At the beginning of the 10th international masterclasses of new music Course, which took place in February in the Myroslav Skoryk Lviv National Philharmonic, the composers-mentors provided public presentations of their own creativity. Alla Zagaykevych (UA), Slawomir Wojcehowski (PL) and Luxa (DE) shared their vision of contemporary art for the young Ukrainian students and everyone interested in Jam Factory Art Center.
Alla Zagaykevych
During war, for every Ukrainian composer, the most pressing question is the possibility of the future. As a professor, I recognize that studying music is crucially and inherently linked to the past.
When teaching students, we constantly engage with history of classical music, navigating the long tradition of European processes. Yet, we also explore new music—our own and that of other composers—raising the question of how music continually renews itself. Each of us must create our own new music.
For me, I have a clear sense of what sustains my ability to innovate, to create anew. My sources of renewal lie in aesthetics and Ukrainian musical history, particularly in the art of futurism. Additionally, folklore and ethnomusicology play a major role, shaped by my extensive experience singing with the ensemble Drevo and working in ethnomusicological research.
Electroacoustic music is another crucial aspect of my work. I am deeply interested in the interaction between instrumental sound and electroacoustic space, as well as in film music, new technologies, and collaborations with media artists.
As an example, I have reconstructed a project in collaboration with the Ukrainian artist Yevhen Deslav, a filmmaker from the all-Ukrainian Photo-Cinema Administration in Odesa, the first cinema studio. Deslav, later forced into exile in Paris. His work belongs to the era of silent film, and I have created music for one of his pieces, “La Marche des Machines,” a five-minute reconstruction reflecting Ukrainian futurism.
To further illustrate the influence of futurism, I invite you to the opening page of my latest symphonic work. It is a symphonic piece incorporating electronics, inspired by the futuristic concepts of Ukrainian artist Valerian Polischuk. This composition serves as a dual tribute—to Ukrainian futurism and to Polish artist Podkowski, a pioneer in Polish electroacoustic music. Created for Warsaw Autumn Festival, it employs spectral techniques, drawing on IRCAM technology, Open Music, and algorithmic composition.
Beyond futurism, folklore has been an essential part of my journey. As an ethnomusicologist, I have personally visited 83 villages across Ukraine to record and study traditional music. This direct engagement with authentic singers and scholars has profoundly shaped my perspective as a composer.
I have a deep appreciation for the folklore of the Rivne / Polissia region and have worked on projects integrating authentic folk elements into contemporary composition. For me, folklore is more than melody—it represents a complex of timbral characteristics and a key to preserving regional identity. Ukraine’s diverse folklore traditions, from Polissia to Halychyna and Kyiv-Polissia, offer boundless opportunities for creative exploration.
Traditional instruments also inspire my work. The bandura, an instrument rooted in oral professional tradition, plays a central role in my composition “Friend Li Bo,” based on Oleh Lysheha’s “Friend Li Bo”. This piece exists in versions for both guzhen and bandura, expanding the expressive possibilities of these instruments.
Another project I’d like to mention is my opera “Vyshyvanyi,” created in collaboration with the Ukrainian poet Serhii Zhadan. The opera integrates historical documents, including the interrogation transcripts of Vasyl Vyshevanyj, a historical figure who fought for Ukraine’s independence. This connection between past and present is strikingly relevant—history repeats itself, and the struggles for Ukraine’s sovereignty continue. In October 2021, this opera was premiered, presenting these themes through music and text.
The themes explored in “Vyshevanyj” also appear in my composition “Murus Lucis” (“Wall of Light”), performed at our concert on February 22. This work, for violin and piano, incorporates elements from the opera and explores the concept of light as both a physical and symbolic force. It is my first composition for violin and piano, though I have previously written for violin with electronics and piano with electronics. The piece consists of two movements, culminating in the search for a “wall of light.”
Ultimately, my message to students is this: find your personal artistic path. The future depends on you—on your creative vision and determination. The future of Ukraine, of Ukrainian music, and of your own musical voice is in your hands. Music must have a future. Ukraine must have a future. Ukrainian music must have a future.
Luxa
I believe it’s crucial to maintain a positive outlook on the future—one that envisions progress and construction rather than destruction. In this talk, I’ll discuss three of my pieces, share aspects of my artistic approach, and connect my ideas to what we’ve heard so far, but from a slightly different perspective.
The first piece is an electroacoustic composition titled Das Mitleid ist die Geisel der Menschheit (which loosely translates to Compassion is the Evil of Mankind, Sheriff—an ironic title, of course). Composed in 2008. It originates from a digitally corrupted found-footage file—an artifact from the internet containing digital glitches.
The source material is the MIDI soundtrack of an old computer game from the 1980s. When I downloaded it, it was already corrupted, producing a distorted sound. Initially, it starts normally but soon takes on a strange, unintended interpretation of raw data. I found this artifact fascinating because it represents a kind of accidental noise—something that wasn’t supposed to be music, yet became something compelling.
The entire composition is built from this found footage. One version of the piece stretches the sound in extreme slow motion, with the fast glitch. Another version applies heavy digital distortion, creating a contrasting sonic world.
The performance setup is also unique. The highly distorted sounds are played through a high-tech surround speaker system, while the other ones are cleaner sounds which come from a retro device, such as a ghetto blaster or cassette player. This contrast between high-tech and low-tech references the 1980s origins of the MIDI file and plays with the idea of media crossovers.
This approach connects to a tradition called acousmatic music, which emerged in the 1950s with composers like Pierre Schaeffer, Pierre Henry, and François Bayle. It challenges the notion of loudspeakers as neutral sound transmitters, instead treating them as active sonic objects with their own unique characteristics. This idea—what I call medium color—explores how playback devices influence the perception of sound. I’ll elaborate on this concept with my next example.
One key aesthetic in my work is the beauty of errors and glitches. Rather than striving for a polished, perfect aesthetic, I embrace accidental sounds, digital artifacts, and unexpected sonic elements. In this piece, I highlight glitches on two levels: first, in the original corrupted file, and second, by deliberately bringing these digital distortions into the foreground.
Another important theme in my work is the intersection of contemporary music and popular culture. This is evident in the next piece I’ll discuss: Schöner Leben Sieben (Living More Beautifully). Part of an ongoing series spanning nearly 20 years, these solo pieces use an augmented setup. This particular work, composed in 2011, was developed in close collaboration with saxophonist Mark Lorenz Kysela from Stuttgart. My solo works are always written for specific performers, making collaboration a crucial part of the creative process.
The setup of Schöner Leben Sieben is unconventional. In addition to playing the saxophone, the performer operates a foot-controlled keyboard, electronic triggers, and various playback devices. The setup includes a mix of speakers, headphones, and consumer electronics, creating a hybrid sonic environment.
Visually, the performance setup becomes a kind of theatrical scene—not traditional music theater, but a setting where the musician’s actions go beyond playing an instrument. The performer navigates multiple instruments simultaneously, requiring a different kind of virtuosity—one that involves risk and adaptation rather than decades of classical training.
This idea aligns with a term coined by my teacher, Nikolaus Huber: Menschenklangfarbe, or the sound of a human being. It suggests that each performer has a unique sonic identity shaped by their physicality, posture, and energy—not just their instrument. While this concept is central to jazz and pop music, I believe it can also be explored in contemporary music.
Beyond performance, Schöner Leben Sieben integrates pop-cultural elements through structural composition. The piece is built from distinct segments, each derived from found footage—similar to the earlier electroacoustic piece but more densely constructed. I don’t simply compile these materials; I deconstruct them, analyzing their spectral and rhythmic properties, then reconstructing them in a highly detailed manner. This is more than a mashup—it’s a way of processing the overwhelming amount of material in our digital age. Instead of simply adding to the vast pool of content, I use composition as a means of navigating and making sense of existing cultural production.
Now, I’ll move on to my third piece: I Would Leave Leaf and Dance (2022), composed for the SWR Symphony Orchestra. This piece blends orchestral and electronic elements, but not in the traditional sense of fixed-tape electronics.
One musician plays electronic drum pads, triggering synthetic beats. Another performs synthesized orchestral sounds—essentially a “shadow orchestra” made of classic synthesized timbres like those from the Yamaha DX7. The third musician produces more abstract electronic noises, such as sine waves, clicks, and static, creating a contrast with the acoustic instruments.
Rather than simply layering electronics over the orchestra, I carefully integrate the two by constructing rhythmic frameworks where each beat can shift fluidly between acoustic and electronic domains. I use rhythm as a structural tool, ensuring that electronic and orchestral elements interact seamlessly.
To compose these rhythmical structures, I first created digital mock-ups in Ableton Live, allowing me to experiment with beat construction before transcribing it into a traditional orchestral score. This method lets me design grooves that feel both structured and unpredictable—blending the sensibilities of pop music with contemporary orchestral writing.
At the climax of the piece, orchestral and electronic elements fully merge in a single harmonic event—one that references both pop music and symphonic traditions. This final chord serves as a meeting point between the two worlds.
You‘d probably recognize this—it’s from Igor Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite. But what makes this chord so unique? Stravinsky himself, of course—his music is legendary, and this piece is widely known. However, this particular chord also became one of the most famous samples in pop and hip-hop history.
It’s exactly this sample that took on a life of its own. You can hear it prominently in Planet Rock by Afrika Bambaataa, one of the earliest hip-hop tracks. The sound entered hip-hop through the Fairlight synthesizer in 1979, marking its transition into pop music.
I decided to take the original Stravinsky sample and merge it into the finale of my piece, creating a meeting point between these two worlds in this one chord.
The idea is to blend live performance with the sampled sound, alternating between the two as they both descend, stretching and deepening—essentially a live enactment of a sampling technique. The final result sounds like this. You get the idea.
As the music sinks, the orchestration thins out, leaving only the deepest instruments in the ensemble. The piece ends with the lowest notes from Stravinsky, descending to the contrabassoon—the lowest voice of the orchestra—a conceptual conclusion.
To summarize: I’ve been discussing the broader context of music. We never hear music in isolation—it’s always shaped by factors like who’s performing, when, where, under what conditions, and through personal experience.
For me, composition isn’t just about musical material itself. I’m drawn to using elements that carry historical weight—like this chord—especially in surprising contexts. My aim is to extend composition beyond just sound, reshaping situations so that context itself becomes a compositional tool.
This also serves as a response to mass production in the digital age. We’re constantly surrounded by a flood of material online, but my approach isn’t just about selection or juxtaposition. It’s about transformation—analyzing, deconstructing, and uncovering deeper structures within the material to combine them in meaningful ways.
As I mentioned earlier,
composition isn’t just about construction—it’s about deconstruction, reinterpretation, and a deeper understanding of sound.
Instead of merely replicating the surface, I want to explore and transform it.
Ultimately, my goal is to refresh how we listen. When sounds become stereotypes, we stop actively hearing them because we’ve encountered them so often in familiar contexts. But by shifting their framework, we can rediscover them—proving that, despite our assumptions, we may not be done listening after all.
Slawomir Wojcehowski
To help you understand my approach, I have put together this short presentation titled Digging for Gold.
The question for me is how to explain my instruments, my tools, and my working process. I will talk about the title at the end of the presentation. We are all searching for something valuable—something meaningful to us. As artists and composers, we seek our own kind of gold. This gold differs for each individual, but as you know, it is not easy to find a fresh river or an undiscovered mine. We keep moving, shifting from place to place, river to river, in pursuit of new creative sources.
I consider myself a gold digger in this artistic journey. I have my tools, my maps, my fields, and my rivers. Some rivers run dry, so I move to others, searching for fresh terrain. The first river I want to discuss dates back to 2012. This river follows the long tradition of preparation in new music. As Lachenmann said, one must build their own instrument. Deeply influenced by this philosophy, I began experimenting with instrument preparations, specifically with string instruments like the violin and cello.
My first composition exploring this was Blind Spot, a string quartet, followed by a piece for eight prepared cellos. For such works, you need a specialized ensemble willing to experiment with you. I spent extensive time with my cello, conducting experiments. Eventually, I developed a technique where wooden sticks are placed between the strings, unlocking various sonic possibilities. By spending anywhere from 20 to 70 hours improvising, I reached a refined result.
The principle is simple: place wooden sticks about two centimeters from the bridge, creating three primary playing areas—the region behind the bridge, the area between the bridge and the stick, and the ordinary playing area. This method solved an issue common in string ensembles: the unwanted resonance of open strings, which can be disruptive. With this preparation, that resonance is eliminated. Another discovery was that when plucking one string, its vibration transfers to all four strings, generating harmonic relationships. By pressing different strings, the resonance alters, forming different harmonic chords. Additionally, bowing directly on the stick produces a whistling effect, controllable through left-hand pressure.
For this project, I recorded all eight cello parts myself, creating an acoustic model from which I structured the composition. This method required substantial time with each performer to teach them the preparation process before actual rehearsals could begin. At the piece’s climax, I introduced an unexpected tool—a milk frother bouncing on the strings. That concludes my thoughts on this first river of preparation.
After my work with prepared instruments, I decided it was time to move to a new river. My next step was integrating live electronics, specifically using Pure Data, an open-source software that enables real-time sound processing. What fascinated me was its community-driven development, affordability, and stability.
My approach involved treating sound manipulation like another form of preparation—applying basic transformations such as speed variation, pitch shifting, time-stretching, cutting, reversing, filtering, and granular synthesis. These simple yet fundamental parameters create complex sonic textures. Over time, these elements form their own internal logic, evolving organically while remaining flexible and dynamic.
The next piece I composed for ensemble explored this principle. The introduction features ascending glissandi, first in the winds, then in the strings, creating a restless motion. This transitions into a chaotic texture of sparkling percussive sounds. Another essential element is the MIDI controller, which triggers algorithmic transformations—essentially virtual mirrors of the acoustic material. This creates an interplay between live musicians and electronically processed reflections of their sounds, generating a constantly shifting, non-repetitive structure. The audience perceives both the ensemble and the virtual layer as an inseparable whole. Let’s listen to a short excerpt to hear this effect.
Moving forward, my next river involved deeper integration between physical objects and digital processing. I collaborated with a friend—a multidisciplinary artist, programmer, and instrument builder—to develop unique sound-generating devices. One such device was a mechanized organ pipe, controllable via Pure Data, allowing for dynamic changes in airflow, pitch, and overblown harmonics. The mechanical movement of the servos added another percussive element.
Another instrument was a DIY gramophone featuring a trombone mute as a resonator. By manipulating playback speed and pressure, we could create expressive sonic textures. We also experimented with a translation loop involving three mobile phones, each recording and retransmitting speech in different languages, forming an evolving linguistic distortion. This piece was a tribute to Aaron Swartz, the activist and hacker who fought for open access to knowledge. His tragic story—being prosecuted for liberating academic articles from JSTOR and ultimately taking his own life—resonated deeply with me. The performance reflected themes of freedom, information control, and systemic oppression.
Now, we move to the final river. At this stage, I have gathered all my previous tools and approaches—instrument preparations, live electronics, object-based sound generation—and combined them into a cohesive practice. This phase is about refining the gold I have collected, shaping it into idiomatic compositions. One example is a piece for ensemble and tape, but instead of using rigidly fixed tape parts, I sought to maintain fluidity and organic interaction.
Here, you’ll hear recordings of organ pipes from the Aaron Swartz piece, a baroque recorder, reversed playback, dialogues between wind instruments and trumpet, and layered percussive textures. Toward the end, we introduce fragmented radio recordings, reintroducing speech as a musical element.
Now, I’d like to conclude by explaining the title Digging for Gold. This phrase is borrowed from a song by Matt Johnson, whose music I listened to as a teenager. The lyric, digging for gold, diving for pearls, reflects the artistic search for value and meaning. Throughout my career, I have explored various methodologies—preparations, electronics, extended instruments, and multimedia approaches—always seeking fresh perspectives.
Today, we are witnessing significant shifts in music production, including automation and artificial intelligence. While many discussions around these topics are exaggerated, they force us to reconsider our creative roles. We must continuously redefine how we express ourselves to ensure our artistic voices remain distinct and meaningful.
And the last word—probably the next river. I think I’ll name the river Big Data because I’m reflecting on my own data. I have so much of it—countless sketches and materials related to this piece, Digging for Gold.
I’ve written two pieces as well. I didn’t use this material for them, but I’m incorporating it into other works. Each piece accumulates new material, and when you work with your own music for a long time, you begin to see patterns in what you’ve created.
All this big data doesn’t necessarily need to be analyzed—it needs to be rethought and reused. That’s how I move forward with this idea of rivers and digging for gold.
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