SIGNALS IN NOISE

ON STAGE

Ensemble Vortex: Anne Gillot – Paetzold flute / bass-clarinet, Romane Bouffioux – percussion, Rada Hadjikostova – violine, Benoît Morel – viola, Aurélien Ferrette – cello, Arturo Corrales – sound engineer / live-electronics

The Six Tones: Nguyễn Thanh Thủy – Đàn Tranh / Performance, Ngô Trà My – Đàn Bầu, Stefan Östersjö – 10-string-guitar & Vietnamese electronic guitar, Henrik Frisk – saxophone / electronics, Marie Fahlin – choreography «Đào Tam Xuân», Jörgen Dahlqvist – video «Đào Tam Xuân»

PROGRAMME

Daniel Zea: «Desplazados» (2016)
The Six Tones / Traditional: «Dạ Cổ Hoài Lang» (2026)
Anna Korsun: «Sottilissime» (2019)
Richard Karpen / The Six Tones: «Đào Tam Xuân» (2013)
Rama Gottfried: «Apophänie» (2016 / 17)
Eva Reiter: «Tourette» (2008)
Henrik Frisk: «Drinking» (2014)
Romane Bouffioux: «Audible Survie Méditative Rasante (asmr)» (2023)
The Six Tones/Traditional: «Hề Mồi» (2026)

Find ARTIST BIOAGRAPHIES at this link.

Scroll down for liner notes.

The opening of the SONIC MATTER Festival 2026 welcomes you to spend an evening of being carried away by a stream of changing worlds. Guests include the Geneva Ensemble Vortex and the Swedish- Vietnamese quartet The Six Tones. Both have been experimenting with their own musical traditions for around 20 years, constantly examining the spirit of the times. «Signals In Noise» is a journey through its ambiguities: with a total of eight pieces, the programme explores virtual escape routes that lead to real people, as well as the changeability of role models, the promises and absurdities of the wellness cult, and dark omens that ultimately vanish into thin air.

TICKETS

35 / 45 / 25 – Legi 15 CHF

INFORMATION & ACCESSIBILITY

You may leave and re-enter the event at any time.

There are sections with particularly loud moments and rapid light changes.

The Rote Fabrik Zürich / Aktionshalle is wheelchair accessilble.

COOPERATION

Rote Fabrik Zürich

LINER NOTES

Daniel Zea: «Desplazados» (2016)
4 à 5 performers, ordinateurs, couvertures de survie amplifiées, MIDI-drum pads, électronique et projection vidéo générée en temps réel

Il y a deux motivations esthétiques et politiques pour la composition de cette œuvre: les migrants, et l’aliénation du sujet contemporain par la technologie.
La couverture de survie, source sonore et instrument musical, permet de créer une image fragile. Un miroir de soi « en migrant », une musique enveloppante, une chorégraphie faite de tremblements. La transformation du son des couvertures de survie crée une évolution musicale qui part des frémissements pour arriver progressivement à des masses sonores enveloppantes qui rappellent l’eau, la catastrophe et l’urgence.
Un tableau ambigüe : s’agit-il de se mettre à la place du migrant ? Ou bien de se rendre compte que nous sommes déjà en train d’entamer notre propre abandon en tant que civilisation? L’homme au bord de la catastrophe reste impuissant, en transe devant la machine. Plus aucun contact entre humains, le seul lien qui reste : la température et le contrôle qu’ils subissent. Un groupe d’aliénés qui bougent en suivant les indications de leurs ordinateurs, transpirant sous leurs couvertures.
Outre les sons, il y a le jeu des images qu’arrive au climax de l’oeuvre. Des survivants tremblent. Leurs visages surveillés, filmés, sont reprojetés soudainement dans un flux vertigineux derrière eux. Ceci évoque la surcharge d’images dans notre monde contemporain, où l’on filme tout, où la temporalité est constamment manipulée, enregistrée, reproduite, et partagée jusqu’à devenir virale. Une mise en scène du côté obscène de l’image.

The Six Tones / Traditional: «Dạ Cổ Hoài Lang» (2026)
Richard Karpen / The Six Tones: «Đào Tam Xuân» (2013)
The Six Tones/Traditional: «Hề Mồi» (2026)

The Six Tones present a series of compositions and improvisations that engage with traditional Vietnamese music and theatre. At the opening night of SONIC MATTER Festival, they perform, among other pieces, «Đào Tam Xuân»—a work originally created for a 2013 dance film—reimagined for live performance with solo dancer, video, ensemble, and electronics. The piece draws on Vietnamese Tuồng theatre, where the story of a female general lends the original play a proto-feminist dimension. Through a deconstructive approach, The Six Tones transform the structural principles of Vietnamese music—such as vibrato types or the particular intonation in a certain mode—into compositional parameters, seeking to bring new life to these ancient traditions.

Anna Korsun: «Sottilissime» (2019)
for singing string trio

A delicate contemplation on quiet sound and listening.

Rama Gottfried: «Apophänie» (2016/17)
for video-puppetry-instrument

«Apophänie» refers to the tendency of the human mind to find patterns in random data, which can be as harmless as recognizing shapes in clouds, or a form of delusional psychosis which sees meaningful connections in events that may or may not have any relationship to each other. In the piece, we are introduced to a performance environment composed of multiple layers of movement at different scales. Actual-size human performers on stage are connected to biological entities performing in a microscopic theater. The action is right in front of us but just beyond our view, perceivable only through incomplete, implied information from the stage, and the digitally magnified sound amplification and video projection.
Shifting through a sequence of contrasting vantage points in the miniature pseudo-organic environment, a narrative grows between the microscopic entities. The organisms of the miniature «Apophänie» world are born, mutated, absorbed, and consumed within the virtual ecosystem. They are artificial components of the video-instrument apparatus, yet are alive, brought to life through sonic organization and the performer’s gesture. The score for the piece thinks musically about the lifeforms appearing within the physical materials, but the material is unstable organic matter — to discover the entities hidden in the material, the performers must recognize the connections and emerging patterns in an ever changing field of interactions. A dramatic form is hidden behind a surface of semi-abstract vignettes, yet piece by piece the plot is exposed, and in the end an overarching system of control is confirmed.

Eva Reiter: «Tourette» (2008)
for Paetzold contrabass recorder and tape (2008)

Ein Virtuoser Parforceritt für eine selten erklingendes Instrument.

Henrik Frisk: «Drinking» (2014)
for The Six Tones

«Drinking» is based on a concept by Bill Brooks and «A Drinking Song» by W. B. Yeats: «After Yeats» is not a score for performance but rather a method for determining a score; it extends W. B. Yeats’s practice of poetic declamation to languages other than English. «After Yeats» describes a collaboration between a performer, who declaims a Yeats poem in translation, self-accompanied by a plucked string instrument, and a composer, who works at a remove to observe and amplify the implications of the declamation. «Drinking» is an independent instance of the meta-composition «After Yeats».

Romane Bouffioux: «Audible Survie Méditative Rasante (asmr)» (2023)
for 3 performers

I became fascinated by ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response). It’s a fascination because it’s strange, it’s like watching a film that captivates you but also makes you uncomfortable. Have you ever checked on YouTube the sheer number of videos about ASMR, and the millions of views they generate? There’s everything and anything, you go completely from one extreme to another, «from the chicken to the donkey» as we say in french! Tattoo makeup tutorials, videos to help you fall asleep, history lessons, medical consultations, product unboxings, hair salon appointments… In short, there’s something for every taste.
So it inspired me to create a piece, because of all the elements I find interesting and compelling: of course, the sound—this extremely close-up amplification that turns every sound into a special experience—and then the speech, the gestures, and the absurdity and incomprehensibility of certain situations and fantasies.