THU 23 04 2015 19:30 | LANGENZERSDORF MUSEUM | Obere Kirchengasse 23, Langenzersdorf
Concert Evening at the Max Brand Tage in cooperation with LANGENZERSDORF MUSEUM

The evening takes a look into the work of Max Brand and his artistic beneficeries. The composer, sound researcher and media archeologist Elisabeth Schimana will lead through the program.

Max Brand: Jungle Drums (1959), / Ilian (1973),
The Astronauts (1962)
Elisabeth Schimana: Hell Machine (2009)
Operators: Manon Liu Winter, Gregor Ladenhauf
Katharina Klement: YOU AND ME (2014)
Uli Kühn & Gerald Krist: a jourey back (2015)

Born in Lviv in 1896, Max Brand had mutated 60 years later into a solitary pioneer of electronics in New York. With his electronic music he would hardly achieve the publicity he did during the interwar years and only rarely reach an artistic and technical level of production that met his standards, and yet he left behind not only a wonderful machine and a collection of tapes but also the reputation of his artistically uncompromising obsession – and the knowledge of an age that quite simply believed in technical utopias. (Christian Scheib)

IMA Institute of Media Archäology has accepted this inheritance, kissed awake, explored and played the Max Brand Synthesizer during the exhibition “Magical Sound Machines” (2008). Artists were invited to deal with this prototype synthesizer, build by Bob Moog after the idea of Max Brand, and to develop new compositions and improvisations.

Max Brand / Jungle Drums (1959)
Thois is the oldest preserved fragment of Max Brands tape compositions.

Elisabeth Schimana / Hell Machine (2009)
Composition für den Max Brand Synthesizer
Operators: Manon Liu Winter, Gregor Ladenhauf
A journey into the depths of a unique machine, the legacy of the composer Max Brand. The forefather of the Moog Synthesizer, it is a monstrous instrument that took decades to develop. Operated by a first-class pianist, it snorts and wheezes through the ether of subharmonic frequencies.
A journey to hell with no return.

Max Brand / Ilian (1973)
The title makes reference to the last few letters of Brand’s full first name, Maximilian, but also to the Greek myth that tells of the shift from matriarchy to patriarchy. Ilian was composed as a music for ballet and is the only preserved work realised on the Max Brand Synthesizer.

Katharina Klement / YOU AND ME (2014)
Working with the Max Brand synthesizer was a personal and physical experience. It’s a mighty machine, each plug, knob, or lever holds a secret waiting to be discovered. The keyboard, pedals, and ribbon controller force hands and feet to operate its many parts, to get it to connect and fuse with one’s own physical being.

Max Brand / The Astronauts (1962)
The basis of this as film music designed work are NASA recordings of the radio conversations between ground control and John Glenn during the latter’s first flight into space.

Uli Kühn und Gerald Krist / eine Reise zurück (2015)
live improvisations on the Max Brand Synthesizer