GLIA (II)

Maryanne Amacher: GLIA (2005)

Ensemble Contrechamps
Ensemble Zwischentöne
Bill Dietz (Musikalische Leitung / Musical Direction)
Carsten Seiffarth (Kurator / Curator)

Four years before her early death in 2009, the American composer Maryanne Amacher was working on a new work for the Berlin-based Ensemble Zwischentöne: GLIA, named after the glial cells in the human brain that control the transmission of excitation between synapses. The work has only been performed once – in 2005 at the Berlin media art laboratory TESLA under the direction of Amacher herself and together with the director of the Ensemble Zwischentöne, Peter Ablinger, and the composer Bill Dietz.

In GLIA, Amacher envisioned the listeners as “neural interfaces” between electronic and acoustic-instrumental sound phenomena. “Otoacoustic emissions” were to be created in the ear – stimulated by frequency overlays at very high volumes. Amacher’s concept was to transmit these “ghost-written” sounds inside the ear back into the room via loudspeakers and instruments.

Years after Amacher‘s death, her work is still largely inaccessible and surrounded by numerous myths. Bill Dietz, one of the world’s best connoisseurs of Amacher’s work, has worked intensively with the existing material and created a ninety-minute performance version of GLIA, which has been presented in collaboration with Ensemble Contrechamps from Geneva and Ensemble Zwischentöne since 2023.

The performances will be accompanied by a one-day conference on July 28, 2025 about GLIA and Mayanne Amacher as one of the most enigmatic artists at the meeting point of electronic music and sound art.

Funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation