Arts Centre Vooruit, Ghent, Belgium

Click here for an overview of future Wildgedrag concerts

PAMELIA KURSTIN
When the Russian Léon Theremin developed the theremin in the twenties, he thought he had made the musical instrument of the future. The electronic device produces sound without the player touching it, but by moving his hands around it. Two metal antennae detect the position of your hands and determine the volume and tone. The Beach Boys introduced the instrument in popular music with ‘Good Vibrations’. In the fifties and sixties the theremin was popularly used to create an atmosphere of threat and doom in thrillers and futuristic films, such as The Day the Earth Stood Still by Robert Wise.

American musician Pamelia Kurstin originally played the double bass, but traded it for the fascinating theremin in 2000. She moved to Vienna and became one of the best theremin players in the world. She performed on Saturday Night Live and played with jazz and pop musicians such as David Byrne and Sebastien Tellier. Her debut album Thinking Out Loud appeared on John Zorn’s Tzadik label.

For her concert at the game is up Kurstin will draw on existing classical work and the contemporary avant-garde repertory with a futuristic/fatalistic touch, while also performing new material that connects to the festival theme ‘How to save the world in 10 days’.

ERWIN STACHE
Erwin Stache is a former East-German physicist who develops new, bizarre instrument with home appliances, such as old irons or washing machine parts. He makes music by transmitting digital sounds through an analogue phone, or by dropping marbles from a bucket. Stache’s compositions are often minimalist, but thanks to his self-made instruments his concerts are nothing less than theatrical and spectacular. With his amusing, surrealist machines Stache turns the stage into a true musical playground. Stache is not only known for his concerts, but also for his sound installations in special places. In Floating Islands for example, pipes in the German River Spree were driven by vacuum cleaners.

In 2002 he founded the Atonor ensemble with a few students. The group performs original compositions as well as work by composers such as Michael Hirsch, Ernst Troch and Wolfgang Heisig. His students not only have an ear for the musical aspect, but also toy with the laws of acoustics, physics, maths and electronics. In 2008 Erwin Stache and Atonor performed in the old Ghent courts during the Flanders Festival. During his concert/performance at the game is up he will present a few futuristic recycled instruments that he designed especially for the festival.