The Pitch with Jules Reidy

Boris Baltschun (organ), Koen Nutters (bass), Michael Thieke (clarinet), Morten Joh (vibraphone), Jules Reidy (guitar)

The Pitch is a quartet founded in Berlin in 2009 that plays a hypnotic form of structured improvisation full of acoustic exploration and electronic intervention. They are joined by Jules Reidy, with whom they recorded Neutral Star on Miasmah Records in 2023.

Making Waves #13

Between One War and Another, My Heart Scattered a Thousand Times

Raed Yassin presents two works that delve into the intersections of sound, memory, poetry, and melancholy. The first is a commentary on and presentation of radio recordings captured by the artist during the July War in Lebanon in 2006. The second is a screening of his latest film, International Satan’s Day (2025), which is based on a poem with diabolical humor and sincere melancholy. 

Following the presentation, Raed Yassin will join scholar and cultural theorist Sami Khatib in a conversation that touches on the critique of memory culture, the power of silence, the role of allegory and poetry, and the aesthetics of image and sound. Together, they will reflect on how artistic practices can confront authoritarianism and contribute to a broader struggle against fascism through critical imagination and creative resistance, with a focus on the universality of the Palestinian struggle.

Possible Places

Ensemble Adapter unveils brand-new material, crafting real and imagined musical scenarios in which artists undergo profound transformations. Set in a dystopian world where art is no longer deemed essential, the works explore states of disorientation and reorientation through sound.

Gunnhildur Einarsdóttir (composition & instruments), Matthias Engler (composition & instruments) & Jessie Marino (composition & instruments)

Anzû Quartet 

Olivia De Prato (violin), Louise McMonagle (cello), Ken Thomson (clarinet) & Karl Larson (piano) 

Anzû Quartet perform a new program featuring works by Aftab Darvishi, Mario Diaz de Leon, and Anna Webber.

Program

Mario Diaz De Leon, Tree of Life (2024)

Aftab Darvishi, to... Serenity (2022)

Anna Webber, adjust (2022)

Formed in 2020, the Anzû Quartet pays homage to Olivier Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps by actively commissioning and performing new works for this iconic instrumentation. Their debut album, adjust, was released on Cantaloupe Music in April 2025.  The name anzû refers to a massive, fire and water breathing bird found in Babylonian and Sumerian mythology. In these ancient texts, Anzû is linked to death and destruction as well as birth and creation, reflecting the juxtaposing themes of calamity and salvation often expressed through birdsong in Messiaen's quartet. 

im klang sein

Jonathan Heilbron (double bass), Joseph Houston (piano), Rebecca Lane (microtonal bass flute) & Vanessa Porter (percussion)

This program presents three underrepresented voices in Berlin's new music scene: Klaus Lang, Ernstalbrecht Stiebler, and Sarah Hennies. The music focuses on sound itself in a unique and profound way. In Lang's trio, the piano's sparse colors and static sound objects interact with the sparse material of the flute and percussion parts. In Stiebler's work, the material is even further stripped down: attention and concentration on a single pitch or interval between instruments constitutes the majority of the musical landscape. This intensity explodes into the more complex textures and rhythms of Hennies' Spectral Malsconcities, but here the focus is on the many repetitions of this material: each section is repeated multiple times, allowing us as listeners to experience each sound microscopically, while both the material within each section and the transitions between them take on a more intense immediacy.

Program

Klaus Lang, ann says “why?” for flute, percussion & piano 

Ernstalbrecht Stiebler,Three in One II for flute, percussion & piano  

Sarah Hennies, Spectral Malsconcities for percussion, piano & double bass   

with kind support from initiative neue musik berlin e.V.

The Velvet Gentleman I:  Erik Satie 1925——2025

A two-part concert series celebrating Erik Satie and his legacy over the past hundred years, with performances by Christopher Butterfield (voice), Anna Clementi (voice), Thomas Nicholson (piano), Tomoko Ono (piano), Jared Redmond (piano) and Marc Sabat (violin). Part two of The Velvet Gentleman takes place on September 30.  

Program 

Erik Satie, 3 Mélodies (1886): Les Anges, Élégie, Sylvie

> Anna Clementi (voice) & Tomoko Ono (piano)

Erik Satie, Trois Morceaux en forme de poire (1903)

> Thomas Nicholson & Tomoko Ono (piano, four hands)

Christopher Butterfield, Souvenir (1995)

> Tomoko Ono (piano)

Erik Satie, Choses vues à droite et à gauche (1914)

> Marc Sabat (violin) & Thomas Nicholson (piano)

Erik Satie, Socrate (1919)

> Christopher Butterfield (voice) & Jared Redmond (piano)

Pierre Borel (saxophone, drums) presents his latest album Katapult (Umlaut Records 2025).

In April 2020, Pierre Borel began to work intensively on a solo form, first on the saxophone, then incorporating various percussion elements into his playing. Right hand, right foot, left hand, left foot and mouth: five parts of the body are now involved. The coordination difficulties inherent in drumming are made even more complex with the saxophone. The basic rules are 1) Mouth on the saxophone: four limbs are available for drumming. 2) Mouth and left hand on the saxophone: the right hand and both feet remain for drumming. 3) Mouth, left hand, and right hand on the saxophone: both feet remain for the drums.

Takako Suzuki performs:  残響室　zankyoshitsu 

Takako Suzuki has worked with Sasha Waltz since 1992, featuring in the productions Travelogue I - Twenty to Eight, Allee der Kosmonauten, Zweiland, and Körper, among many others. In 2008, she received a scholarship from Tanzplan Dresden for her works Empire at the Dresden Semperoper and Collavocation, which was performed at the European Center for the Arts Hellerau in Dresden in 2010. Other notable works include Blind-Tisch (2015), Treader (Labor Sonor Berlin, 2016), and More than one species, which was part of the German-Georgian Year 2017, supported by the Goethe-Institut. Suzuki pursues a multidisciplinary approach in her work and collaborates with numerous musicians, including Dietmar Diesner (saxophone), Axel Dörner (trumpet), Robin Hayward (tuba), and Yan Jun (poet/voice). 

Schlippenbach/Walsdorff Quartett

Alexander von Schlippenbach (piano), Henrik Walsdorff (alto saxophone), Antonio Borghini (double bass) & Jan Leipnitz (drums)

The Schlippenbach/Walsdorff Quartet was founded in 2013. At the heart of the music are old and new compositions by Alexander von Schlippenbach, which include both composed passages and free elements, clearly demonstrating the connection between traditional jazz and free playing. Other sections of the program consist of freely improvised pieces as well as reworkings of pieces by Thelonious Monk, Herbie Nichols and Eric Dolphy.

Banquet of Consequences

Tobias Delius (tenor sax, clarinet), Pierre Borel (alto sax), Anil Eraslan (cello), Rieko Okuda (piano), Antonio Borghini (double bass) & Steve Heather (drums)

Banquet of Consequences present their forthcoming Resta chi va (We Insist Records 2025), following up on their debut release Banquet of Consequences (We Insist Records 2023). Writes Borghini, “Banquet of Consequences is my wish to gather some of the finest musicians I’ve played with and celebrate with them the mystery of togetherness. For them I wrote songs, sketches, and fragments as an invitation to convivial counterpoint. This music is dedicated to these players and to all the masters who smile as we steal from them.” 

Silvia Tarozzi (violin, voice, bells) and Deborah Walker (cello, voice, bells), Canti di guerra, di lavoro e d‘amore

With Canti di guerra, di lavoro e d‘amore, Tarozzi & Walker add folk music to their contemporary classical and improvised music roots, reinterpreting songs from their youth in rural Emilia that originated from the emancipation of working class women and the partisan resistance in World War II, especially ones sung by choirs of female rice field workers, called "mondine" or "mondariso." Their songs tell a story of hard, poorly paid work, love, the hypocrisy of society, protests, war, the challenge of working far from home, the violence of oppression, and the need for political awareness. Following years of incorporating, reinventing, and transforming these songs within their practice, Tarozzi and Walker unlock emotional territory where their relationship with Emilia resonates in concert with other sounds and places. 

Anthony Pateras, I Can Act But I Can't Lie, for electronics*

Anthony Pateras is a composer/performer active within pre-meditated and intuitive creative contexts. His work is focused on expanding the organizational possibilities of sound through an exploratory approach to timbre, form, and instrumental performance, drawing from a broad range of acoustic and electronic sonic materials. 

Adam Campbell, solo electronics 

Adam Campbell is a musician whose work explores improvisation, nonlinearity, feedback systems and noise. He co-runs Fancyyyyy, a record label and eurorack manufacturer, with Tristan Clutterbuck, and FLMPP, an online label and publishing platform, with Nick Klein and Diego Behncke. 

with kind support from Creative Australia

Kosack, Lee & Joyul

Liz Kosack (synthesizer)

Okkyung Lee (cello)

Joyul (daxophone)

Singular daxophone player Joyul reconnects with her Berlin-based colleagues Okkyung Lee and Liz Kosack.

Making Waves #14

Christine Gedeon and Ghazal Aldakr present two films—Gedoen's A Portrait of Michel (2024, 44 min.) and Aldakr's Kayan (2025, 8 min.)—followed by a discussion with the filmmakers. 

Christine Gedeon is a visual artist, born in Aleppo, raised in the U.S., and divides her time between Berlin and New York. Since the start of the war in Syria, her work has focused on her family history in Syria, pre-civil war, in various mediums: video, a sound installation, works on paper and canvas. Her Portrait of Michel is an investigation of Gedeon's uncle, Dr. Michel Saadé, who was abducted in Damascus in 1978 by the Hafez al-Assad regime and never seen since. After finding a pouch belonging to Michel that contained his miscellaneous objects, documents, and scraps of paper, Gedeon created this film, which combines photographs of these "Objects of Evidence" with voiceover interviews with family members, as well as vintage photographs, music, and archival 8mm family footage. Gedeon reconstructs his life and disappearance through these fragmented memories and found documents.

Ghazal Aldakr is a filmmaker and performance artist based in Saarbrücken, Germany. Growing up in Syria, she experienced the profound upheaval of war—losing the sense of safety and certainty, and eventually becoming a refugee in Germany at the age of 19. These experiences of displacement and loss shape her work, which examines freedom, memory, and identity through both personal narrative and collective stories. Her films move fluidly between documentary and experimental approaches, transforming trauma into a space for understanding and connection. She is currently exploring hybrid forms that combine cinema and live performance, focusing on how the body carries and expresses memory. Her work often begins with personal narrative and expands outward, creating space for audiences to engage with themes of trauma, healing, and transformation.

The Velvet Gentleman II:  Erik Satie 1925——2025

The concluding night of a concert series celebrating Erik Satie and his legacy over the past hundred years, with performances by M.O. Abbott (trombone), Anna Clementi (voice), Jonathan Heilbron (contrabass), Rebecca Lane (flute), Thomas Nicholson (piano), and Tomoko Ono (piano)

Program 

Erik Satie, Harmonies (1906): 1, 2, 3

> Thomas Nicholson (piano)

Erik Satie, Pièces froides (1897): Danses de travers

> Thomas Nicholson (piano)

John Cage, Cheap Imitation (1969)

> Thomas Nicholson (piano)

Erik Satie, Musique d’Ammeublement: Tapisserie en fer forgem (1917), Carrelage phonique (1917), Chez un “Bistrot” (1920), Un salon (1920), Tenture de cabinet préfectoral (1923)

> M.O. Abbott (trombone), Jonathan Heilbron (contrabass), Rebecca Lane (flute) & Thomas Nicholson (viola)

Erik Satie, Trois Poèmes d’amour (1914); Cabaret songs: Je te veux (1897), Tendrement (1902), La Diva de l’Empire (1904)

> Anna Clementi (soprano) & Tomoko Ono (piano)

Jun & Fagaschinski, record release concert for Graveyard Processions (Ni Vu Ni Connu 2024)

Kai Fagaschinski (clarinet, voice, umbrellas, objects & field recordings)

Yan Jun (voice, slippers, objects & field recordings)

Graveyard Processions is the first joint recording by Kai Fagaschinski and Yan Jun. The Berlin-based clarinettist and the sound artist and vocalist from Beijing blur the lines between improvisation on the one hand and record production as well as composition-after-the-fact on the other. The four pieces on Graveyard Processions work primarily with Jun’s voice and Fagaschinski’s playing and also add a plethora of other sounds to dizzying effect. This is the sound of two prolific artists—the former active across different media and as a vocal experimentalist, the latter a fixture in Berlin’s Free Scene—vastly expanding upon their possibilities.

Tan Shuoxin, solo electronics

Shuoxin Tan was born in Beijing and works as a composer and sound artist in Cologne. She researches algorithmic acoustics, sound ontology, and Lacanian topology.