Unequivocally one of the most magnificent musical mavericks of the 20th century, the late Maryanne Amacher was a composer of large-scale, fixed-duration sound installations and a highly original thinker in the areas of sound perception, spatialisation, and aural architecture.
After studying with Karlheinz Stockhausene, Amacher took off on her own psychoacoustic flight, developing a body of unique methodologies and concepts that underpinned her life-long research into the experience of sound in particular spaces, ways of hearing, and the creative potentialities of how the ear itself processes sounds. One such approach was the exploration of »ear tone« music via creative use of both spontaneous and evoked otoacoustic emissions – sounds produced within the cochlea. Along her visionary path, she would collaborate with artists such as John Cage, George E. Lewis, Merce Cunningham, and Thurston Moore.
Amacher’s practise rigorously opposed the idea of fixed-form electro-acoustic composition in favour of an ethos of experiential investigation, such that most of her works are near-impossible to recreate. This applies also to »GLIA,« a work for seven or eight instruments and electronics commissioned in 2006 for the Berlin-based Ensemble Zwischentöne. In this work, Amacher was interested in the glial cells of the brain, which assist in neurotransmission between synapses. For the new work, Amacher imagined the listener as a sort of glial interface between the electronic and acoustic instrumental elements of the work. More specifically, she imagined the otoacoustic emissions created in the ears of the listener (the »ear tones«) as this neural interface.
The work was performed a single time in Berlin, directed and overseen by Amacher together with the then director of Ensemble Zwischentöne Peter Ablinger and Bill Dietz (its current director). When Amacher returned home to Kingston, New York, taking with her all of the performance material for the work, there was a vague plan of continuing the collaboration, but no thought that the 2006 iteration would ever be repeated. In 2009, Ensemble Zwischentöne invited Amacher to return to Berlin to continue developing »GLIA,« however she tragically passed away shortly before this could happen. Since then, Bill Dietz has conducted intensive research into reconstructing »GLIA« for future performance, resulting in re-premieres at Hamburger Bahnhof, ZKM, ICA London, and Radio Suisse Romande. The performance of »GLIA« at CTM forms part of the continuing collective interpretive re-presentation of Amacher’s practice.
Performed by members of Ensemble Contrechamps & Zwischentöne: Susanne Peters and Dorothee Sporbeck (flute), Maximilian Haft and Akiko Ahrendt (violin), Lucy Railton (cello), Volker Schindel and Helles Weber (accordion), Bill Dietz (artistic direction, electronics, conducting).
Funded by Musikfonds e.V. by means of the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.
