Steffen Krebber

Neolithic Brass is the CD and DVD portrait of Steffen Krebber in the Edition Zeitgenössische Musik. His music is about relationships of a compositional, semiotic and medial kind, and the release reflects on itself as a carrier medium rather than one storage option among many. Ten works on the CD and two on the DVD, written between 2008 and 2015, mix materials, styles and forms into what Krebber calls a networked mélange.

Krebber was born in Stuttgart and describes himself as composer, sound artist and researcher. He has held fellowships at the Akademie Schloss Solitude, the Künstlerhof Schreyahn and the Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg, and the Bernd Alois Zimmermann scholarship of the City of Cologne. His sound installation Weissagungen belongs to the KOLUMBA collection in Cologne. The players come from his regular circle of collaborators: Ensemble Garage under Mariano Chiacchiarini, the Sonar Quartett, Ensemble Praesenz and LUX:NM. Soloists include the violinist Sabine Akiko Ahrendt, the singer Julia Mihály, Dirk Rothbrust on drum set and Ulrich Löffler on keyboard.

The Konfusionen series is heard three times. In it, sound materials from different places and times collide without pause, Papua New Guinea and Gabon, the Renaissance and the present. Konfusion I (2011) is for ensemble, played by Ensemble Garage, and Konfusion IIa (2015) for solo violin, played by Ahrendt. Konfusion IV (2013) is for contrabass clarinet, reed organ or accordion, violin and cello. Elsewhere the instruments themselves change: faire signe (2014) is for player piano and loudspeaker, and zimzum (2015) for the MIDI-controlled Fokker organ, a co-production with the Stichting Huygens-Fokker. Nichtsattrappen 0'03'' (2009) puts Mihály's mezzo-soprano with flute, Böhm clarinet, violin and cello.

In Krebber's view the separation of media and genres has dissolved, even if gradually, and "everything overlaps referentially and bursts its formerly predefined bounds". The DVD, 15 minutes long, follows from this. It holds Laufzeitumgebung (2013), for two players with talkbox, keyboard, video, triangle and three loudspeakers. It also has a second version of style study (2015) for drum set, violin or viola, video, microphones and loudspeakers. The CD also has the Streichquartett I (2014) played by the Sonar Quartett, and Obdach//Wohnung (2015) played by LUX:NM.

CD and DVD (PAL, 16:9), 62 minutes on the CD, WER 6420 2, released in 2016 in the German Music Council's Edition Zeitgenössische Musik.