CTRL Variations – Festival 33,7

Pascal Schumacher (*LU, 1979)
CTRL Variations (2009) multi-media project – 60’

“Is it a love story? Undoubtedly. Is it a play about the strange relationship between people and their computers? Likewise (after all, among other things, quite a few annoying spam mails are given musical honours in it). Is it experimental literature? Certainly, at least in part, because one of the actors from the Oulipo circle of authors around Raymond Queneau and Georges Perec is involved in it. Is it film music for an abstract film with letters instead of actors? In a way, that too. When musician and composer Pascal Schumacher, typographer Michel Welfringer and writer Ian Monk join forces to write variations on CTRL (control? the control key? the sounds C, T, R and L? the letters?) for the ensemble United Instruments of Lucilin, a kind of controlled loss of control is preprogrammed.” (Philharmonie Luxembourg 2009, translated by Jil Hamm for United Instruments of Lucilin)

Commissioned by United Instruments of Lucilin
Original idea by Michel Welfringer and Pascal Schumacher
Libretto by Ian Monk
Typo-graphics by Michel Welfringer
Original music by Pascal Schumacher
Recording by Céline Grangey at Unison Studios Luxembourg

With: Léo Belthoise (violin), Sophie Urhausen (viola), Jean Philippe Martignoni (violoncelle), Sophie Deshayes (flute), Max Mausen (clarinet), Pascal Meyer (piano), Guy Frisch (percussion), Pit Brosius (conductor)