18/04/2024
Thank you, Jazz.sk 😍
Translated automatically:
UFMC: Brno will probably "kick the ass" of many again
reportage
I don't know what to do about it, but I've fallen in love with Brno lately: the best Central European jazz festival (JazzFestBrno) takes place there throughout the year, which, in addition to excellent dramaturgy, organizes, for example, nutritious Central European Jazz Showcases, as part of JAMU's Jazz Department, students can confront with personalities such as Juraj Bartoš, David Dorůžka or Matúš Jakabčic, local Ponava. Radio there through Martin Kyšperský, Vít Kalvoda, Michal Wróblewský or Martin Konvička brings remarkable shows, the local club scene has a life of its own. And the inimitable functionalist architecture...
In the middle of April, I went to Brno mainly because of the "umbrella", which does not sound so bizarre in these April days. UFMC – Umbrella for Music Curators is the newest European platform for independent music and is connected to Brno by an umbilical cord, as the main organizer of the project is Ponava.Radio and above all its spiritus movens Vít Kalvoda. This digital platform started its broadcast on Friday, April 12 (as usual) from the Brno House of Arts as part of the FAUN experimental festival. UFCM's main offering is unique music podcasts, in which individual music curators present their collections of independent music and add context to it thanks to their own expertise. "Music absolutely needs a context," states alternative musician and sound supervisor of the project Tomáš Vtípil. "Nowadays, people are literally oversaturated with music, it pours on them everywhere - in shopping centers, in the car, from videos on social networks... Music often serves as a backdrop that the listener doesn't notice at all. UFMC sets itself the challenging goal of bringing listeners back to conscious listening to music, precisely through people who understand it and who can convey deeper connections to listeners. It works like an art exhibition, where the curator makes his own mark on the works of art with the help of a well-thought-out installation."
As one of the team of UFMC curators, I went to Brno both for technical matters (they were resolved at the Friday afternoon workshops) and for the ceremonial start of the broadcast, which was part of the FAUN festival. I admit that experimental or electronic music events do not belong to my "daily cup of coffee": however, I can accept occasional excesses of this type, and I remember that I attended quite a few "disconnected" performances of this type during, for example, ten visits to the jazz festival in Saalfelden, Austria. During the two evenings of the five-day FAUN festival (April 10-14), I managed to catch several performances, of which the slow-motion movements of the butoh dancer Elena Boschi remained in my memory, during which, despite the silence in the hall, the incessant "drone music" sounded in my subconscious, eccentric the Japanese duo Kakuhan with electrified cello and electronics, and especially the directly life-giving folklore influences that dominated the space during the performance of the Slovak percussionist (in this case, a fuja player and end player) Michaela Antalová and the Norwegian double bassist Adrian Fiskum Myhr. Although I was familiar with their joint album "Bells" (Hevhetia 2021), I was still surprised by the cross-cultural connotations, into which they occasionally mixed the names of a folk singing group from Šumiac or field recordings of birdsong. The chamber performance was enhanced by the impressive lighting design of the respected visual master Tord Knudsen, whose visual installations once illuminated Nils Petter Molvær's concerts, for example.
The UFMC project itself connects independent music publishers and creators of independent music, experts on new and independent music and of course listeners, without whom the whole thing would be meaningless within the European cultural space. “For each of these groups, UFMC is an asset. We reward creators and publishers for their music on the basis of a signed contract and, unlike global platforms for listening to music, primarily fairly - 80% of the fees from listeners go directly to musicians and labels," explains project leader Vít Kalvoda. For a monthly flat rate of EUR 3, the listener receives high-quality music content in lossless quality. "The project starts in a team of four different subjects with different musical profiles," adds Ladislav Železný, UFMC metacurator. "We create a colorful mosaic of genres, approaches and musical thinking under one roof. We can immerse ourselves in the soundscapes of the European environment, or peer into the depths of the Asian jazz scene with our ears." One of the biggest problems at UFMC was the legal issue of pan-European music distribution. Thanks to lawyer Viktor Košut, who has been specializing in copyright law for many years, we managed to find a fair (and especially legal) solution for authors and rights owners. “Settling rights for on-demand streaming presents an insurmountable problem for most mortals. I am glad that we managed to find a solution to this conundrum, which will now find a pan-European application."
The founding foreign partners of UFCM also included the Dutch Royal Conservatory in The Hague, the Polish international festival Voicingers, as well as the Slovak music publishing house HEVHETIA / hevhet - tune. "A digital platform whose aim would be a fair distribution of financial flows in the music industry sounds like a small one to my ears, but still a glimmer of hope that the whole environment has not yet fallen into the fatal lethargy of total dependence on public funding," said director Hevhetie Ján Sudzina. "I'm keeping my fingers crossed for the UFMC that it succeeds in showing the way, or at least inducing an impulse for reflection and discussion among the players in our industry." The UFMC was established primarily thanks to the support of the Office of Creative Europe. "Succeeding in the challenge of the European program Projects of European Cooperation is not easy," says Magdalena Müllerová, head of the Creative Europe Culture Office. "The competition is high and only the best from all over Europe get support. Therefore, all Czech cultural organizations that are trying to support it, including Ponava.Radio, should be praised." And one of the proofs that moderated (or curated) events can really transport us to other dimensions was the listening session. , which was conducted by Pavel Klusák, one of the most renowned Czech music columnists and editors, as part of the FAUN festival in Brno on Saturday, April 13, in the premises of the cult Divadlo Husa na provázku. His "listening session" was called "To be held for a long time" (experts will note this instruction that La Monte Young left to the interpreters of his cult composition Compositions 1960) and was in the spirit of the monotonous "drone music" of authors such as La Monte Young , Phill Niblock, Eliane Radigue or Kali Malone. And it was really stimulating "deep listening", as the American composer Pauline Oliveros called her music. Hopefully UFCM will bring us similar strong experiences!
You can tune in to UFMC programs at www.ufmc.eu and soon also through the mobile application.
Author: Peter Motyčka
Neviem s tým nič robiť, ale Brno som si v poslednom období nesmierne zamiloval: počas celého roka tam prebieha najlepší stredoeurópsky jazzový festival (JazzFestBrno), ktorý popri skvostnej dramaturgii usporadúva napríklad výživné Central European Jazz Showcases, v rámci Jazzovej ka...
