Today we announce the first 28 artists and projects confirmed for Rewire 2022, taking place from 7th - 10th of April in The Hague.
Meredith Monk, photo (above): Christine Alicino
Since 2011, Rewire has been a meeting place for the discovery of envelope-pushing musicians, acclaimed artists and emerging new talents. In April 2022, Rewire is taking over the city centre and its surroundings for its 11th edition, presenting forward-thinking and genre-bending music across a diverse range of venues including concert halls, theatres, churches, night clubs, galleries, and public space. The latest addition to the festival’s locations is Amare, the new cultural hotspot for performing arts in The Hague.
For its 2022 edition, Rewire is proud to present a multi-day focus programme around world-renowned composer, singer and interdisciplinary artist Meredith Monk. Another highlight is 100 Cymbals, an acoustic composition by electronic music pioneer Ryoji Ikeda performed by Les Percussions de Strasbourg. Rewire will also premiere newly commissioned pieces, including works by Helm & Nate Boyce, Slikback x Weirdcore, and Myxomy (James Ginzburg & Ziúr). Furthermore, the programme features exclusive concerts by celebrated artists like Grouper, Jenny Hval, Mira Calix, and Circuit des Yeux, all presenting new albums. Check out the full announcement and read more about the performances below.
Early bird tickets (€20 off the regular price) for Rewire 2022 are on sale until midnight on Friday the 19th of November via www.rewirefestival.nl/tickets
---__--___ (More Eaze & Seth Graham) - World premiere
aya live AV ft. Sweatmother
Bang on a Can All-Stars & Ensemble Klang ‘Forgiveness & Forgetting’ - World premiere
bela
Bitchin Bajas
Blackhaine
Circuit des Yeux
FUJIIIIIIIIIIITA
Grouper
Helm & Nate Boyce - World premiere
jaimie branch 'Fly or Die'
Jana Rush
Jenny Hval
JJJJJerome Ellis
Mabe Fratti
Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble ‘Cellular Songs: Concert Version’
Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble and Bang on a Can All-Stars ‘MEMORY GAME’
Mira Calix ‘origins - movement is freedom’
MSYLMA & Ismael
M Lamar ‘Machines and Other Intergalactic Technologies of The Spirit’ - World premiere
Myxomy - World premiere
Naaljos Ljom
Ryoji Ikeda & Les Percussions de Strasbourg ‘100 Cymbals’
Silvia Tarozzi
Slikback x Weirdcore ‘VOID’ - World premiere
Sofie Birch & Johan Carøe
The Caretaker & Weirdcore
Ziúr with Kiani del Valle & Sander Houtkruijer
More artists and projects, as well as an extensive discourse programme of talks, workshops and screenings will be added in the coming months.
Rewire is proud to present a special focus programme on Meredith Monk. Monk is recognised as one of the most influential names in contemporary music and performing arts — a groundbreaking composer, performer, director, choreographer, filmmaker, and installation artist. During the 11th edition of Rewire, Meredith Monk will be presenting works on multiple days of the festival, including a concert version of Cellular Songs with her acclaimed Vocal Ensemble. Presented together with the celebrated and frequently collaborating ensemble Bang on a Can All-Stars, Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble will also perform MEMORY GAME. An artist talk with Monk and additional programme contributions will be announced at a later date.
Besides their performance of Meredith Monk’s MEMORY GAME, Bang on a Can All-Stars will also share the stage with Ensemble Klang to perform the world premiere of Forgiveness & Forgetting, by The Hague-based composer Pete Harden for the two sextets. Harden’s piece explores the combined forces of these renowned ensembles and plays with the unique dynamic between the twelve musicians on stage.
Challenging the notions of what we perceive as electronic and acoustic music is the performance of 100 Cymbals, a collaboration between the Japanese luminary of synthetic music Ryoji Ikeda and distinguished music ensemble Les Percussions de Strasbourg. Employing ten percussionists in a geometrical set-up consisting of one hundred cymbals, the typically percussive instrument suddenly becomes a site of harmonic tension, producing alluring and hypnotic sounds that verge on droning synthesizers.
For its 2022 edition, Rewire presents the world premieres of several commissioned audiovisual performances. British noise experimentalist Helm collaborates with the American visual artist Nate Boyce for an immersive A/V performance based on Helm’s new album Axis. A propulsive, throbbing and convulsing piece of harmonic noise and spelunking audio design, Axis proves to be a fascinating sonic framework for Boyce’s tactile and uncanny approach to digital imagery.
An equally arresting performance is VOID, an audiovisual collaboration between the Kenyan producer and DJ Slikback and London-based visual designer Weirdcore. The subversive visuals of Weirdcore are a thrilling match for Slikback, a prolific and omnivorous musician who has emerged as one of the most exciting club artists from East Africa in recent years. Weirdcore will also present the visuals for an exclusive show by The Caretaker, an alias Leyland James Kirby devoted to sonically charting the advancement of Alzheimer’s disease from “beautiful daydream” into an “abyss” of confusion, horror and isolation. This performance was originally slated for Rewire 2020.
Emptyset's James Ginzburg teamed up with producer Ziúr for a seemingly effortless, intuitive approach to hazey pop, broken trip-hop and near-apocalyptic club music. Their shared output as Myxomy is a cathartic tour-de-force through the margins of pop music and the depths of electronic experimentation. Rewire presents the world premiere of Myxomy’s inaugural live performance, a show that sounds like a vibrant club event and feels like a forward-thinking rock concert.
Combining dance, performance and a collage of knifesharp, off-kilter rhythms, WARP Records mainstay Mira Calix will be joined by mezzo soprano Rosie Middleton and dancer Ella Robson Guilfoyle, transforming her latest album absent origin into a captivating and urgent performance called origins - movement is freedom that utilises the venue as a political stage. Ziúr also brings Puerto Rican dancer and choreographer Kiani del Valle to the stage, along with Dutch video artist Sander Houtkruijer, for an exhilarating and intoxicating performance with ecstatic dancing.
Emerging from the UK as one of its most exciting and innovative new artists, producer aya – formerly known as LOFT — has found ways to contort her poetry, voice and production skills into freakishly beautiful electronic pieces. She’ll perform her gripping Hyperdub debut im hole at Rewire as a special A/V performance in collaboration with London-based artist and filmmaker Sweatmother. With the release of his newest EP And Salford Falls Apart, the performer, choreographer and musician Blackhaine has established himself once again as one of the fiercest embodiments of contemporary British counter-culture. He performs his politically engaged, forceful and sensitive blend of rap, spoken word, trip-hop, ambient and drill.
On his powerful, new album The Clearing, composer, producer, multi-instrumentalist, and writer JJJJJerome Ellis forcefully weaves together the looping techniques of electronic music with acoustic and analogue elements to create an intimate and essayistic epic that reflects on time, blackness and identity. On stage, JJJJJerome Ellis embraces his stutters — or as he calls them “clearings” — as spontaneous occurrences that challenge notions of temporality, identity and performativity.
As Grouper, the Oregon-based psychedelic folk, dream pop and ambient icon Liz Harris returns to Rewire after seven years to coincide with the release of her twelfth and most recent album Shade, a deeply intimate and dream-like collection of mesmerizing and hauntingly beautiful songs. Also returning to Rewire in support of her upcoming release is the Norwegian singer-songwriter Jenny Hval, bringing her kaleidoscopic vision of conceptual pop to the stage with a full band. Making their world premiere on stage is —__–___, a collaboration between Austin-based multi-instrumentalist More Eaze and Dayton, Ohio-based Orange Milk-founder Seth Graham. They combine lush instrumentals with processed vocals and jittery samples to create a dreamlike — and sometimes nightmarish — vision of a decaying America.
The Saudi Arabian singer MSYLMA and Cairo-based producer Ismael find a unique sonic palette for their plaintive music. The duo combines a lush electronic patchwork of swelling synths, emotive sound design and club-adjacent percussion with MYSLMA’s soaring, Arabic vocals. In her live set, Jana Rush further expands the sonic range of Chicago footwork. Her 2021 Planet Mu-release Painful Enlightenment marked a confident departure of some of footwork’s signature-sounds by veering into deeply personal and experimental terrain. The South-Korean musician bela has found a way to place their own mind-bending contemporary club aesthetic within the framework of Nongak, a traditional form of Korean folk music. Analogue tradition and electronic modernism are also fused in the exciting microtonal music of Norwegian duo Naaljos Ljom, whoexplore tonality and rhythm in traditional Norwegian folk music.
Bringing along synthesizers, guitars and samplers, the Guatemalan cellist, composer and singer Mabe Fratti will perform her most recent album Será que ahora podremos entendernos in an intimate context. To make their orchestral epic -io come alive, Haley Fohr’s Circuit des Yeux will collaborate with a local chamber music ensemble to reach the staggering heights of her sixth, masterful album. Renowned Italian violinist and vocalist Silvia Tarozzi will translate her poetic album Mi specchio e rifletto to the stage with a dense sonic cloud of violins, voices, guitars, synth, sax and theremin. Musicians Sofie Birch & Johan Carøe will recreate their airy, intricate and improvisational album Repair Techniques with a collection of synthesizers and analogue instruments.
Japanese sound artist FUJIIIIIIIIIIITA performed with his uniquely crafted pipe organ during last year’s online edition of Rewire. This year Yosuke Fujita will bring his equally laborious as meditative performance to a live audience. Another Rewire alumni is contemporary jazz-innovator jaimie branch, who will perform her politically charged and sonically adventurous masterpiece Fly or Die and its equally riveting sequel Fly or Die II on stage. Changeling the cosmic jazz and far-out synth experimentation of Afrofuturist icon Sun Ra, Bitchin Bajas project their signature spaced-out sounds to stratospheric levels. Meanwhile, composer, performer and operatic countertenor M Lamar will premiere a new work during Rewire called Machines and Other Intergalactic Technologies of The Spirit, a piece that is heavily inspired by Sun Ra’s retro-futurist sci-fi projections on the mind and spirit.