In 2019, a new contemporary music ensemble took flight for the first time. Maria Mogas Gensana (accordion), Audrey G. Perreault (flutes), Hannes Schöggl (percussion), and Elīna Viļuma-Helling (voice) – collectively known as between feathers – are dedicated to exploring the possibilities of their unique instrumentation; Michael Franz Woels spoke to them recently about their ongoing search for repertoire, the challenges of interdisciplinary projects, and soap bubbles.
Your most recent project, Seems like a portal, is very intense, very immersive. How did you feel about it personally – what did you like about it; what was a challenge for you?
Hannes Schöggl: Seems like a portal is different from our usual productions; it’s interesting. The energy is different from other works we’ve commissioned. People expect a quiet, gentle atmosphere from us, not intense music – because of our name, between feathers, or our instrumentation. The first compositions that people wrote for us were all on the softer side; one even included soap bubbles.
Elīna Viļuma-Helling: They were as mellow as you could imagine.
Hannes Schöggl: It wasn’t our intention to be a quiet ensemble at all, and I don’t think we are. We showed that clearly with Seems like a portal.
Elīna Viļuma-Helling: Since we started developing our programs in 2021, we knew we wanted to try different directions to discover who we are. Each program took us deeper into improvisation. Some composers use improvisation and workshops to test our limits. They often ask Maria to play as loud as she can.
Maria Mogas Gensana: I try to compete with Hannes volume-wise. [laughing]
“some people perceived it as a kind of transgression.”
Elīna Viļuma-Helling: We played a piece by Vinko Globokar, loud and expressive music. Audrey had to burn paper onstage – when she was allowed to. When we met at the residency for Seems like a portal in Germany and started improvising together, we were influenced by the dancer Christine B. Saulut, and we all discovered this more intense side of ourselves. But I wouldn’t say we went there intentionally – we were searching, and that was one stop on the route. Maybe our next program will bring back the bubbles.
Maria Mogas Gensana: For the first performance at Theater am Lend in Graz, the intensity of the piece wasn’t as strong for the audience as it was in Vienna. I was surprised that the people in Vienna found the piece so moving and intense. Maybe it was because they were seated so close to us. The space in Brick-15 helped to intensify the volume, to the point that some people even perceived it as a kind of transgression.
Audrey G. Perreault: Seems like a portal was easier for us to perform because we developed the material together with the composer, Scott Rubin, and the choreographer, Christine Saulut, via improvised videos, Zoom meetings, and a week-long residency. between feathers was part of the process right from the beginning. It was a quick, collaborative way to understand the atmosphere, the structure, the material. For me, the biggest challenge was the piece’s interdisciplinary aspect. We all had our individual processes, based on geography and our artistic experience: a French/American dancer used to similar shows, an American composer working with videos and improvisations, a Greek light designer coming from the contemporary music scene, and an Austrian contemporary music quartet that had experience with improvisation and movement. Finding [a common] language was a challenge, and we all learned from each other – things that have stuck in my mind are the importance of lighting, how to structure meetings and communication [when people are in different countries], and some dance production vocabulary, like ‘load-in’.
“We had to be flexible with our expectations”
Elīna Viļuma-Helling: Another one: “when is the strike?” The ‘strike’, in this context, is dismantling and packing the stage set after the concert.
Audrey G. Perreault: It was interesting to see another side of a production. Christine Saulut is a dancer and choreographer, and things that are essential for her might not be as important for us as musicians. Sharing the rehearsal and the video production time was a challenge for us.
Elīna Viļuma-Helling: Coming from different disciplines, a detail that might be good enough for us – for instance, light or space – might not even be close to what a dancer like Christine needs. And vice versa with the sound. We had to understand the other point of view and be flexible with our expectations.
Audrey G. Perreault: We know how we work as a quartet, but Christine is the leader of her own dance company and Scott Rubin is a composer and improviser with a solid sense for productivity – . It was the most challenging production we’ve ever done – shipping a sound installation from Denmark and having a fever on the day of the performance of Ulysses was nothing compared to this!But in the end, everyone involved was satisfied with the result.
So, is being on stage – where you just have to “organize” your own body – a relief in comparison?
Audrey G. Perreault: It is! But at the same time, the organizational part of my brain is still active. I have to learn to separate those things. It helps when someone else is taking care of coordination and marketing – that’s a challenge many smaller ensembles have. We were lucky to work with Yulan Yu and NOW! Oper der Gegenwart for the production in Graz.
“…the dirty skin between the feathers…”
I’ve been thinking about the name of your ensemble, “between feathers”. It sounds so light to me, but seems like a portal proved me wrong. Do you think that a group’s name can also influence its development, in a kind of iterative way?
Elīna Viļuma-Helling: One journalist wrote something like: “…and then they showed the dirty skin between the feathers…”
Audrey G. Perreault: Honestly, there is no profound answer – we just had to find a name. At the outset, we all suggested names for the quartet.
Elīna Viļuma-Helling: We had a lot of suggestions – a hundred or more – going in a lot of different directions. We brainstormed about the kind of feeling each name gave us. Personally, I like the name.
Hannes Schöggl: I love it! And the nickname people have given us: “the feathers”.
Elīna Viļuma-Helling: It sounds light and airy, but at the same time, there’s so much in between.
Audrey G. Perreault: Originally the idea came from a poem by Kenji C. Liu, “Gaman: Topaz Concentration Camp, Utah”. When we were choosing, at least three members of the ensemble had to like a suggestion for it to be shortlisted. Another choice we had was ‘Hum Arsenal’.
Hannes Schöggl: Imagine the first commissions we would have gotten with that name…
Can we talk about the video for seems like a portal?
Elīna Viļuma-Helling: We worked with Violeta Puerta, a video artist and photographer whom we’ve worked with before. She tried to capture the scene with a close-range camera. We wanted more than one fixed camera to document it, so she also did wide-angle filming in Graz. The video should be finished in summer 2023.
“We spend a lot of time searching for material”
In July you’re playing at the impuls Festival in Graz.
Elīna Viļuma-Helling: It’s going to be a trio performance – flute, accordion and percussion.
Audrey G. Perreault: Finding [pieces for quartet] is no easy task, and it’s not really easier to find good trios. We’re starting to commission pieces for trio; one will be ready in November.
Hannes Schöggl: Generally, our program for impuls consists of composers and lecturers at the academy and festival: Peter Ablinger, Franck Bedrossian, Malin Bång, François Sarhan and Bernhard Lang. We also added a piece by our long-term collaborator, Kirstine Lindemann.
That’s interesting – you have to commission material for your specific instrumentation?
Elīna Viļuma-Helling: We spend a lot of time searching for material. The reaction of the composers is enthusiastic when we talk about our group; they’re interested in writing for these instruments.
Maria Mogas Gensana: We’ve found less than ten pieces composed for soprano, flute, accordion and percussion. One is from Vinko Globokar, and another is from Klaus Lang. The music was nowhere to be found online, so we talked to [Lang], and he scanned an old copy he had for us. We performed it in May 2021, and we were very happy that he composed a new quartet for us after that. The new work, “cantica christinae II – confluents”, fits our style, and we all enjoy playing it.
Audrey G. Perreault: Most of the pieces we found were written in 1996 and 1997, for some reason. There must have been something in the air.
In June you played at echoraum in Vienna. How did you develop that program?
Maria Mogas Gensana: We want to keep creating programmatic events, but we’re lacking strong quartet pieces. To attract more repertoire from composers in Austria, we’re playing two conventional concerts, which we’ve named between feathers, Volumes 1 and 2. Volume 1 was acoustic music; the second part [will include] electronics. We will develop concepts for the new quartet pieces after 2024.
Audrey G. Perreault: In 2023-2024 we have collaborations planned with Pedro Berardinelli, Tanja Brüggemann, Kirstine Lindemann, James O’Callaghan, Alexander Kaiser, Emre Sihan Kaleli, Aron Ludwig and Yulan Yu. Some pieces are planned for traditional new music concerts, some are performance pieces, and some are part of an exchange with the Echos Ensemble in Graz.
Elīna Viļuma-Helling: We’re lucky that so many composers are inspired to work with us.
Michael Franz Woels, edited by Philip Yaeger