Body Symphony

A concert by the Studio for Electroacoustic Music at the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, with works from members, scholarship holders and prize winners of the Akademie, performed by Ernst Surberg (piano, keyboards) and Gregorio García Karman (sound direction).

The concert features compositions for piano and keyboard with fixed media, live electronics and video by famous and rising artists, which will be performed in Cuba for the first time. Among them there will be two unique premieres: a new piece from Peter Ablinger's Voices and Piano song cycle with the voice of the revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara and a new set of Sunlay Almeida and Humberto Díaz's frontline performance series Body Symphony. The program is rounded off by a live set by the Berlin-based synthesizer virtuoso Thomas Ankersmit.

Body Symphony is a multimedia act by Cuban composer Sunlay Almeida Rodríguez and Cuban visual artist Humberto Díaz, created in 2017/18 as a co-production of the Laboratorio Nacional de Música Electroacoustica de Cuba and the Academy of Electroacoustic Music of the Akademie der Künste.

The production initiates a long-term collaboration between the two electroacoustic music studios. The first part of Body Symphony was premiered at the International Festival KONTAKTE '17 at the Academy of Arts in Berlin. Another sentence will now be performed for the first time in the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Havana, Cuba. In addition, this initiative will invite further artists from Berlin and Havana to exchange views. The aim of the project is to intensify the German-Cuban exchange between artists, musicians and composers.

Concept and Projekt Directors: Enmanuel Blanco und Gregorio García Karman
Concept Body Symphony: Humberto Díaz, composer
Choreographer: Sunlay Almeida Rodríguez
Production Berlin: Karoline Czech (coordinator), Evelyn Saylor (production assistant)
Production Havanna: Rafael Ruiz Cabrales, Teresa Fernández Rodríguez, Miguel Antonio Parera Rodríguez, Ennier Manuel Navea Castillo

A co-production of the Studio for Electroacoustic Music at the Akademie der Künste, Laboratorio Nacional de Música Electroacústica en La Habana and Goethe-Institut – International Coproduction Fund