Ensemble Contrechamps

Standard £32 // Solidarity £41.60 // Under 30 £7
Advance booking required

Our Solidarity ticket price is an opportunity for audiences to support our work by purchasing a ticket at a slightly higher price (the cost of a Standard ticket plus 30%). Read more about Solidarity prices here.

Ensemble Contrechamps:
Susanne Peters flute +
Laurent Bruttin clarinet *
Pierre-Stéphane Meugé saxophone *
Thierry Debons percussion *+
Dorian Fretto percussion +
Coco Schwarz synth +
Anne Bassand harp +
Hans Egidi alto *+
Martina Brodbeck cello *+

Wassim Halal darbuka +

Olga Kokcharova electronics *

Christophe Egea sound engineer
Maxime Le Saux sound engineer

Olga Kokcharova (Switzerland, 1985)
Signal-to-noise ratio (new version; 2025) 35’ UK Premiere *

Interval

Wassim Halal (France, 1986)
Sang d’Angle (2024) 35’ UK Premiere +

Click here to view programme note

What happens when the background becomes the message? In Signal-to-noise ratio, Swiss composer Olga Kokcharova examines how the unpredictabilities of life, accidental mishandlings, or the passage of time can reverse the relationship between signal and background noise. In the quest for technological improvements in sound recording and reproduction equipment, the search for the best signal-to-noise ratio has always favoured information over the rest, the latter term being generalised under the name of ‘background noise’ – yet it is this residue, containing data described as random, that carries the information that affects us and gives some of us auditory satisfaction.

In the second half of the programme, Wassim Halal builds around voracious and uninhibited darbuka grooves, accompanied by a fully amplified, percussion and electronics-heavy band. With Sang d’Angle, he plays with the philosophical pathways of forgery, giving the illusion of reality: the darbuka imitates the davul; the clarinet mimics the bagpipes or zurna; rhythmic formulas taken from darbuka phrasing and wedding music are translated for a mixed ensemble and electronics. Sounds kept natural or sublimated, (over)ornamented, it’s about grabbing the root of a musical gesture by its core and revealing it through different angles as a prism of reality.

Produced by hcmf// supported by Stanley Thomas Johnson Foundation, the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, République et canton de Genève and Ville de Genève

Signal-to-noise ratio and Sang d’Angle are commissioned by Ensemble Contrechamps

Photo: © Morgane Meys