Commissions to Michele Abondano, Juliana Hodkinson & Karen Power

Klangwerkstatt Berlin, founded by composer Peter Ablinger in 1990, is the oldest independent festival of contemporary music in Berlin and Germany. Every November, concerts, performances and multimedia formats with numerous premieres and German premieres take place over a week and a half. Over the course of its more than thirty-year history, around 1800 pieces have been performed, around 800 of them world premieres. This makes it one of the most important premiere festivals in Berlin and beyond.

The programme of Klangwerkstatt Berlin 2025 will include around 20 concerts, performances and multimedia formats, including three world premieres of new commissions to Michele Abondano, Juliana Hodkinson and Karen Power, made possible by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation.

flüssige Zeit / tiempo líquido is the title of the new work by Colombian composer Michele Abondano. The topic of time and the perception of it is something that musicians are constantly dealing with: the period of time it takes to create a sound, the arc of suspense of a pause, the beginning, course and end of a phrase, the influence of personal form on the day on the duration of a sound. The idea of the work is equally polytemporal in a highly individual way, personal and collective time meet or complement each other.

In Juliana Hodkinson’s new work, the composer continues her exploration of vocal aging. In her new piece, she will work with spatialisation, polyphony and counterpoint, and the transfer of subjectivity between different vocal registers, including those of the audience.

life between poles is the result of two life-changing expeditions by Karen Power to the South and North Poles, where Power made recordings above, in and below the melting ice. It is the culmination of a decades-long fascination with the sonic diversity of melting ice, which began with Power’s first Arctic expedition in 2013.

Further information:
klangwerkstatt-berlin.de

Dates

November 7, 2025
Kunstquartier Bethanien, Berlin
(World Premiere: Juliana Hodkinson)

November 8, 2025
Kunstquartier Bethanien, Berlin
(World Premiere: Karen Power)

November 15, 2025
Kunstquartier Bethanien, Berlin
(World Premiere: Michele Abondano)