Happy 100th, New York School!
11 June 2026, 19.00 / Kunsthalle Darmstadt
A project of the Academy of Music Darmstadt, featuring archival material and conceptual input from the International Music Institute Darmstadt and the artist Nikolaus Heyduck, educational content from the Jazz Institute Darmstadt and in collaboration with the Kunsthalle Darmstadt
To mark the 100th birthdays of Morton Feldman, Earle Brown and David Tudor, this event explores key ideas of the New York School: open-form concepts, experimental notations, and a musical approach that deliberately intertwines composition, performance and sound research.
The concert installation takes place amidst the exhibition of Dutch artist Robert Zandvliet, whose works draw on key impulses from North American Color Field painting of the 1950s and 1960s. The ideas of the New York School are thus placed in an open dialogue with the Kunsthalle’s spaces and Zandvliet’s exhibition. Points of contact arise less on the level of stylistic or formal parallels than in a shared sensibility for perception, duration and the experience of time in space. Music is presented here not as a finished work, but as a process – as something that unfolds in the moment, changes and engages in dialogue with the space, the performers and the audience.
Program
FOYER
Nikolaus Heyduck
Mobile Volatils (2026) with two mobile loudspeaker objects (WP)
Morton Feldman
Only (1947) for voice
Fabiola Schelmbauer
MAIN HALL
Interview-Collage “Happy 100th, New York School!” (2026)
Concept and resource collection: Lisa Angelina Hennige, Christoph Kröll
Morton Feldman
Four Instruments (1975) for piano, violin, viola and cello
Jiaqian Zhou, violin; Frauke Thomsen-Otter, viola; Sieun Baek, cello; SunYoung Nam, piano
Johannes Morgenroth
Grafische Notations-Komposition (2026) for moving clarinet solo (WP)
Xin Wang, clarinet
GARDEN HALL RIGHT
Earle Brown
Four Systems (1954)
Helena Kunkel, voice; Yangying Li, violin; Yiwan Du, cello; Yelysaveta Blinichkina, harmonetta; Arne Gieshoff, live electronics
GARDEN HALL LEFT
Nikolaus Heyduck
4DT – Hommage à David Tudor (2026) (WP)
Nikolaus Heyduck, objects and electronics
MAIN HALL
Earle Brown
December 1952
all participating students
Darmstadt played a key role for Feldman, Brown and Tudor: As leading figures in the Darmstadt Summer Course, they contributed significantly to the aesthetic expansion and internationalization of the European avant-garde. An examination of their work is therefore relevant not only historically but also in terms of cultural policy, as it highlights how aesthetic openness, international networking and institutional frameworks are effectively intertwined. The musical activities, designed as a journey, are contextualized by contributions from the archives of the International Music Institute Darmstadt.
Initiated by the “New Music Workshop” seminar led by instructors Sun-Young
Nam and Arne Gieshoff at the Academy of Music Darmstadt, the project was developed in collaboration with the International Music Institute Darmstadt (IMD) and the Jazz Institute Darmstadt. The Kunsthalle Darmstadt supports the project as an external partner. This collaboration brings together educational, artistic, and archival perspectives, making the ideas of the New York School tangible as a living practice. At the same time, the project builds on the long-standing cross-institutional cooperation among the participating institutions and strengthens Darmstadt’s position as a hub for experimental music and open artistic thinking.
Performers include students from the Academy of Sound Arts as well as the Darmstadt composer and artist Nikolaus Heyduck.
