stargaze-website

in c with matthew herbert

2013

Magnetic North + Sarah Neufeld

2013

These New Puritans feat. stargaze

2013

Lee Ranaldo with Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop

2013

stargaze labs @ Haldern Pop 2013

2013

in c with matthew herbert 2

2013

Villagers feat. stargaze

2013

Villagers feat stargaze

2013

villagers dublin 2013 x

2013

Sarah Neufeld

2013

stargaze presents 2014

2014

Music for Heart and Breath

2014

Haldern Pop 2014 residency

2014

Kilkenny Arts Festival 20114

2014

heimathafen neukoelln 2014

2014

Into the Great Wide Open Festival 2014

2014

These New Puritans expanded: Field of Reeds

2014

Julia Holter with stargaze – in special orchestral arrangements

2014

New Years Eve Concert and Celebrations

2014

Terry Riley with stargaze - In C

2015

The Dodos & stargaze

2015

Wonderfeel Festival 2015

2015

haldern pop 2015

2015

Owen Pallett and s t a r g a z e

2015

Koreless and s t a r g a z e - 80 Jahre Terry Riley

2015

Owen Pallett and stargaze

2015

s t a r g a z e with These New Puritans and Richard Reed Parry – Music for Heart and Breath

2015

on june 10th, the young british band these new puritans released their third album field of reeds on the infectious label. Recorded at Nalepa Studios in Berlin, this album featured a line-up of stargaze musicians who already accompanied the only german hidden live show , including orchestral ensemble, children's choir, two pianos and two vibraphones.

stargaze also teamed up singer/composer jack barnett with dutch composer michel van der aa to co-compose and arrange one of the tracks, the light in your name. The musical arrangements on field of reeds lead the band even further away from set definitions of pop-music, merging with chamber music and presenting a unique and unconventional style of songwriting, which the band and stargaze already presented at last year's The Rest is Noise Festival in Amsterdam.

For sacrum profanum festival in krakow, These New Puritans will now perform their expanded-show for the third time only, conducted by andré de ridder and performed by stargaze musicians.

Richard Reed Parry , the multi-talented musician out of Montreal's rich and striking music-scene, is probably best known for his work as a core member of arcade fire and the band's unique sound-design. Parry is the leading force and creative head of bell orchestre, being responsible for the remarkably complex instrumental compositions.

In 2014, the composer released music for heart and breath(Deutsche Grammophon), several pieces for ensemble – duet up to octet.

Tempo and development of the individual parts depend literally on the heart beat of the musicians - by listening through stethoscopes to the beat of their very own hearts - they are bound to follow them.

After playing the german premiere of music for heart and breath, the musicians of stargaze will now team up with Aaron and Bryce Dessner (The National) and Richie Parry himself.

s t a r g a z e is very honored to be invited by sacrum profanum festival in beautiful krakow for the very first time and to not only play one but two concerts!

- Dates:

September 13th – These New Puritans, stargaze and Synergy Vocals London

September 15th – Aaron and Bryce Dessner, Richie Parry and stargaze perform Music for Heart and Breath

On the soundtrack of Leo's 'The Revenant'

2015

Kaltern Pop Festival

2015

Greg Saunier's Deerhoof chamber Variations

2015

s t a r g a z e signs to Transgressive Records London

Debut EP 'Deerhoof Chamber Variations' out on December 4th

We are very proud to announce that s t a r g a z e have signed to the much lauded Transgressive Records label, home of such bands as Foals and the up-and-coming Alvvays and Gengahr to name but a few. Transgressive was recently awarded Label Of The Year by AIM Independent Label Association and we are extremely excited to enter into a collaboration with them, and we'll keep you up-to-date as to future plans and releases!

We launch this hopefully pioneering relationship with the premiere recording of Greg Saunier's 'Deerhoof Chamber Variations', out on December 4th!

Deerhoof Chamber Variations is devised as a continuous piece of instrumental music, based on 9 1/2 songs which drummer and composer Greg Saunier originally wrote for his acclaimed band Deerhoof. Different from most other band and orchestra/classical collaborations Greg himself arranged and recomposed the material for a classical chamber ensemble, using exactly the same notes as in the originals while rearranging the songs structurally, in a kind of miniaturizing and abstracting way. Therby coalescing their essence, he somehow managed to still enhance and bring out the quirkyness, the harmonic and melodic originality and eccentricity of these pieces. Talking of eccentricity: Just as he eliminated his own part (drums) first, he used two instead of one singer, subtracting most words from their parts and using their voices and fragments of the original singing parts more like instruments themselves.

So the transformation is complete!

watch the "data" video on vimeo

watch the "data" video on youtube - except in Germany

order the 12" from transgressive

download from itunes

- reviews:

Drowned in Sound - 8/10

Drunken Werewolf - “Ebbing and flowing through the entire spectrum of human emotions, the sections weave beautiful, lilting lines though haunting, unsettling backdrops of instrumentation.”

The Music - 3.5/5 - “Stargaze debuts with a brilliant and totally left-of-centre take on the work of an indie-rock powerhouse.”

The Skinny - 4/5 - “the effects are dazzling.”

stargaze orchestral 2016 - from Bach to Greenwood

2015

You can find all information on our festival site

A weekend in December, a stage in Berlin-Mitte and 14 musical performances oscillating between the poles of revitalized classical music, electroacoustic pop and folk form the coordinates of a music festival that is so thrilling, so coherent and so much more uptodate than the otherwise long-unquestioned mode of festivals that one can speak of a potentially groundbreaking musical event for Berlin.

André de Ridder – the Berlin-based conductor and founder of the trailblazing and internationally acclaimed stargaze ensemble – found himself wondering why in Germany, and especially in Berlin, there was not a curated festival in the spirit of All Tomorrow’s Parties (ATP): Rather than being a mere musical showcase, such a festival could seek moments of epiphany, illumination and enlightenment – requiring an arc that is larger, carefully curated and not clouded by compromise.

At first glance, it appears that very different artistic positions will collide at the Volksbühne on 11, 12 and 13 December. Of course, on closer inspection they turn out to be deliberately assembled puzzle pieces, which together form a great musical panorama. The special thing about stargaze Weekender is its ability to relate to today’s pop listening habits, while at the same time challenging them. It should be mentioned that the London indie label Transgressive Records recently signed stargaze under contract – but as what? As a band? As a classical contemporary ensemble? None of these terms can precisely describe it. Beyond here lies the unknown.

Founded two and a half years ago, the collective of curators and musicians is internationally well-connected in the pop and electronic worlds and performs in various formations. They are heralded from the Boiler Room (“renegade classical ensemble”) to the Barbican in London, to Amsterdam’s Muziekgebouw, where stargaze did not merely perform with Terry Riley, but indeed acted as a source of ideas and innovation. Now in the context of its Weekender, stargaze returns to Berlin, bringing together the loose ends and existing energy lines of the recent interventions in concert.

But let’s take it day by day.

Friday night (11 December)

has spiritual music as the theme – thus addressing a basic need in our throughly rationalized time, which in all its technocratic strive for perfection still painfully feels the presence of an absence. Translated into the language of music, one might speak of a modern classical variant of saudade, the popular Portuguese style of music that so masterfully translates the loss and the intangibility of the absent into melodies and moods. stargaze has managed to put together a program that approaches the topic of spirituality in music in an almost Dadaist manner: A newly arranged Bach Cantata #150, “For you, Lord, is my longing” and a piece entiteled “Grateful Dead – What’s Become of the Baby” form the core of the opening night. Both will be performed by stargaze ensemble and Cantus Domus. “Death Speaks”, for soprano, violin, guitar and piano, was composed by the Pulitzer Prize winner David Lang. Lang took words from many Schubert songs and reassembled them in a new libretto, a collage about death. Like last year, the evening, and thus the three-day festival, will be opened by a string quartet from Bryce Dessner, which he wrote for the Kronos Quartet: “Tenebrae”. De Ridder: “Tenebrae is a three-day Catholic Mass before Easter beginning on Maundy Thursday. During the sermon,15 candles are extinguished, one after another, until it gets dark. This piece describes this Mass in retrospect, so it moves towards the light.” The overarching question of the first evening is: What are the sources when spirituality finds its voice anew as a subject in pop music (and pop culture)?

Saturday night (12 December)

delves deep into the Folk of Eastern Europe — and takes the audience into the world of Bela Bartók and György Ligety (as well as Jonny Greenwood). When Bartók’s “Three Village Scenes” is collaged, or rather infiltrated, by the indie folk band A Hawk And A Hacksaw, a circle is closed that has already been drawn at many stargaze events in recent years. According to de Ridder’s reading, Bartók is nothing more than the tonal and rhythmic language of folk in a different guise. A Hawk And A Hacksaw from New Mexico, in turn, have toured South-Eastern Europe and work much like Bartók: they go into the villages, play for the local folk and adjust themselves to suit them. With stargaze, and especially this Weekender, it’s always about the permeability of pop and classical music. György Ligety’s Cello Concerto for solo cello and a for the evening specifically assembled allstargaze Orchestra (feat. Solistenensemble Kaleidoscope) in turn refers to the evening’s international guest star, Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead. He has always stressed that Ligety and Bartók have been decisive influences of his compositions and film scores. To be performed on the Friday night is his suite “There Will Be Blood”, composed for the eponymous film by Paul Thomas Anderson. Indeed, the evening is also committed another narrative: the film score. Namely, the Cello Concerto by Ligety is familiar to us from pop culture as it underscored but the eight-minute break-in to the warehouse in Michael Mann’s film “Heat”. Without a word being spoken, during the scene we hear the entire first movement of Ligety’s work. This is reminiscent of Kubrick; cinema and folk as narrative lines amalgamating in an orchestral context.

Sunday night (13 December)

The finale is devoted to potentially groundbreaking collaborations** – the sensational Danish punk-noir band Iceage, whose sound swings dynamically between The Gun Club, the Bad Seeds and Joy Division, will perform in an unfamiliar dialogue with stargaze for the first time in Berlin. This clash of two worlds promises an intense, inspiring listening experience: the hypnotic-existentialist urgency of Elias Bender Rønnenfelt’s vocals with the artificial, instrumental contribution of stargaze. It is as if Alexander Kluge’s famous phrase about the value of “using the Subway Map of Brooklyn to find one’s way in the Harz Mountains” is transferred to the reality of the stargaze concert stage. The musicians of stargaze and Rønnenfelt first got to know each other this year at the Haldern Pop Festival. De Ridder: “stargaze is characterized by the fact that we cooperate with all kinds of musicians. So on this evening the band Villagers from Ireland will perform with stargaze, and together we will also play new arrangements of the American composer Nico Muhly.” David Longstreth from Dirty Projectors is another of the evening’s potentially groundbreaking collaboration partners, here with a piece entitled “Michael Jordan” for double string quartet. Longstreth thus takes his place along the likes of Felix Mendelssohn on the extremely short list of composers to have written pieces for this instrumentation. De Ridder: “He always names his pieces after athletes who are so charged in the pop context that something happens to the music, as if it becomes more accessible as a result.“

Curtain.

One thing is certain: The audience will be witness to a clear course of contrasts, surprises, risks, key experiences and challenges. The stargaze Weekender thus promises real and pure entertainment, evoking the origins of folk and pop, but also of classical music: Nothing is generic, nothing is commercial, which – see Jonny Greenwood (see also Bach) – doesn’t mean that it won’t work in a Cinemascope movie, or on the main stage of the Volksbühne, or as a harbinger of a new festival culture. With the stargaze Festival, we are surely talking about the most exciting, illuminating as well as entertaining music festival to be held this autumn/winter.

- doors: 19:00 every day - starts: 20:00 every day

- tickets: here

The Dodos orchestral and Greg Saunier: Deerhoof Chamber Variations

2015

Mica Levi's Under The Skin

2016

Boards of Canada & Grateful Dead

2016

judith holofernes lp recording

2016

these new puritans lp recording

2016

day of the dead album release

2016

Session Three at Nils Frahms' Possibly Colliding - Barbican

2016

bbc proms 2016

2016

haldern pop 2016

2016

kaitlyn aurelia smith lp recording

2016

michelberger music 2016

2016

kaltern pop 2016

2016

steve reich weekender

2016

november music 2016

2016

liquid music

2016

alien disko

2016

musica nova

2017

steve reich 12 inch release

2017

spitting chamber music

2017

eaux claires 2017

2017

sonar festival sampler series

2017

gaudeamus festival 2017

2017

reeperbahn festival 2017

2017

class of 67

2017

Beach Boys - Variations on Smile, Part 1 by Aart Strootman

Berio Folk Songs - Black is the Color, I wonder as I wander, Loosin yelav, Rossignolet du bois

Berio - O King

Berio Folk Songs - Motettu de tristura, Malurous au’o uno fenno, A la feminisca, La Fiolare, Azerbeijan love song

Stockhausen - Stop and Start

Berio - Michelle II

Beach Boys - Variations on Smile , Part 2 by Morris Kliphuis

We were asked to look at 1967, taking Sgt. Pepper as an axis but considering everything else that could have happened in music that year, whatever the genre. In 1967, pop took hold of the musical avant-garde, pushing the limits while simultaneously managing to express the thoughts and feelings of the whole new generation.

The Class of '67 project strives to make the Beatles of 1967 resonate with several major contemporaries, namely the Beach Boys, Luciano Berio and Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Performed by stargaze musicians with soprano Nora Fischer, the program combines several pieces by Berio (Folk Songs, one of his reinterpretations of "Michelle" by The Beatles and O King), Stop und Start by Stockhausen and a special creation by stargaze. This creation was developed from unfinished Beach Boys tracks from sessions of the legendary Smile album, which was supposed to be released in 1967 but was never completed.

The Beach Boys then exerted a great influence on the Beatles, through their records but also through their experiments in the studio - experiments largely unearthed via the edition of the Smile Sessions published a few years ago. The tapes from these sessions contain a lot of instrumentals and sketches. We had the idea to rework some of these sketches into pieces that are both tributes and pieces in their own right. In addition, Paul McCartney is known to have a passion for Stockhausen's electronic music, with the Beatles themselves using and exploring new studio techniques to reinvent their sound and arrangements. We focused on Stop, a piece that Stockhausen composed at that time and of which he then devised a version for synthesizers and acoustic instruments, Stop und Start, which seems to point towards the future of all pop music. Paul McCartney also had a great interest in the work of Berio, who also rearranged several Beatles songs. O King was written in 1967 and reflects the political situation of the day as well as the context in which the groups were working. Berio and Stockhausen represent opposing poles in the field of new music of the 1960s. It shows how much musicians like Paul McCartney were open to different genres and musical languages.

Rather than playing the pieces separately, in a purist spirit, we will try to make this concert a kind of collage, capable of reflecting the various music and influences - and perhaps also the chaos that reigned in the minds of these musicians in 1967.

kaltern pop 2017

2017

Spitalfields Music

2017

the rest is noise 2018

2018

us tour polica and stargaze 2018

2018

music for the long emergency release

2018

crosslinx 2018

2018

klarafestival 2018

2018

blackstar 2018

2018

brighton festival 2018

2018

Haldern Pop 2018

2018

michelberger music 2018

2018

edinburgh international festival 2018

2018

loney dear 2018

2018

gaudeamus festival 2018

2018

lisa hannigan and stargaze 2018

2018

“Her antique-folk arrangements are deconstructed and brilliantly reassembled as sublimely orchestrated chamber pieces in which simplicity and sophistication waltz hand-in-hand” Uncut

“Terrific… this latest collaboration is a joy, adding fresh layers and cinematic elements to songs previously memorable for their haunting sparseness” Hot Press

“Spellbinding… her poetry emboldened by the multi-faceted backing, allowing the wonderment to expand multifariously.” The 405

Live In Dublin is comprised of one new cut titled ‘Bookmark’ and 13 more tracks plucked from Lisa Hannigan's extensive back-catalogue; one that’s spanned 17 years and several award nominations, from the Mercury Prize to Ireland’s Choice Music Prize and Meteor Music Awards. This meeting of minds captured on the album was the product of a chance-encounter at Cork’s Sounds From A Safe Harbour Festival in 2015. Both performing at the festival, it was there where Lisa met André.

The following summer, at Berlin’s PEOPLE Festival, stargaze would end up inviting Lisa to perform a couple of her songs with them on stage and the project spiraled on from there. “Walking in I felt vaguely trepidatious. Sometimes working with classically trained musicians can be slightly nerve-wracking as a singer songwriter because they speak a language so beautifully fluently that I can only fumble towards,” Hannigan recalls: “In a band, so much communication is done through the shoulders, the lift of an eyebrow, the feel of a small group breathing and dancing together. It’s hard to extrapolate that out into twenty, forty, even eighty people! It can feel like a glorious ocean liner tied to a creaking rowboat.”

Thankfully, Lisa’s apprehensions would prove to be unfounded: “When we started to play though, it felt like all of stargaze had climbed aboard my rowboat. They approach a song very much as a band would, with an enthusiasm and musicality which immediately felt like home. I was overwhelmed to hear my songs in such a widescreen way, going from black and white to technicolour, and hoped we could do more.” And just like that, the idea of a live album was born: “The idea of eventually making a record and playing more together felt very natural and easy. Having made three records of my own I had a notion of making a live record but wanted to do it in a slightly more unusual way. We called on some wonderful arrangers over the following couple of years and built our setlist up one song and festival at a time.”

kaltern pop 2018

2018

polica and stargaze autumn 2018

2018

bjork 2019

2019

palast der republik

2019

fugazi record store day release

2019

For Record Store Day 2019 we released Instruments - A Track By Track Re-Composition of Fugazi's In On The Killtaker kindly arranged by our friend Greg Saunier.

Here is what André says and thinks about this project of ours: ''This project is not meant be 'referential' at all, but for me it’s a new work of art, literally New Music, inspired by a number of things to do with IOTK and the band. I find the band’s music expresses a great deal of vulnerability and struggle, very finely balanced with some visceral outbursts not just of anger, but of energy of an encouraging and uplifting nature. Our record is also a tribute to the film 'Instrument' - the band after all had a penchant for instrumental tracks or long instrumental passages, which are in itself periods of either reflection, where the words sink deeper, or in fact where the words would fail - hence 'Instruments' in which we feature each of our group’s single 'instruments' in their individuality and their negotiation of (or 'struggle' with) the material. The loud/quiet model is just one example of a musical trope explored here over the course of the whole record, with the acoustic/busting nature of some of these pieces, relaying as a voice on the street, directly to the people. These new instrumentals (quiet wordless pieces) being maybe the equivalent of the still film portraits of the women and men waiting in line at Fugazi shows in the 'Instrument' film. That’s how I literally see them.

Then there is the coming together of all instruments in the last song, where the players also sing, as well as using their instruments: it becomes even more personal. A couple more songs are realised in smaller ensembles, too. 'Rend It' becomes a deep harmony, a lament in the way I read many Fugazi songs which make them relatable to that old vocal and operatic form musically and lyrically.
It’s fascinating to me that the composer Greg Saunier claims to have never listened to a single Fugazi song before we put this idea to him, yet intuitively his compositions incorporate all this. Plus, his own band and his own public expressions all abide by very similar or the same rigorous musical, operational, and political principles as Fugazi’s.

For me the whole project is a celebration of the vital role and 'publicness' of music, its lasting impact, and its building and re-building over and over of communities and humanity.''

roam

2019

lisa hannigan and stargaze lp

2019

“Her antique-folk arrangements are deconstructed and brilliantly reassembled as sublimely orchestrated chamber pieces in which simplicity and sophistication waltz hand-in-hand” Uncut

“Terrific… this latest collaboration is a joy, adding fresh layers and cinematic elements to songs previously memorable for their haunting sparseness” Hot Press

“Spellbinding… her poetry emboldened by the multi-faceted backing, allowing the wonderment to expand multifariously.” The 405

reflektor hamburg

2019

summer nostros festival 2019

2019

other voices berlin

2019

all together now

2019

haldern pop 2019

2019

sommerfestival hamburg soap and skin

2019

helsinki festival

2019

mam 2019

2019

kaltern pop 2019

2019

crossing borders 2019

2019

leonard cohen thanks for the dance lp

2019

under the skin

2019

beethoven nein

2020

mam 2020

2020

haldern pop 2020

2020

boards of canada woodkid support

2021

post-beethoven-fest

2021

s t a r g a z e presents: Post-Beethoven-Fest 2021 at Volksbühne Berlin, an online festival presented by zart.tv

Owing to the laws of the Pandemic, our ‚weekend’ will be rung in early, and the festival will be streamed on Thursday the 10th and Friday 11th of June live from Berlin, and re-broadcast for the various time zones the days after (more about this below)

We are very excited to have a pioneering concert-stream media partner on board: zart.tv! With them, we promise an exciting new kind of experience for an online presented festival, including a special virtual installation room and foyer performance.

Beethoven - the aftermath: The – in classical music circles - much-anticipated Beethoven Year 2020 has largely fallen victim to Covid-19, and so did part of our year with Beethoven which included a concept of performing all of his nine symphonies in new re-composed versions by a diverse range of artists. Our quest to find out ‚what’s up with/left of Beethoven’ has found new meaning in 2021 in more than one way and so we have put our versions of his symphonies, which are already steeped in a 21st century perspective, in context with philosophical and pop-cultural lines in German art music ‚post Beethoven’.

There’ll be a host of premieres by composers Sarah Nemtsov, Nicole Lizée, Kate Moore, Josephine Stephenson, Matthew Herbert and Aart Strootman based on movements and ideas from Ludwig’s first, second, seventh, and ninth symphonies; opposite works by Stockhausen, Friedrich Nietzsche - performed by Holger Hiller (Palais Schaumburg) - Boards of Canada and Kraftwerk. Other artists involved include dancers Latisha Sparks, Zen and Miriam Arnold, the re-united Hamburg new-wave band 1000 Robota, and of course us ourselves, finally performing our project based on Boards Of Canada’s phenomenal album ‚Hi Scores’ for the first time in Germany, following our huge success at Edinburgh International Festival in 2019, featuring The Notwist’s Andi Haberl on drums.

Tickets are available here, and you can choose between three different time zones (Berlin, New York, Melbourne)
Festival Day 1 on June 10th (Berlin, New York, 8pm local time) and June 11th (Melbourne, 8pm)
Festival Day 2 on June 11th (Berlin, New York, 8pm local time) and June 12th (Melbourne, 8pm)

Our virtual doors open at 7.45pm every evening and the concert starts at 8pm with breaks in-between the pieces, so you can hang out at the virtual bar, visit the Merch store or one of the installation rooms.

Programme 10 June 2021

*Beethoven One

Composition: Aart Strootman (NL) with s t a r g a z e and André de Ridder

*1000 Robota

New and old songs, featuring a cover of “Autobahn” by Kraftwerk

*Boards Of Canada - Hi Scores+ Beethoven 7.2. with dance

Arrangement by BoC Hi Scores: Aart Strootman, s t a r g a z e

Arrangement by Beethoven 7.2.: André de Ridder, Mouse on Mars

with s t a r g a z e incl. Drummer Andi Haberl (The Notwist, Andromeda Mega Express Orchestra), dancers: Miriam Arnold, Latisha Sparks and Zen Jefferson

Programme 11.06.2021

*Karlheinz Stockhausen: STOP und START (for Synthesizer and acoustic instruments)

With s t a r g a z e and André de Ridder

*Beet2 – World Premiere

Composers

“Beet Two-1” Josephine Stephenson, UK

“Beet Two-2” Kate Moore, NL

“Beet Two-3” Sarah Nemtsov, DE

“Beet Two-4” Nicole Lizée, CAN

*Holger Hiller sings Nietzsche

Arrangements: Aart Strootman

With Holger Hiller and s t a r g a z e

Concept spaces on 10.06 and 11.06

*“ALONE” from Beethoven NEIN

s t a r g a z e and Matthew Herbert, concept

Mayah Kadish on violin

*“TOGETHER” from Beethoven NEIN

Sound installation by Matthew Herbert

ABC – (not) Another Beethoven Cycle

2021

ABC – (not) Another Beethoven Cycle has essentially come out of the question how it would be possible to present a cycle of all of Beethoven’s symphonies (the perceived pinnacle of the classical orchestral repertoire, and benchmark for every such ensemble) as a world-premiere. So the idea was to ask 9 different artists, not all composers or even musicians necessarily, to take one symphony each and make their own version or arrangement of it, or a new work based on it. We were specifically interested in involving individuals who would not normally perform this music, or have been educated on or in these works, whose relevance (which we believe in) may be questioned today, and should, not least in what was billed as the 250th anniversary year of the composer.

We started with no less than the monumental NINTH, including the famous Ode to Joy, which has recently come to renewed prominence as a kind of European anthem, sung by a massed choir and 4 soloists in the final movement of the work.

Our version developed in collaboration with electronic conceptional auteur Matthew Herbert, premiered on February 1 and 2 at the Barbican Centre London, coincidentally also the weekend ‚Brexit’ came into effect in the UK.

This project is a very multifaceted affair, as the four movements became different projects each, bound by the central idea of the relationship between individual and society, the questions of ‚Equality’ and sisterhood and brotherhood of all human kind negotiated in Schiller’s Ode. The last movement is a community project which enables choirs of all ages and abilities to sing the notoriously difficult piece, usually the domain more ambitious choral societies and professional choirs, in a much more humble and less noisy manner than is practice.

Although many of our Beethoven concerts got cancelled through 2020 (co-commissioners included the BBC Proms, the Helsinki Festival, Lucerne Theatre and Festival, the Barbican Centre and Cologne Philharmonie) we still managed to perform our versions of Beethoven ONE (re-composed by Aart Strootmann) and NINE again, in very different settings and circumstances, away from the classical concert hall usually home for these works. This was another objective of our project, to ‚disseminate’ this quite radical music and concepts amongst audiences that wouldn't usually even listen to Beethoven, through the lens of 21st century artists, in less formal settings (that were adaptable and would become successively more Covid-proof also, without much ado).

Beethoven EIGHT was arranged and re-composed for stargaze by Greg Saunier, composer and drummer of the US band Deerhoof and a long-term collaborator of ours. He re-arranged the order of the movements and partly combined them, in an artistic shuffle-play style, but kept tvery true to he musical material. Yet his idiosyncratic orchestration on the one hand pinpoints the particular characteristics of this symphony as well as highlights Saunier's own sense of groove and tempo in this work famous for it's 'metronomique' features.

Beethoven ONE "What I like about the third movement of the first symphony is that it's basically a scherzo (even though Beethoven doesn't call it that (yet)). The many, relatively short ideas are fantastic to mull over and over again, putting them in different perspective by orchestration, tempo and timbre. The overall curve of the piece is that I start the work almost as written (after a wink towards the opening of the first movement) and slow the music down more and more, stretching the notes and harmonies so that it ends in a sound that is close to the synthesizer music of Boards of Canada. I've arranged BoC's seminal album Hi-Scores for the group 4 years ago." (Aart Strootman)

Beethoven TWO For this symphony we asked four different composers to take on a movement each, and left the brief wide open as to how much they would 're-arrange/compose' or write pretty much a new, their one piece of music, taking elements of Beethoven's music as inspiration:

Josephine Stephenson - Beet 2-1

Kate Moore - 0202B.

Sarah Nemtsov - Scherzo

Nicole Lizée - 2 | IV

For our musicians, creative, individual multi-instrumentalists from different backgrounds who mostly decided against an orchestra career early on, and may have last played a Beethoven Symphony in youth orchestra, or never at all, the sense of discovery they experienced so far on this journey through Beethoven’s cosmos has been, in the words of some, quite ‚mind-blowing’ and therefore it’s become clear to us that we should continue this journey and project, regardless of Beethoven year or not. Beethoven was a child of the ‚Enlightenment’, an artist and personality engaged in public political discourse, intriguingly placed and immersed in the midst of Immanuel Kant’s and Schiller’s discussions of what Freedom, Education meant and what constitutes a self-responsible, morally ethical citizen.

Some eminent contemporary philosophers (most recently the German Markus Gabriel, who holds the chair of Modern Philosophy at.. coincidence?... Bonn University) have found evidence in 2020 for their claim that we need ‚a new enlightenment’, for our time. This extends of course beyond any solution for the pandemic and how we may or may not continue to live after, this includes of course the far more crucial impact of climate change and all it’s connected geopolitical ramifications.

An effort towards a new view and understanding of Beethoven’s music, firstly, cannot end at the close of 2020 and secondly, can communicate through art the necessity of this New Enlightenment.The third movement from Beethoven‘s First Symphony combined with all four from his Second (together compromising the „12th“) provide the starting point for this collaborative suite.

Boards of Canada - Hi-Scores

2021

starTracks with Nik Void, Arone Dyer, Tyondai Braxton and Greg Saunier

2021

Theaterspektakel-Zürich - Tribute to Warp Records (Boards of Canada & Aphex Twin)

2021

ARONE x stargaze - THE ALBUM KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN

2021

Beethoven 1-2-8

2021

Lisa Hannigan and s t a r g a z e

2022

“Her antique-folk arrangements are deconstructed and brilliantly reassembled as sublimely orchestrated chamber pieces in which simplicity and sophistication waltz hand-in-hand” Uncut

“Terrific… this latest collaboration is a joy, adding fresh layers and cinematic elements to songs previously memorable for their haunting sparseness” Hot Press

“Spellbinding… her poetry emboldened by the multi-faceted backing, allowing the wonderment to expand multifariously.” The 405

Song-Of-The-Earth

2022

MÁM - Teac Damsa

2022

For our first ever foray into the dance world, s t a r g a z e co-created the music for a new production of renowned choreographer Michael Keegan-Dolan and his dance company Teac Damsa. Mám is a co-production of the Dublin Theatre Festival, Sadler's Wells London, and the New Zealand Festival. Musically, the project started with workshops of Irish Concertina player and stargaze in Berlin and London, and adding dancers, in Auckland over a period of more than a year. Based on traditional material interpreted by Begley, stargaze created a series of new pieces, improvisations, interludes and arranged accompaniments that Keegan-Dolan and his dancers responded to and vice -versa. In a unique co-creative process music and dance developed in parallel,refined in a shared six weeks rehearsal process in the remote village of Dingle in West-Kerry, spiritual home of Teac Damsa (and actual home of Begley and MKD)

André de Ridder about MÁM:

MÁM is a dance project we were invited on by choreographer Michael Keegan-Dolan and his company Teac Damsa. It started with tentative workshops between our musicians and Irish Concertina player Cormac Begley, to explore if we could find a common language and vibe in playing together, quite possibly towards making new music together. We met twice, in Berlin and Amsterdam (stargaze’ two headquarters, you may count Rotterdam in now as a third one) before three of our musicians were invited to travel to New Zealand (as New Zealand Festival was one of the main co-producers of the work) in February 2019 to take part in further workshops that this time involved the dancers as well! I’d say that by the time the actual project started for good, we had developed a pretty good understanding of each others’ personalities, artistry and aims. The week in Wellington also produced some musical material that, alongside Cormac’s original tunes, would form the backbone of the music for MÀM.

Then, in the summer of 2019, stargaze spent no less than 5 weeks with the whole company in West-Kerry, in the beautiful little fishing town of Dingle, home of Keegan-Dolan, rehearsing and creating the final work in a community centre.

As a conductor, I am used to an orchestra, as in the musicians joining a music theatre or dance production fairly last minute, 1 – 2 weeks (often less) before the premiere, with not much room for maneuver structurally or musically. The music has been set all along. This was an entirely different process, that not only made us co-creators of the score, but the whole work took its shape under the influence of every individual dancer and musician in the room. I think it’s no hyperbole to say that this experience changed everyone’s outlook on what we do, our creative roles and processes completely and irreversibly.

And that’s before I even talk about the content of MÀM, which casts a group of people, maybe family, old and new friends, couples, a society in a place where togetherness, apartness, love and loss, support, meetings farewells are undergoing multiple manifestations and transformations like life has to, to be complete. A longing, a real struggle for but succeeding in the coming together of human kinds (sic) lays at the heart of the very emotional piece – and therefore touched on everything we are going through this year and need to consider for our future.

Shows
Premiere at Dublin Theatre Festival in September 2019
Sadlers Wells, London, in February 2020
Perth Festival, Australia, in February 2020
New Zealand Festival of the Arts, Wellington, New Zealand, in March 2020
Teatros del Canal Madrid, Madrid, in December 2021
Internationale Maifestspiele Wiesbaden, Germany, in May 2022

High Dive

2022

ARONE x stargaze - THE ALBUM LAUNCH 2023.12.1 world

We have finally launched the official ‘ARONE x s t a r g a z e’ album!

‘ARONE x s t a r g a z e’ - We launched the album!

We have finally launched the official ‘ARONE x s t a r g a z e’ album! On December 1st 2023, the latest s t a r g a z e album hit the streaming platforms after nearly a decade long collaborative relationship between our orchestral s t a r g a z e r s and Buke and Gase, via Transgressive Records and Brassland. The album has been described as a vibrant yet intricate and captivating journey into the minds of genre-agnostic musicians in conjunction with Buke and Gase, an artist who evolved from New York’s underground buzz and makes up one half of the music duo ‘Buke and Gase’. Not for the faint-hearted, the album has been carefully designed to result in a rich combination of finely tuned classical elements, bursts of raw creative exploration and contemporary flair.

Melding polyrhythmic strings, percussion, and orchestral flourishes in combination with Buke and Gase’s unique vocals, each track is formed together as an experiential piece of art. It’s a real testimony to the talent of each individual member of the s t a r g a z e orchestra collective, and we are really delighted with the outcome. All of the songs in the album give focal attention to singular musical elements of each instrument as the tracks reach varying climaxes.

With the entire album lyrics written by the vocalist Buke and Gase herself, the album ‘ARONE x s t a r g a z e’ features songs with sparseness and emotional weight, echoing themes of challenges in relationships, such as communication, acceptance and consequential decision-making. Tracks such as “Sugar Friend” explore dealing with entitlement and the importance of boundaries. “Don’t Say” tackles anger at wealth disparities, whilst “Spider Practical” depicts the delicate and complex nature of humanity comparing relationships to that of a spider’s web. The album also pays homage to Dyer’s late mother in an emotional tribute within the song “Carwash”.

How did we meet?

The s t a r g a z e collective first encountered Buke and Gase at Haldern Pop Festival in Germany back in 2014. After watching the New York duo ‘Buke & Gase’ performing, the s t a r g a z e team really connected with Buke and Gase and the creative ideas began. The following year, while performing as a part of the [PEOPLE Festival](https://peoplefestival.berlin in Berlin with members of The National and Bon Iver, the s t a r g a z e ensemble met Buke and Gase for the second time and first arranged to collaborate on her solo compositions. Those sessions ignited the initial conception of the album that you hear today. In 2020, the pandemic hiatus became a creative opportunity for our collaborative project to really take off.

A successful s t a r g a z e kickstarter campaign for the album raised €25,000 EUR, which allowed Buke and Gase to visit s t a r g a z e in Europe and make new music where instrumentals were recorded at Wisseloord Studios in Hilversum, Netherlands by Sam Jones & Ira Helfferich. Dyer later recorded vocals at Polyphonic Workshop in Hudson, NY, by Aron Sanchez, Dyer’s longtime collaborator and bandmate in ‘Buke and Gase’.

We are so grateful to all our Kickstarter supporters who contributed to the development of the album - your support was absolutely integral to the completion of the album! We couldn’t have done it without you.

Go and listen!

❤️ the s t a r g a z e collective