We are a Graz-based arts organization dedicated primarily to presenting contemporary music productions in reinvigorated contexts. We understand music as being continuously reimagined and reinvigorated by its past, rejecting aesthetic constraints and prioritising quality of sound and experience. Therefore, we have curated projects focused on spatial exploration, passage of time, invention and re-invention of instruments, and looking at past musical practices to find new and interesting ways forward.
Currently active board members:
Dr. Alyssa M. Aska, President
Alyssa is fascinated with the architecture of music, both spatially and temporally. She composes works which explore extremes in time and space, using rigid proportions to generate forms in acoustic works and exploring the unpredictable duration and lack of control in gamified works. This is closely tied to her compositional style, which is concerned with a delicate balance between elements of functional form and elements of pure aesthetic purpose. As much structure as possible, as many ornaments as necessary (and vice versa).
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She studied composition in the United States with Robert Kyr, David Crumb, and Jeffrey Stolet, in Canada with Robert Pritchard, Keith Hamel, and David Eagle, and in Graz, Austria with Marko Ciciliani and Klaus Lang. Alyssa’s work and research are performed worldwide at various concerts and festivals such as Wien Modern, Ars Electronica Linz, Forum Wallis, ICMC, EMS, Impuls, Darmstadt Summer Courses, Musikprotokoll, Tonraum21, ComposIt, Mirkofest Helsinki, Microtonal Festival Prague, and many others. She was selected for participation at many academies and workshops such as WasteLAnd Academy (2019), CrossROADS Festival (2019), Kalv Festival Academy (2020), and reMusik.org (2021). She was also selected for performance at the Gamified Audiovisual Performance and Performance Practice (Gappp) Symposium 2019. Alyssa is a founding member of the Graz facere collective, which presents every year concerts in various formats, and is a current member of the Graz collective Die Andere Saite. Her scores are published by Babel Scores and Verlag Zeitschleife.
DDr. Martin Ritter, Vice-President
Martin Ritter studied composition in Canada and currently lives in Graz, Austria. He writes both electronic as well as instrumental works and is performed across Europe, North America, and Asia. As a composer he is interested in the spaces sounds emerge in/from and the intersection of music, technology, and performance/performance practice. In recent years he has started to explore microtonality as a conceptual space for his work. As a researcher he works with digital tools in order to analyze and understand electronic music.
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His music and research are featured regularly at conferences and festivals such as Wien Modern, MikroFest Helsinki, ICMC, NIME, EMS, Audio Mostly, eContact!, Impuls, Darmstadt, ComposIt, MusCan, TENOR, Ars Electronica. He has received scholarships like the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship, the University of Calgary Technologies International Inc. Fellowship Scholarship, Alberta Innovates – Technologies Futures Scholarship, the Joseph and Melitta KANDLER Scholarship for Advanced Music Study. He founded, co-founded, or is on the board of several arts organizations such as Zeitschleife, Die Andere Saite, OEGZM, Graz Orchestra of Noise and Distortion. He currently holds the National Composition Scholarship of Austria.
He holds a DMA in composition from the University of British Columbia where his primary teachers were Drs. Keith Hamel and Robert Pritchard, and a PhD in Computational Media Design from the University of Calgary where he studied with Drs. Friedemann Sallis and Jeffrey E. Boyd. At the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Graz he studied with Klaus Lang and Dr. Marko Ciciliani.
Mag. Pablo Abelardo Mariña Montalvo, Scribe
Pablo Mariña is a Mexican composer of acoustic and computer music living and working in Graz, Austria. His focus lies in live electronics, structural approaches, and iterative processes. In his work, the composer has been searching for methods of creating pieces of live electronics that unfold sonic homogeneity between processed and non-processed sound materials. In his latest work, Pablo has also been exploring spatialization configurations and cross-perceptual phenomena.
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In addition to concert music, Pablo Mariña is also creating sound installations, collaborates with video artists, and takes part in composers´ collectives GONaD and facere. In conjunction with his creative practice, Pablo Mariña is developing electronic and electroacoustic music performance and composition tools.
Pablo Mariña graduated from Composition and Music Theory studies at the Center for Music Studies and Research (CIEM) in Mexico City and from Computer Music at the Institute of Electronic Music (IEM) in Graz. Currently he is enrolled in a Master´s Degree in Classical Composition studies at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz.
Sepehr Karbassian, Treasurer
Sepehr Karbassian is an Iranian composer and performer based in Austria.
He has studied composition and computer music at the university of music and performing arts Graz in Austria and had the opportunity to learn from composers such as Klaus Lang, Gerhard Eckel, Annesley Black, Marko Ciciliani, Christian Ofenbauer, Dimitri Papageorgiou, Nadir Vassena, Dmitri Kourliandski, Francesca Verunelli and Joachim Heintz.
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His music has been performed in Austria, Spain, Italy, Serbia and Iran. All varieties of Persian music, early music, rock music, impressionism, and other types of art such as painting and literature have influenced him, and particularly Persian poets such as Forough Farrokhzad and Mehdi Akhavan-Sales. He is fascinated by the concepts of intonation and inharmonicity, as well as the creation of means of communication and interaction between various sound sources.
Sepehr is the board member of Zeitschleife cultural society in Austria. He began his music studies in Iran with guitar performance and film scoring techniques with Babak Mirzakhani, as well as music theory, contemporary composition, and piano performance with Vartan Sahakian, Mazyar Younesi, Arash Teymourian, and double bass performance with Parvaneh Anaraki. Among his other activities can be mentioned: Scoring for various films, live Performance and composing for theatre, musicological research about history and aesthetics.
Alena Kiszter,
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