World premiere of Gerald Eckert's "ferne Tiefe" for contrabass flute, orchestra, live electronics and tape at the Provinzlärm Festival on February 18, 2022

Duo Reflexion K - Beatrix Wagner, flute and Gerald Eckert, violoncello - was selected to take part on the „Virtual Partner Residency“ program of the Goethe Institute.

The two musicians will collaborate with composer Juan Campoverde Q. who was born and grew up in Ecuador and actually lives in the US. 

Project: Estelas Australes

Some time ago, a very long time ago, when I was completing my undergraduate studies at the Music Conservatory in Cuenca, in the southern Ecuadorian Andes, I visited an art exhibition featuring the metal works by Estuardo Maldonado (1928 - ). Later I learned that these works could be placed within what has been called the Latin American Constructivist Movement, characterized by the combination of Pre-Columbian designs and geometric forms with ideas derived from the early twentieth century European Constructivism.

The display of his colored steel works greatly struck me by virtue of the the dynamic projection of volumes of color and light, helped by the skillful arrangement of the illumination system of the exhibit room, as if the two-dimensionality of the metallic “canvas ” was being projected into the surrounding spaces. When I had the opportunity to approach Estuardo, after gathering some courage, I asked him all sorts of questions, some of which even now still bring me a tinge of embarrassment for their naiveté. He graciously and generously answered most of them, additionally telling me that his son was studying music composition in Italy. With the perspective offered by the time passed since then, I can now see that these early encounters marked the beginning of a long lasting search for musical forms of expression that being open to current Western developments of language, notation and technique, were also aware of the historical and cultural contexts in which they are placed, some of them with roots that could be traced well before the predominance of Western thought and believes in the American continent.

Preparing for the composition of estelas australes, which I write and rehearse with enjoyment for and with Beatrix and Gerald, I learned what I could about Pre-Columbian steles, these small, carved monoliths made of rock which are found in burial places in different sites in what is now Ecuador, and which could be seen in display in museums such as the “Casa del Alabado Pre-Columbian Art Museum” in Quito. These carved figures appear to represent connections between earth and heaven and between the material and the spiritual dimensions, with their pointed bases wedged into the ground, erected towards the sky, and protected from the irremediable effects of the passing of time by the nature of their material.

In estelas australes I attempt, together with Beatrix and Gerald, to establish a symbolic, even if tenuous connection between the spiritual legacy of these burial objects and the formative processes of our modern-day subjectivity. Far away from any attempts of claiming any historical interpretation or validation, my work is rather a creative speculation emerging from the shades cast by the presence of these millennial monoliths within a time and landscape mostly busy with the immediate and the ephemeral.

(Juan Campoverde Q., July 2021)

CD-recordings 03. - 05. Feb. 2020, Eckernfoerde, Nicolai church
- "Composizione per flauto e violoncello" - by Emiliano Turazzi
- "karg" for flute and violoncello - by Natalia Solomonoff
Duo Reflexion K (Beatrix Wagner, Gerald Eckert)

concert in Madrid, Teatro Galileo, 24.09.2019

concert 14. June 2019, 7:30 p.m., New York, NYU, Avery Fischer Center
(compositions from Marc Ainger, Gerald Eckert, Eric Lyon, Barry Moon, Clemens von Reusner and Tibor Szirovircza)

Concert 18, 21. July 2018, 08:00 p.m., New York, Abrons Art Center, Playhouse

www.nycemf.org

CD-recording 14. Jan. 2018, Neumarkt, Reitstadl
- "Annäherung an Petrarca" -
Auditivvokal Ensemble Dresden (Viktoria Wilson, Katja Fischer, Jonas Finger, Cornelius Uhle and Olaf Katzer (direction)) and Duo Reflexion K

CD-recording 09. Nov. 2017, Eckernfoerde, Nicolai church
- "Absence - traces éloignées" -
(from r. to l.) Astrid Schmeling, Rebecca Lenton, Beatrix Wagner, Martina Roth, Johannes Fischer and Matthias Kaul

CD-recordings 30./ 31. March 2017, Nuremberg, BR-studio
- "den angestoßenen Augen der Steine"  and  "außen von tief innen" -
(Lenka Zupkova, Beatrix Wagner, Joachim Striepens, Andre Bartetzki and Gerald Eckert)

Photographs from the concert (in order of the concert)

Theater am Gleis am 19.03.2017