We are thrilled to welcome you to Rewire 2019. Our ninth edition upholds the festival’s tradition to present adventurous music; highlighting multidisciplinary crossovers and forward-thinking artists, those who push boundaries and rewire the idea of what music and live performance can be today.
This year we have assembled a programme that resonates, promotes and fosters the innovative music we witness around us. We bring together artists who embrace change, find new artistic directions and collaborations, seek out new forms of performative expression, use emerging technologies, such as AI, or invent their own instruments. At Rewire 2019, we explore how artists disrupt the status quo and how they intervene across a spectrum of musical outputs and artistic disciplines.
These ideas materialise throughout the festival weekend as concerts, interdisciplinary performances, talks and workshops. New this year is a Prelude Event at the Royal Conservatoire on Thursday 28 March; a collaborative programme with contemporary music festival Dag In De Branding; a symposium organised with the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision; a film programme; and a series of sound walks. With more than 150 individual events, this is by far the most extensive edition of our festival to date.
As an artist who consistently pushes his practice into new territories, we are proud to present a focus on Chilean producer and composer Nicolás Jaar. At Rewire, he will present several projects that epitomise his experimental and explorative spirit: a commissioned performance for piano, saxophone, electronics, percussion and duduk; a solo set presented in combination with an installation by himself and Vincent de Belleval; a programme showcasing artists from his Other People label; and an artist talk reflecting on his practice.
As a music festival, we believe our role is not only to curate music but to draw connections and facilitate relevant and important discussions around it. With our 2019 discourse programme, we continue our exploration of the wider context surrounding the performances and artists with the understanding that, while music can be enjoyed in isolation, it can also provide a vital glimpse into the way we navigate ourselves in the world.
Instrumental Shifts, the first of our discourse themes, serves as a metaphor for rapidly changing times; moments of new questionings, understandings and orientations. With it, we give space to reflect on our contemporary positioning and the current debates that surround us – like those on responsibility and ethics, creativity and autonomy. On Friday, we present a full day Symposium that opens scientific research to the artistic world. Over the course of the festival, Instrumental Shifts zooms in on the many technological developments in process today and the effects these are having, not only on the music we hear but on the ways we exist as a society. We seek answers to how this coincides and conflicts with musical and cultural progression and autonomy.
Staging Sound, our second theme, observes the performative nature of music; the experience, ritual, and show. It’s the creative process by which musical material is translated into performance and a growing need for an experience beyond the sonic and an urge for an artist to express ‘liveness’ through gestures and presence. Bringing live debuts to The Netherlands with exciting performances that go beyond their solo electronic outputs are Jlin, who will be joined by ten dancers from Company Wayne McGregor; Tim Hecker, a solo performer here accompanied by an ensemble of traditional Japanese gagaku musicians; and Sega Bodega, who transitions from electronic music producer to on-stage performer with his first live show.
Throughout this booklet, you will also find texts by writers that engage with these themes. Selected through an open call are contributions by Aidan Wall, Alexine Rodenhuis, Guilherme Coelho, Holly Dicker, James Hassall, and Tolga Arslan & Mette Slot Johnsen.
Rewire has established itself as a producer of new works, steadily supporting and investing in the music community. In addition to Nicolás Jaar, you will find several other commissioned or co-produced works at the festival, including a new work by British pianist Kit Downes and The Hague-based Ensemble Klang; British electronic musician Mark Fell’s new piece for electronic music, light, kinetic objects and human movement; and Dutch artist Haron who will be accompanied by pianist Anne Veinberg for his first ever live show: a performance for piano, electronics and spatialised sound. Danish composer and artist Astrid Sonne has been invited to perform a new work with local musicians, while electronic producer Lotic presents his new live performance ’Endless Power’ in collaboration with visual artist Emmanuel Biard.
The Rewire 2019 programme also features a number of special projects making their (inter)national premiere. Chicago-based composer, clarinetist and singer Angel Bat Dawid performs the spellbinding spiritual jazz of her recent debut ‘The Oracle’ with the help of a six-piece ensemble, while the Begena, one of the world’s oldest instruments, comes to life accompanied by soulful incantations in a rare performance by Ethiopian artist Sosena Gebre Eyesus. Iona Fortune & NYX come together for a liminal ceremony that re-embodies digital instrumentation and live electronics, and movement artist and vocalist Elaine Mitchener explores the universality of death and rebirth with her celebrated, contemporary opera ‘Of Leonardo Da Vinci.’
As a festival that operates outside of the mainstream, we often find ourselves in peripheral settings and surfacing global scenes, such as with this year’s Ugandan Nyege Nyege showcase. Although our focus is openly international, we also take note of the immense talent and innovation we have at home with more than a quarter of this year’s programme consisting of Dutch artists.
We invite you to embrace the unknown and the unruly, and to feel as inspired by the artists performing this weekend as we are. We wish you an incredible ninth edition of our festival!