Bhagwati: Treatises on Trans-Traditional Aesthetics

Featuring

ensemble ɛkstʁaktə
Sandeep Bhagwati

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Interpretation

The ensemble operates like a band, eschewing traditional hierarchies of conductor, composer, or performer; its repertoire emerges from intense collaborative working sessions.

Historical Context

Elke Moltrecht, co-director of Ensemble Extrakte, previously served as artistic director for music at Podewil in Berlin, one of the first institutions worldwide to confront contemporary art music with club culture, experimental electronics, and music from different cultures.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Ensemble Extrakte was founded as a research-creation ensemble to explore how musical ideas evolve when extracted from their original context and brought into contact with each other.

Compositional Technique

Ensemble Extrakte's music extracts and recombines elements from a rich diversity of styles, forms, and traditions across Asian, European, African, and American cultural contexts, avoiding simple appropriations.

Recording & Production

The album was recorded in July 2016 at Elsenstudios Berlin, with Lutz Glandien as Tonmeister and Elke Moltrecht and Sören Birke as musical advisors.

Composer Biography

Sandeep Bhagwati, the musical director, has pursued inter-musical explorations since the 1990s, directing new music ensembles like Ensemble Modern into exchanges with Indian, Chinese, Bavarian, and Basque musicians, as well as jazz players and the IRCAM computer music lab.

Composer's Artistic Vision

The album's musical experiments are called 'treatises' because the ensemble approaches its task with the curiosity, meticulousness, and passion of artist-researchers, rather than naive multicultural optimism.