WEISSLICH

Extract of an article from "Sounds Like Now" magazine about the vibrant London experimental scene and the work of WEISSLICH.

article (Wayback Machine)

"...But among the composer-led series emerging over the last five years, Chadburn’s concerts at City are an exception. For the most part, the new concert curators favour informal, non-traditional venues; work largely outside of any official affiliation; are motivated by concerns that are neither academic nor strictly commercial; and present their work with an attitude informed by irreverence, independence and experimentation. Bastard Assignments, ddmmyy, WEISSLICH, and 840 are just some of the more prominent new collectives dragging contemporary composition out of the concert hall and into the streets. In the process, they have been radically rewriting the relations between performers, composers, audiences and sites of performance, using influences from the worlds of pop music and performance art to reframe contemporary classical music as a set of immersive encounters and unstable situations. ...

...Subsequent ddmmyy shows would involve the visual artists Dori Deng and Meta Drčar, and when I met with Rose and Sheen, they spoke enthusiastically about collaborating with visual artists and with composers interested in building sound installations instead of time-based performances. Bastard Assignments’ Edward Henderson went even further, insisting that gallery artists such as Martin Creed and Tino Sehgal are already composers. ‘That’s music!’ he insisted of Sehgal’s constructed situations. ‘That’s what I do!’

The same attitude is explicit in the work of another London-based concert series – WEISSLICH. Taking their name from a work by Peter Ablinger that was performed at their very first concert back in 2014, composers Michael Baldwin, Louis d’Heudieres and David Pocknee started putting events together in ‘an attempt’, as d’Heudieres explained, ‘to get performance art and other stuff outside of new music and to present it along with more musical works in a context that was accommodating for both’. In a move that would set the template for the series, that first show took place in the basement of an art gallery, juxtaposing works by the three curators with historically established Fluxus pieces by George Brecht and Alison Knowles. The event came to a close with a group performance for several combs.

Meeting through mutual friends while Pocknee and Baldwin were studying at Huddersfield, the WEISSLICH team were drawn together by a shared desire to, in Baldwin’s terms, ‘just put on a thing’. The informality of that gesture may account for some of the eclecticism of their programme so far, embracing one moment the ultra-minimal near-silent music of Antoine Beuger and Michael Pisaro, the next the theatrical maximalism of Neil Luck and Jennifer Walshe. ‘The one thing we don’t do’, Pocknee told me, ‘is straightforward concert music’.

But if there is something that unifies their curatorial mission it’s the urge towards a certain physical proximity. ‘One of the comments we received after our very first concert is that there was a real intensity to the moment’, Baldwin said. ‘We are interested in works where the live experience of it is really critical. That sense of needing to be there to experience it.’ It’s a feeling which all three relate to the experience of attending performance art events. But as Pocknee granted, seeing ‘a really energetic, well-played New Complexity piece in a small bar’ can provide just as intense a live experience. WEISSLICH makes room for both – often side by side, and up close. ..."

from Robert Barry - This Is a Score. This Is Another. This Is a Third. Now Form a Band. (2017)

Some Sadomasochistic Aspects Of Musical Pleasure (2012)

created with Ana Smaragda Lemnaru, Miguel Peres dos Santos, and Leo Svirsky

Het Nutshuis, 18 May 2012

An evening of work by David Pocknee, Leo Svirsky, Ana Smaragda Lemnaru & Miguel Peres dos Santos. Chaos. 17+ pieces. And one of the best things I've ever done. A performance featuring 30 people on the 18 May 2012 at Het Nutshuis, Den Haag, NL.

Some Sadomasochistic Aspects Of Musical Pleasure (zine)

Programme

PART I (Commissariszaal):

1. For Audience – David Pocknee for electronics
2. Warehouse #1: Canvas I – David Pocknee for piano
3. Augenmusik II: Bangscale II: Fantasia – David Pocknee for Trio Spannung
4. Trauergondel – Leo Svirsky for Trio Spannung
5. Augenmusik I: the grid is a terrible moment for sensitivity and substance (after John Cage and Jordan Mackenzie) [extract] - David Pocknee for piano
6. Live Composing – David Pocknee and Miguel Peres dos Santos

Part II (Main Hall)

7. The Beauty of European Languages – David Pocknee for amateur choir
8. Parameters I: The Myth Of Liberal Democracy – David Pocknee for string quartet
9. String Trio No. 1 – David Pocknee for 3 performers (Los Caballeros)
10. Labyrinth II – David Pocknee for multiple players on one piano (choir)
11. Parameters VII: Infectious Diseases In Cattle – David Pocknee for dancers
12. Copyright – David Pocknee for multiple players on one piano (choir)
13. Assorted Text Pieces -David Pocknee
14. Match Piece – David Pocknee for amateur choir
15. Parameters III: My Massive Pollocks – David Pocknee for two saxophone players
16. Killing Floor – David Pocknee for guitarist
17. Twister – Ana Lemnaru for 4 performers

Personnel

Part I

• Electronics: Maya Verlaak
• Solo Piano: Leo Svirsky
• Trio Spannung:
  • Leo Svirsky (piano)
  • Germaine Sijstermans (clarinet)
  • Hollas Longton (violin)

Part II

• Live Composing:
  • Miguel Peres dos Santos, David Pocknee
• String Quartet:
  • Hollas Longton
  • Ivan Babinchak
  • Maya Felixbrodt
  • Assaf Gidron
• Los Caballeros:
  • Andy Ingamells
  • Ivan Babinchak
  • Jeremiah Runnels
• Choir:
  • Lucie Vitkova, Maya Verlaak, Yael Levi, Teodora Stepančić, Corné Roos, Juan Albarracín, Vladan Kulisic, Cristiano Melli, Ivan Babinchak, Jeremiah Runnels
• Pianists:
  • Maya Verlaak, Yael Levi, Corné Roos, Juan Albarracín, Vladan Kulisic, Cristiano Melli
• Dancers:
  • Teodora Stepančić
  • Melanie Dijksma
  • Catinca Tzilea
  • Lucie Vitkova
• Guitar:
  • David Pocknee
• Saxophone Players:
  • Christian Ferlaino
  • Natalio Sued
• Twister Performers:
  • Leo Svirsky
  • Germaine Sijstermans
  • Philip Pocknee