovementioned characters in the form of SF comics, typical for the technophile era of the 1950s and visually comprehensible. The lines these characters utter can be heard as actual recorded voices or synthesized voices in a layered sound environment.
You can listen in on what it sounded like at the concert HERE.
BALKAN AFFAIRS is a Biennale project aimed at opening up space for the development of young composers in the Balkan region, encouraging them to exchange ideas and understand each other’s cultural similarities and differences. That is, the war that led to the breakup of Yugoslavia and the challenges of transition, which is in fact the fundamental preoccupation of all compositions, created unequal conditions for composers living in different Balkan states. Although they were just beginning their lives when it took place, these six composers (and many others) from every part of the Balkans, from Slovenia to the Republic of North Macedonia, are still affected by its consequences to this day. Moreover, the extent to which the situation with the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine has also contributed to the unfavorable parameters cannot be overemphasized. This project seeks to provide equal opportunities to all six composers, while also striving to encourage the region to reconnect through a contemporary and more inclusive perspective. Cooperation with an internationally renowned European ensemble, Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, as co-producer of the project, undoubtedly contributed to this effort.
Listen to the individual musical numbers of the Balkan Affairs concert at the link and the concert in its entirety HERE.
The Collettivo_21 is a contemporary music ensemble based in Piacenza, Italy, and founded in 2015. It participated in major contemporary music festivals and premiered pieces by many composers such as Frederic Rzewski, Giorgio Colombo Taccani, Luca Guidarini, Luca Ricci, Claudio Panariello, Alessandro Bono and Sara Stevanović. The 2023 MBZ, presented works by several contemporary composers together with a shared electronic composition in three parts called MicroTape, an intermezzo, or a common thread of a kind between several pieces by different composers. The program also includes two first performances, a first performance of a new version of an existing composition, and a revised version of an already performed composition. The performance, held at the Pogon Jedinstvo, combineed works for ensemble and electronics, pure electronics and solo instrument, the latter in Giulia Lorusso’s compositions on the electric guitar.
You can listen to this concert in its entirety or as individual musical numbers.
Until the next MBZ edition, enjoy the recordings of our concerts!