shut up and listen! 2025
PAST_20 → NEXT_∞
Saturday, October 18, 2025 @ echoraum, 8:00 PM
Ensemble echo_von_nichts: CRI DE COEUR
participatory concert
Works by Tamara Friebel (UA), Sofia Gubaidulina, Hannes Lingens, Pina Rücker, Giacinto Scelsi
with Ingala Fortagne (soprano) | Pina Rücker (quartz glass bowls) | Gobi Drab (recorders)
CRI DE COEUR
Cri de coeur is a new interactive concert format that breaks with traditional concert rituals. The title—a cry from the heart, a passionate plea from one’s innermost being—becomes the program itself.
The concept: When purchasing tickets, audience members can anonymously write down their personal “cry from the heart”—whether grief, joy, political concern, or gratitude. These statements are read aloud during the concert and answered musically. Audience and musicians share the space, eliminating the classical separation between stage and auditorium. Movement during the performance is encouraged. This creates a dialogue at eye level—a shared space of connection through emotion and music that opens new perspectives, especially in challenging times.
Program: Contemporary compositions and classical modernism, connected through real-time improvisations. Featuring works by Tamara Friebel, Hannes Lingens, Pina Rücker, Sofia Gubaidulina, and Giacinto Scelsi. The highlight is the premiere of Tamara Friebel’s new work for soprano and quartz singing bowls, exploring the body as vibration—beyond the audible, in the realm of pure sensation.
echo_von_nichts (Ensemble für stille Musik)
Every something is an echo of nothing (j.c.)
Sound emerges from silence, echo from nothingness—this concept shapes everything the ensemble does. Their carefully curated programs weave together contemporary compositions, commissioned works, and pieces from the past. Between composed works, improvised passages connect directly with the audience’s present moment.
echo_von_nichts embraces musical democracy: new music encounters tradition, spontaneous creation meets carefully crafted scores. The ensemble regularly invites guest musicians to collaborate, ensuring that each concert offers a unique sonic landscape.
echo_von_nichts: Leipzig-born soprano Ingala Fortagne has been pushing the boundaries of classical vocal performance since her studies at the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Conservatory in Leipzig and the Franz Liszt School in Weimar. Whether performing contemporary or traditional repertoire, she prioritizes emotional expression and meaningful communication above all else. Her projects resist simple classification, blending opera, oratorio, and chamber music while working across artistic disciplines to create a more complete theatrical experience. Critics praised her CD “Obhut” for its “fascinating sound world oscillating between avant-garde experimentation and meditative stillness” (ORF/Ö1 2023), noting her clear, vibrato-light soprano that adapts seamlessly to diverse contemporary musical contexts. She has premiered works by Bešlić-Gál, Friebel, Lampson, Thiele, and Florey at major venues including the ECLAT Festival, Musik der Jahrhunderte Stuttgart, Zurich’s Tonhalle MAAG, and Bosnia’s Slovo Gorcina Festival.
echo_von_nichts: Pina Rücker performs on Czochralski crucibles made of quartz glass—industrial vessels normally used to grow silicon crystals for computer chips and wafers. She has transformed these high-tech industrial tools into musical instruments, discovering a fascinating intersection between cutting-edge technology and pure analog sound. Rücker has developed unique playing techniques that produce percussive sounds with extraordinary sustain, establishing these instruments within experimental and contemporary music circles while also creating installations. Her performances span an unusually wide range of venues: churches, concert halls, galleries, clubs, classical festivals (mdr-musiksommer, moviementos), experimental music events (sinwald, sinusTon, ZixP, StelzenFestspiele bei Reuth), techno gatherings (KONG, Garbicz), and even the Chaos Computer Club Congress. As a founding member of Ensemble Modele Reduit, she has contributed to seven albums, and by 2025, six compositions have been written specifically for her unique instrument.
As guest: Gobi Drab is a recorder player, performer, and composer. Her repertoire combines free improvisation with the rhetoric of early music and the complex structures of contemporary music. She has a particular fondness for square Paetzold recorders and a strong interest in contemporary dance. Gobi is a co-founder of the association snim – spontaneous network for improvised music (snim.klingt.org) and the artistic director of the concert series Neue Musik in St. Ruprecht (nmr.klingt.org). She has performed at Wien Modern, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Sonorities Festival Belfast, Ultima Festival Oslo, Music Unlimited Wels, Wiener Festwochen, Musikbiennale Zagreb, among others.