"We crave music that’s connected to the here and now"

On October 25 at Radialsystem, Berlin’s contemporary music group Zafraan Ensemble presents Eigenständige Stimmen (Independent Voices). Alexey Munipov spoke with the ensemble’s artistic directors Emmanuelle Bernard and Clemens Hund-Göschel about how they shaped the programme, how it should be heard — and whether one needs to know anything in advance.

Zafraan is an ensemble specializing in contemporary music. What is your definition of “contemporary”?

Emmanuelle Bernard: For me it’s the ongoing process of thinking, writing, playing, and listening now — not a fixed era, not an appendix to “classical music.” It’s a constantly evolving language that, in some way — even when the attitude is one of rejection — is still based on everything written before. I love older repertoire and love playing it, but I’d be sad not to take part in music that’s being composed today — especially since “classical” music, including modern music, is such a tiny fraction of the world’s music anyway.

Historically, the lines keep shifting. When we studied in Berlin twenty years ago, “modern music” for us meant what had been written in the 1990s, but for the institution where we studied, “modern music” could still mean works from the 1910s or 1920s.

Clemens Hund-Göschel: For instance, in piano exams you could still play late Scriabin. Pianists have a particular perspective: we play an instrument developed around 1880, and most of our traditional repertoire — from Bach to, say, the 1920s — spans only a couple of centuries. And already more than a hundred years have passed since then.

To me, contemporary music no longer needs to be tied to the classical tradition. Many fascinating modern composers never studied an instrument or a composition in the conventional sense, and yet they think deeply and create meaningful work.

The most interesting thing is collaborating with people who live in the same world as we do — who read the news, hear the sounds around them, and respond to contemporary reality. What do they make of it musically, sonically?

Emmanuelle Bernard: A piece can be written as a reaction to what’s happening — but not necessarily. It can also trigger new feelings or ideas. The link to reality can take many forms, we love listening for it, because by doing so we also listen to the life we’re living now. We crave music that’s connected to the here and now.

Contemporary music is a vast sea. How do you navigate it? What do you look for — and what do you avoid?

Clemens Hund-Göschel: We’re ten musicians, and each of us also plays in other constellations. Composers write to us; we attend concerts; we research online; we bring each other suggestions. Sometimes we commission directly for our specific ensemble setup instead of searching for an existing piece that fits by chance.

Emmanuelle Bernard: First, we listen. If there’s a recording, that’s our entry point. Very quickly you sense whether a piece relies on new-music clichés or carries a personal sound. We usually listen for two things: the coloristic world — its sonorities and textures — and how it unfolds in time. Some pieces start intriguingly and then lose their thread. Others sustain tension, even when “not developing” is the point. It’s all about the internal logic of time.

Sometimes you hear works where the main focus lies in exploring new techniques — new ways to produce sound — but there’s no real idea behind it. Just an inventory of “extended techniques” with no meaningful integration. Exploration alone isn’t enough — the sounds must cohere into an experience.

Clemens Hund-Göschel: We’re open stylistically — our instruments ground us, but we also program performative and conceptual works. If a piece has a compelling temporal life and a clear relationship between sound, gesture, and any visual or theatrical elements, it can fit. Sometimes that works in one kind of program but not in another.

How is artistic decision-making organized within Zafraan? Who decides what to play — and what not to?

Emmanuelle Bernard: When we started, we were a group of like-minded musicians in our early twenties, and we liked the idea of deciding together — even arguing about it. We’ve kept that spirit. It takes more time, involves a lot of discussion and planning, but it nourishes the decisions and keeps everyone truly invested on stage. Our artistic direction is collective by design.

Clemens Hund-Göschel: In a sense, there’s no single person in charge — everyone is. Artistic directors rotate; more than half of Zafraan’s members have served in that role at some point. That makes us special.

What’s most important is that when we’re on stage, everyone feels confident about what we’re doing there. It’s not “here are the scores, let’s just play them because someone said so.” The energy is completely different when everyone stands behind the program.

How do you know that a programme worked?

Emmanuelle Bernard: Usually you can tell before it happens. If not, you wait and see. You can feel it in the room — the shared energy between listeners and players, the quality of concentration. When it goes well, there’s a calm, open atmosphere afterwards.

Clemens Hund-Göschel: People don’t rush out; they want to talk, they’re still reflecting and remembering.For us, success isn’t about audience size. A small audience can be deeply moved — and that matters just as much. In rehearsals and performances, we can feel when the program becomes more than the sum of its parts. That’s when we know we want to take it further.

“Eigenständige Stimmen” is a very diverse programme — featuring recent music written mostly in 2024–2025, with many composers who may still be unfamiliar to listeners. How did you select the pieces?

Clemens Hund-Göschel: We looked together for pieces by composers who, regardless of biography, managed to find an individual voice amidst all these political challenges — a personal sonic language that isn’t just a collage of traditions. Many of them were born in one place, educated in another, and now work elsewhere. They come from very different backgrounds. But the point isn’t a “mix of styles” — it’s the inner perspective that emerges from those paths.

For instance, we’ve worked a lot with [Berlin-based Palestinian-Israeli composer] Samir Odeh-Tamimi and find his language unique, so we thought of him first. Then we spent a long time listening, discussing, searching. We didn’t start from biographies or CVs. What mattered most was to build a program in which all the pieces work together as a whole.

Emmanuelle Bernard: Practically speaking, we compared notes with [Voices Berlin curator] Sergej Newski on composers who felt special to us — people whose music offered a genuinely new language. Some we’ve worked with before, others we discovered during this process. The result is a balanced program: half from our ongoing collaborations, half from new discoveries.

Yes, the festival cares about geography and movement, but our main criterion was musical — what we actually hear in the work. We don’t reduce individuals to where they come from. That’s simply not enough.

Could we take a quick tour through the programme?

Emmanuelle Bernard: Sure. The first piece is Oleg Krokhalev – Winding Garments. As soon as it starts, you’re transported somewhere else. There’s a noisy, shimmering background of short, discontinuous sounds forming a tapestry of texture. Against it, the viola creates a foreground — another discontinuous line in a different space. It really resembles a machine weaving fabric which starts speaking.

Clemens Hund-Göschel: The performer uses a motor connected to the viola strings, changing the tension as he plays. You can feel it even without seeing it — the tension shifts physically. It’s a quiet piece, an ideal opener: it doesn’t reveal too much but immediately invites concentration.

With Samir Odeh-Tamimi we don’t have the score yet, but we’ve worked with him many times. His writing and sound world are unique, often highly energetic. When he recalls his childhood, he describes, for instance, hearing someone play drums with such force and ritual energy that it left a deep impression. You can feel that experience in many of his works.

He studied with the Korean composer Younghi Pagh-Paan and is deeply interested in ancient Greek culture, so his influences are vast. But the point isn’t to trace which note comes from where. It’s about what he does with those experiences — how he brings them together. Childhood memories, smells, noises — all of that eventually resurfaces in one’s way of speaking musically.

Then comes [Syrian composer and guitarist] Tarek Alali. I imagine he developed his sensitivity to microtonal nuances as a child, surrounded by that musical environment.

Emmanuelle Bernard: Traditional singing in his culture is very different from what we learn in European classical training — it’s not confined to semitones.

Clemens Hund-Göschel: This piece began as part of a masterclass we gave at the Saarbrücken University of Music. We liked it so much that we wanted to show it to a wider audience. It sounds quite “classical” for the instruments, yet its melodic line and intonation are strikingly individual. It’s not just, “I took Syrian intonation and mixed it with contemporary chords.” It stands completely on its own.

Emmanuelle Bernard: Yes, it’s smoother than the pieces around it — continuous lines instead of fractured gestures. And with its title An den Ruinen (“At the Ruins”), it resonates with the current state of the world.

Emmanuelle Bernard: Next is [Israeli electroacoustic composer and sound artist] Sivan Cohen Elias – multicounterspeechless. It shares something with Krokhalev’s piece — a layered relationship between background and foreground, with electronics and bursts of short, noisy fragments. But the saxophone speaks inwith a completely different character — wilder, more impulsive, as the title suggests.

Clemens Hund-Göschel: Yes, it’s like a kind of multilingual speech, trying to say something but struggling to find words. Many composers today live between languages; they constantly bridge gaps.That experience naturally seeps into their musical language.

Then Michaela Catranis – Inside the Veins of a Petal. Michaela grew up in the US. Her father is Greek and the family spent part of their lives in Lebanon — I believe, eight siblings or so in total! She studied composition at the Hanns Eisler Hochschule with Hanspeter Kyburz. When I first heard her music, I couldn’t believe she studied there — it sounded so different from her peers.

This piece is a special commission for us — a world premiere. It centers around a unique percussion setup created by our percussionist Daniel Eichholz: a personal drum set expanded with huge wood blocks and parts from his former car.

Emmanuelle Bernard: Including instruments he built together with his father. It’s very individual. Usually, each composer invents a new setup for every piece, so percussionists constantly have to adapt. But Daniel has developed his own configuration, and now we’re encouraging composers to write for it — to treat it as a distinct instrument. It’s shaping our ensemble’s sound in a very personal way.

Clemens Hund-Göschel: Next is [Iran-born, Swedish composer] Mansoor Hosseini – UFO (Unidentified Flapping Object). We’ve been working a lot with him this year. He’s also a filmmaker, so his approach often merges sound and movement. In a recent project we did together, a harpist was “conducted” by two directors — one controlling expression, the other timing — exploring how visual cues shape musical behavior.

In UFO, there’s video projection again: the shadow of the double bassist is manipulated with objects — literally unidentified ones — creating a dialogue between gesture and sound. It’s another kind of artistic research into how physical motion affects the perception of sound.

Emmanuelle Bernard: Then [Turkish composer] Zeynep Gedizlioğlu – Denge. We’ve played it before — it’s one of Clemens’s favorites. It’s beautiful, very approachable, and at that point in the concert it brings everyone back together. Rich colors, warm piano sound, no electronics — like a deep breath between extremes, a moment of reconnection.

Alexey Munipov: And the final piece is Leonid Desyatnikov – An Attempt to Ascend. He once described this new cantata as a reflection on his “shimmering identity” after emigration — and the title makes perfect sense in that light.

Clemens Hund-Göschel: Yes, we’re still in the process of preparing it. It’s a world premiere and the finale of the evening — certainly one of the key works in the programme.

It’ s an amazing programme — but why should we go? What makes it special?

Emmanuelle Bernard: I’d say: it’s going to be a very contrasted listening experience. You’ll hear things you’ve never heard before. They’ll definitely catch your attention. The pieces are very different — from quiet, highly reduced solos that demand active listening, to more extroverted ensemble works, including one with singer. Different languages, different sound worlds. Your imagination will be constantly triggered.

Clemens Hund-Göschel: Yes, the program moves through very different worlds. Some works explore sound as a kind of noise or background texture, while others build toward almost orchestral intensity — a near-operatic experience. It’s a colorful journey. Even if you don’t know the composers, there’s so much variety that you’ll definitely find something that inspires or touches you.

Also, the composers’ ages are quite varied — something you don’t need to know while listening, but it adds another layer. The youngest is quite young indeed; the range wasn’t planned, but it’s a nice aspect of the programme.

Aaron Copland wrote a famous book called What to Listen for in Music, to help audiences understand what not to miss. What shouldn’t one miss in this concert?

Emmanuelle Bernard: Keep your personal taste in mind — notice your own reactions to each piece and how they differ. There are eight works; together they form one whole. It’s always interesting to sense how they relate to each other in time, in energy.

Maybe one will completely absorb you — that’s great. But also notice the contrasts. These are eight composers who each have something to say. Try to enter each sound world in turn. You may not catch everything, but it’s a dialogue — between you and each composer’s ear. You’ll find something meaningful every time.

Clemens Hund-Göschel: Yes, it’s more about mindset — openness — than about focusing on any single structural detail.

What if a composer says, “My background and heritage mean nothing. Let the music speak for itself. I don’t want to be pigeonholed or exoticized — I’m not an exotic bird.”

Clemens Hund-Göschel: Of course, that’s completely understandable — and very natural. It’s part of the challenge of programming. That’s why, for us, the main priority is to perform pieces we feel emotionally and musically connected to, rather than selecting works based on someone’s biography.

We don’t want to play a piece just because the composer comes from a certain country. We choose it because their voice is interesting and individual. Some composers have even asked us not to mention their nationality in the program — and I fully understand that. It shouldn’t be the main reason their work is included.

Take, for example, Dror Feiler — he was born and raised in Israel, but he’s Swedish by passport, he left his home country. If every program keeps reminding him where he “comes from,” it overshadows his artistic decisions and where he is now. A new piece might be inspired by completely different concerns — not by political or geographical background.

So for us, it’s important to create a space where music can exist without having to carry political or national labels. Context matters, but it shouldn’t dominate the listening experience.

Should the audience know where the composer is from? Should they have that context while listening?

Emmanuelle Bernard: I don’t think they have to. The best thing is simply to listen — to learn how to hear, as you said — and to notice what you connect with emotionally. Afterwards, if curiosity grows, you might ask: Who wrote this? Where did they grow up? What kind of world shaped this sound? That feels much more natural to me.

Clemens Hund-Göschel: You won’t understand a country’s politics just by listening to a piece of music — that’s not how it works. But you might connect with something the composer felt or experienced — something universal. Maybe it reminds you of a memory from your own life, or evokes a certain feeling.

Emmanuelle Bernard: Once you start exploring — once you like a piece and want to know more — you learn about the culture behind it, discover similarities and differences. That curiosity leads to deeper understanding and connection. It helps you talk to people more easily, see through their eyes, and, in a way, makes the world a bit more open and kind.