Charles Uzor's work is critical and challenges our ears to listen beyond the audible and familiar. From my very first encounter with Uzor's music, it raised the questions that originally drew me to this art form in the first place. These questions could be described as existential, political, social, individual, cosmic, and much more. His music engages in a critical examination of life itself through sound. […] Uzor's music invites us to think and talk about the world. Uzor's music teaches us that the inexpressible must be expressed and brought into an (inscrutable) relationship with what we can talk about. This also raises the question of whether we need to listen to the inaudible voices, the voices that have been silenced, such as Black lives. […]
If Uzor's music is political, then it is a kind of radical emphasis on the demos – a Greek word that describes both those lives for whom politics should exist, whom it should serve, and those whose voices have hitherto been neither conceivable nor audible. Perhaps Uzor wrote political music because his own experiences in the existing world were repeatedly inconceivable, this world of controlled and limited existence. Or perhaps it has always been the task of music in modernity to make us question what can become audible to us. Be that as it may, what his work shows is that such an inaudible positioning, a standpoint expressed behind the veil of audibility as radical inclusion through the recognition of shared experiences—if the marginalized cannot speak, they can still hear the invisibility of others, it seems.
Jessie Cox
Can music make the world a better place?
When asked what politics is, Charles Uzor responded with the striking counter-question: “How are the others doing?” If we follow this rhetorical argument, all further tasks that result from it serve the purpose of finding a satisfactory answer to his question or a solution to the corresponding problems for all involved. […]
Socially and ecologically, the world is not in the best shape. When it comes to poverty, oppression, migration, and nature, the pace of deterioration is increasing at an alarming rate. Rescue is urgently needed. Many people are aware of this, which is why politicians, entrepreneurs, hedge fund managers, and technocrats have initiated a wide variety of projects to solve the problem. Unfortunately, most of these activities can hardly conceal their actual motivation, which focuses on power, money, and fame. They should therefore be viewed with great suspicion.
As a composer, one ultimately asks oneself what one's own music can contribute to alleviating or improving the situation in which we live. Is that possible? Composers have studied music and are passionately devoted to it. Music is an excellent lubricant for manipulative purposes, a flying carpet for all kinds of extra-musical promises of salvation. The question of whether it can continue to be (mis)used for such purposes is rhetorical. So: no agitprop, no setting political texts to music, no propaganda for even the most promising political utopia!
Rupert Huber
Programme
CD 1
Charles Uzor (*1961)
[01] merrusch for piano trio, woman's voice and tape
based on Sudokus für Kreuzfahrten by Astrid Kaminski (2022/23)
Ensemble Amaltea
(Emilie Inniger, soprano · Keiko Yamaguchi, violin · Lukas Raaflaub, cello · Eva Schwaar, piano)
Voices: Isabel Pfefferkorn & Charles Uzor
[02] Breaking of the Vessels for orchestra and tape (2024) *
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Ilan Volkov, conductor
A BBC recording
Rupert Huber (*1953)
[03] Beshub oder wider den Verlust des Eindeutigen for solo soprano and choir (2022)
SWR Vokalensemble
Johanna Zimmer, soprano
Rupert Huber, conductor
[04] Nana for solo soprano and vocal ensemble (2023) *
Vokalinio Meno Tinklas
(Ilona Pliavgo, soprano · Ieva Marmienė, soprano · Roberta Daugėlaitė, alto · Vaidas Bartušas, tenor · Alfredas Miniotas, bass)
Rupert Huber, conductor
Charles Uzor
[05] Bodycam exhibit 3. George Floyd in memoriam for ensemble and tape ad lib. (2021) *
œnm.œsterreichisches ensemble für neue musik
Josef Steinböck, tuba solo
Rupert Huber, conductor
CD 2
Charles Uzor
[01-15] The Great Wall. A Labyrinth for vocal sextet and tape (2024)
Ekmeles
(Charlotte Mundy, soprano · Elisa Sutherland, mezzo-soprano · Timothy Parsons, countertenor · Tomás Cruz, tenor · Jeffrey Gavett, baritone and conductor · Steven Hrycelak, bass)
Speakers: Julienne Pfeil, Hao Hohl, Johnna Wu, Charlotte Mundy, Jeffrey Gavett, Steven Hrycelak, Charles Uzor
Jeffrey Gavett, conductor
[16] Elegie für Marianne Schatz for violin and tape (2023) *
Mateusz Szczepkowski, violin
Tape: Hindewhu, Whistle song (excerpt) einer Ba-Benzélé-Frau, BM 30 L 2303, Simkha Arom / Geneviève Taurelle, 1966
* Live recordings
World premiere recordings
Biographies
Charles Uzor was born in Nigeria in 1961. He came to Switzerland during the Biafran War. After graduating from school in St. Gallen, he studied oboe and composition in Rome, Bern, and Zurich. From 1986 to 1990, Uzor studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London with Gordon Hunt and graduated with a concert diploma and a master's degree in composition under Hans Werner Henze. He then wrote a dissertation on melody and inner awareness of time at Goldsmiths, University of London. In connection with electronics, Charles Uzor deals with the phenomena of identity and deception as harsh metaphors for the situation of refugees. In Nri/mimicri, birdsong is deepened by 8 octaves and imitated by the ondes Martenot. Between 2016 and 2023, he composed Ave Maria, Hier in diesem zierl’chen Prunkgebäude after Robert Walser, the cycles Mothertongue and George Floyd in memoriam (8’46’’, Bodycam exhibit 3, Katharsis Kalkül), as well as the orchestral works Qualia, Parmenides Prooimion, and Breaking of the Vessels. Merrusch, named after Astrid Kaminski and George Floyd in memoriam, shows influences from the philosophy of Derek Parfit and Uzor's increasingly political stance. Ensemble PTYX, œnm, London Sinfonietta, KammarensembleN, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Ekmeles, ensemble amaltea, Duo Aventure, the SWR Vocal Ensemble, the Bavarian Radio Choir, and conductors Rupert Huber, Christian Karlsen, Ilan Volkov, and Mariano Chiacchiarini have performed Uzor's works at the Bern Music Festival, Festival Rümlingen, Time of Music in Viitasaari, Festival for Other Music in Fylkingen, Wien Modern, Lucerne Festival, MaerzMusik, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, and Tectonics Glasgow. Uzor has been working on the opera Leopold II.exhibit since 2015 and heads the forum contrapunkt. new art music.
The composer, conductor, and performance artist Rupert Huber was born in 1953 in the Innviertel region of Upper Austria. The two pillars of his conducting career are, on the one hand, 19th- and 20th-century a cappella literature and, on the other, new music in all its forms and facets. This is evidenced by hundreds of world premieres by composers such as Mark Andre, Maria de Alvear, Nikolaus Brass, John Cage, Antonio Caprioli, Jani Christou, Edisson Denissow, Beat Furrer, Vinko Globokar, Georg Friedrich Haas, Klaus Huber, Nikolaus A. Huber, Klaus Lang, Nikos Logothetis, Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf, Benedict Mason, Robert Moran, Fabio Nieder, Luigi Nono, Helmut Oehring, Klaus Ospald, Matthias Pintscher, Wolfgang Rihm, Rebecca Saunders, Giacinto Scelsi, Martin Smolka, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Charles Uzor, and Samir Odeh-Tamimi. He has worked with ensembles such as: Radio Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart of SWR, WDR Symphony Orchestra, SWR Symphony Orchestra Baden-Baden and Freiburg, Klangforum Wien, Ensemble Recherche, Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Musikfabrik, Ensemble Resonanz, œnm, Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, Royal Oman Symphony Orchestra, Neue Vocalsolisten, SWR Vocal Ensemble, WDR Radio Choir, BR Choir, and the Vienna State Opera Choir Concert Association.
He has conducted concerts at: the Salzburg Festival, Donaueschingen Music Days, Witten Days for New Chamber Music, musica viva, ECLAT, Festival d'Automne à Paris, Festival Musica Strasbourg, NDR das neue werk, aspekte SALZBURG, Wien Modern, Ruhrtriennale, Venice Biennale, documenta 14, and many more. In the field of vocal music, he has been advocating for decades for authentic vocal writing, or a compositional approach that is not primarily instrumentally oriented, as in New Music since Schoenberg, but rather takes into account the conditions of the larynx and its vocal and mental availability.
More information
Catalogue number: NEOS 12502-03
EAN: 4260063125027
