KISCELLI
KISCELLI is an Ensemble in Limbo project created for the Church Hall of the Kiscelli Museum in Budapest, performed on 21 September 2024.
The project was conceived as a site-specific electroacoustic work for mixed choir, wind ensemble and electronics. The monumental, sacred atmosphere of the former church hall was the first point of inspiration: it suggested a music built from voices, brass and slowly unfolding harmonic fields, shaped by the spatial and acoustic qualities of the space. The electronics functioned almost as an extended organ, surrounding and supporting the acoustic ensemble while merging with the long reverberation of the space.
The emotional background of the concert was shaped by a recent personal experience of illness, bringing vulnerability and recovery into focus. In the period leading up to the performance, breath, endurance and bodily presence had become fragile and newly significant. Rather than translating this experience into a literal narrative, I chose to work with texts such as those of Masaoka Shiki, whose life and art were also marked by a prolonged struggle with illness; the music thus transformed these resonances into a shared sonic situation: long sustained tones, collective breathing, gradual expansion and contraction, and a fragile community of voices and wind instruments held together by light and space.
The concert consisted of two connected pieces: Vestibule and Shiki.
Shiki takes its title from the Japanese poet Masaoka Shiki, whose pen name was connected to the hototogisu, a cuckoo associated with singing and blood. The piece draws on one of Shiki’s haiku: “Sing until the sunflower blossoms are all scattered, a little cuckoo.” In the context of the concert, this image of singing through physical fragility resonated with the personal background of the work, becoming a quiet emotional centre rather than a direct story.
In Shiki, the singers and wind players perform a slow melodic motif, with each sound sustained for an extended duration. The movement between notes is guided by a light installation, with separate lamps cueing different groups of performers. The result is a static yet constantly shifting harmony: a collective, fragile and luminous sound, slowly thickened by layers of electronics.
Together, Vestibule & Shiki continued the central concerns of Ensemble in Limbo: the border between composition and improvisation, music as a spatial and social situation, and listening as a shared ritual. In the resonant hall of Kiscelli Museum, the ensemble formed a living organ of voices, winds, light and electronics.
Performers
Vito Szelevényi – trumpet
Árpád Kiss – trumpet
Marci Udvardi – trumpet
Áron Bujdosó – trumpet
István Szögi – trombone
István Rózsa – tuba
Csaba Kovács – tuba
Zsolt Bartek – saxophone
Soharóza / Varsányi / others – mixed choir of 20 people
Márk Bartha – composer, electronics