Chamber of Circuits

The concert features a premiere of Anna Fišere’s Noesis for eight performers and fourteen synthesizers, bringing on stage musicians from Latvia’s classical and electronic music scenes, alongside the works by Estonian electronic music pioneer Sven Grünberg, for the very first time played live by the Ensemble of the Estonian Electronic Music Society (EMA).

The core idea of Anna Fišere’s Noesis is rooted in Plato’s idea of the highest form of knowledge as a direct, intuitive perception of truth. Written for eight performers and fourteen synthesizers, this ambitious opus seeks to challenge the assumption of academic and electronic music as two separate territories of creative expression. By combining contemporary compositional techniques, the chamber orchestra model of performance, and electronic instruments, Noesis attempts to reflect musically the interaction between human intuition and the algorithmic precision of the machines, where spontaneity and logic intertwine within a single musical process.

Thanks to close collaboration with the Latvian electronic instrument manufacturer Erica Synths, the work employs an impressive and varied range of instruments, combining digital, modular, and analogue synthesizers developed from the 1970s to the present day. Drawing inspiration from ritual as a musical driving force, the repeated phrases, modulations, and cyclical processes of the synthesizers create a rhythmic and meditative flow, interweaving harmonic and spectral structures into the inner dynamics of the composition. The chordal structures and timbres are based on the principles of the spectralism school, taking the acoustic properties of sound itself as the compositional point of departure.

In the first part of the concert, for the very first time in live performance and with the composer himself present, the audience will experience Sven Grünberg’s music from the albums Hingus and OM (1988), as well as the soundtrack to the cult science fiction film Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel (1979). These works have now been made available for live performance on stage by the Ensemble of the Estonian Electronic Music Society. Sven Grünberg is a pioneer of electronic music in Estonia and among the first to explore the medium in the Soviet Union. He began his career in the 1970s as the leader of the progressive rock group Mess, has released numerous studio-recorded electronic music albums, and composed music for more than a hundred feature films. From the outset, Grünberg’s electronic works have been shaped by his fascination with Far Eastern cultures and philosophy, a quality also reflected in the music of Hingus and OM.

The Ensemble of the Estonian Electronic Music Society was founded in 2017 with the aim to promote and develop electronic music in Estonia, and to perform electronic chamber music on stage. Their performance style is distinguished by efforts to overcome the barriers imposed by technological media, achieving a subtle, sensitive interplay between musicians that highlights the endless sonic possibilities of different electronic instruments.

Performers of Noesis: Rihards Plešanovs, Reinis Rabenau, Sonja Misiņa, Kaspars Tobis, Ansels Kaugers, Error, Madara Ozoliņa, Edgars Tomševics, conductor Artūrs Gailis.
EMA: Doris Hallmägi, Ekke Västrik, Mihkel Tomberg, Taavi Kerikmäe, Tarmo Johannes, and Theodore Parker.

Set design: Artūrs Virtmanis.

Produced by the cultural organisation Artes Liberales
Doors 18:00, concert 19:00
Venue: Hanzas Perons, Hanzas iela 16a
Tickets: bilesuparadize.lv