we have been one of a handful of ensembles given a ‚ReLoad’-grant by the Bundeskulturstiftung (the German governments’ arts foundation – they already supported our Spitting Chamber Music project in 2017) for a project which could be developed, pursued and delivered under the current circumstances, as a way of continuing to work as a group remotely. Our proposal had the totally serious working-titel ‚starTracks’ – and involves commissions to 4 composers that are also known as producers. The brief is to write pieces for which each musician can record their parts at home, or even develop them in online conversations and workshops with the composer/producer. The tracks are then put together and finalized, possibly treated, remixed and layered back at the creators’ home/studio.

It’s a recording project foremost, one that we can present as a little album once mixing and mastering is done, but also a co-creative effort which puts each musician in direct exchange with the composer.

We chose artists that we already know a little or even very well, and vice versa, to get the most out of the short-term initiative, and while not being able to meet and work it out in person: And the names we can reveal are:

Nik Void (of Factory Floor), Tyondai Braxton, Greg Saunier and Arone Dyer.

s t a r g a z e' newest collaboration is with the lead singer of the band Buke and Gase, Arone Dyer. We are working with the US composer and vocalist on her emerging, highly individual solo material, with a view of making an album together, due for release in the spring of 2022. The record will be an instrumental song-cycle, with Arone accompanied solely by the contemporary-classical orchestration of s t a r g a z e. A succesful Kickstarter campaign to help fund the recording process and release was launched on January 28th 2021.

Arone and stargaze met and performed together at the PEOPLE Festival and residency in Berlin in 2018 which was co-curated by The National's twin-brothers Aaron and Bryce Dessner, and subsequently decided to embark on an album project. Arone's other creative outputs include her band Mistresses, the Drone-choir project, and composing music for various other occasions, groups and individuals.

By now - April 2022 - the LP is fully mixed and mastered and waiting for its release somewhere in Autumn 2022!

“Her antique-folk arrangements are deconstructed and brilliantly reassembled as sublimely orchestrated chamber pieces in which simplicity and sophistication waltz hand-in-hand” Uncut

“Terrific… this latest collaboration is a joy, adding fresh layers and cinematic elements to songs previously memorable for their haunting sparseness” Hot Press

“Spellbinding… her poetry emboldened by the multi-faceted backing, allowing the wonderment to expand multifariously.” The 405

Live In Dublin is comprised of one new cut titled ‘Bookmark’ and 13 more tracks plucked from Lisa Hannigan's extensive back-catalogue; one that’s spanned 17 years and several award nominations, from the Mercury Prize to Ireland’s Choice Music Prize and Meteor Music Awards. This meeting of minds captured on the album was the product of a chance-encounter at Cork’s Sounds From A Safe Harbour Festival in 2015. Both performing at the festival, it was there where Lisa met André.

The following summer, at Berlin’s PEOPLE Festival, stargaze would end up inviting Lisa to perform a couple of her songs with them on stage and the project spiraled on from there. “Walking in I felt vaguely trepidatious. Sometimes working with classically trained musicians can be slightly nerve-wracking as a singer songwriter because they speak a language so beautifully fluently that I can only fumble towards,” Hannigan recalls: “In a band, so much communication is done through the shoulders, the lift of an eyebrow, the feel of a small group breathing and dancing together. It’s hard to extrapolate that out into twenty, forty, even eighty people! It can feel like a glorious ocean liner tied to a creaking rowboat.”

Thankfully, Lisa’s apprehensions would prove to be unfounded: “When we started to play though, it felt like all of stargaze had climbed aboard my rowboat. They approach a song very much as a band would, with an enthusiasm and musicality which immediately felt like home. I was overwhelmed to hear my songs in such a widescreen way, going from black and white to technicolour, and hoped we could do more.” And just like that, the idea of a live album was born: “The idea of eventually making a record and playing more together felt very natural and easy. Having made three records of my own I had a notion of making a live record but wanted to do it in a slightly more unusual way. We called on some wonderful arrangers over the following couple of years and built our setlist up one song and festival at a time.”

A NEW SONG OF THE EARTH
»Let’s do something new,« said Dave Longstreth of the Dirty Projectors and André de Ridder, leader of the experimental Berlin orchestra collective stargaze, when they met at the Sydney Festival in 2013. And indeed, the composer and frontman of the famous American rock band kept his word: Following one of his recent singles »Earth Crisis«, he now created »Song of the Earth in Crisis« for the musicians of stargaze. Longstreth, who founded the Dirty Projectors back in 2002 in New York, explains: »In the 111 years since Gustav Mahler’s ›Song of the Earth‹ was first performed, our relationship to the earth has changed dramatically. So it seemed time to reframe that idea.«

review: Dirty-Projectors-Konzert-in-Hamburg (taz)

world premiere: August 12th 2021 at Elbphilharmonie Hamburg

commissioned by: Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Barbican London, National Concert Hall Dublin, deSingel Antwerp and Helsinki Festival

soloists: Felicia Douglass, David Longstreth

conductor: André de Ridder

musicians:
Isa Goldschmeding- Violin (Elbphilharmonie)
Mayah Kadish - Violin (deSingel)
Shelley Sörensen - Violin
Thora Sveinsdottir - Viola
Alister Sung - Cello
Caimin Gilmore - Double Bass
Ramon Lormans - Percussion
Georgi Tsenov - Percussion
Vitalii Kyianytsia- Piano, Electric Organ
Maaike van der Linde - Flute, Voice
Marlies van Gangelen - Oboe
Daniel Boeke - Clarinet
Romain Bly - Horn, Trumpet
Ian Sankey - Trombone

For our first ever foray into the dance world, s t a r g a z e co-created the music for a new production of renowned choreographer Michael Keegan-Dolan and his dance company Teac Damsa. Mám is a co-production of the Dublin Theatre Festival, Sadler's Wells London, and the New Zealand Festival. Musically, the project started with workshops of Irish Concertina player and stargaze in Berlin and London, and adding dancers, in Auckland over a period of more than a year. Based on traditional material interpreted by Begley, stargaze created a series of new pieces, improvisations, interludes and arranged accompaniments that Keegan-Dolan and his dancers responded to and vice -versa. In a unique co-creative process music and dance developed in parallel,refined in a shared six weeks rehearsal process in the remote village of Dingle in West-Kerry, spiritual home of Teac Damsa (and actual home of Begley and MKD)

André de Ridder about MÁM:

MÁM is a dance project we were invited on by choreographer Michael Keegan-Dolan and his company Teac Damsa. It started with tentative workshops between our musicians and Irish Concertina player Cormac Begley, to explore if we could find a common language and vibe in playing together, quite possibly towards making new music together. We met twice, in Berlin and Amsterdam (stargaze’ two headquarters, you may count Rotterdam in now as a third one) before three of our musicians were invited to travel to New Zealand (as New Zealand Festival was one of the main co-producers of the work) in February 2019 to take part in further workshops that this time involved the dancers as well! I’d say that by the time the actual project started for good, we had developed a pretty good understanding of each others’ personalities, artistry and aims. The week in Wellington also produced some musical material that, alongside Cormac’s original tunes, would form the backbone of the music for MÀM.

Then, in the summer of 2019, stargaze spent no less than 5 weeks with the whole company in West-Kerry, in the beautiful little fishing town of Dingle, home of Keegan-Dolan, rehearsing and creating the final work in a community centre.

As a conductor, I am used to an orchestra, as in the musicians joining a music theatre or dance production fairly last minute, 1 – 2 weeks (often less) before the premiere, with not much room for maneuver structurally or musically. The music has been set all along. This was an entirely different process, that not only made us co-creators of the score, but the whole work took its shape under the influence of every individual dancer and musician in the room. I think it’s no hyperbole to say that this experience changed everyone’s outlook on what we do, our creative roles and processes completely and irreversibly.

And that’s before I even talk about the content of MÀM, which casts a group of people, maybe family, old and new friends, couples, a society in a place where togetherness, apartness, love and loss, support, meetings farewells are undergoing multiple manifestations and transformations like life has to, to be complete. A longing, a real struggle for but succeeding in the coming together of human kinds (sic) lays at the heart of the very emotional piece – and therefore touched on everything we are going through this year and need to consider for our future.

Shows
Premiere at Dublin Theatre Festival in September 2019
Sadlers Wells, London, in February 2020
Perth Festival, Australia, in February 2020
New Zealand Festival of the Arts, Wellington, New Zealand, in March 2020
Teatros del Canal Madrid, Madrid, in December 2021
Internationale Maifestspiele Wiesbaden, Germany, in May 2022

What did you know as a kid, that you forgot when you grew up? Can you go back to this childlike knowledge, or is it lost forever? Composer Morris Kliphuis, writer Lucky Fonz III, singer Pitou and collective s t a r g a z e dig through layers of civilization and intellectualism, searching for our hidden playfulness and fantasy.

High Dive is a collaboration of creative forces Pitou and s t a r g a z e with composer Morris Kliphuis and the eclectic singer-songwriter Lucky Fonz III. A colourful and psychedelic interplay between voice, ensemble and eyes that consider everything they see as new and exciting.

Review of our concert at Oranjewoud Festival 2021