Pia Palme
is a composer based in Vienna, Austria. She likes to work along ideas from ecology, writes texts for her pieces, performs, and makes installations and visuals. Her compositions bring together multiple disciplines, species and materials. She is deeply interested in collaborative practices with a focus on theatrical formats, or performative ecologies. She engages in artistic research, posthumanism and ecofeminism, both inside and outside academia. Palme is also a performer and improvisor with bass recorders and voice.
For a general list of her works, her activities, blogs and scholarly publications, visit Palme’s website https://www.piapalme.at
Or is it microbiology? (2023)
A piece for a lower voice and percussion, music and text by Pia Palme
duration 16 minutes, premiered by Schallfeld ensemble (Helena Sorokina, voice and Manuel Alcaraz-Clemente, percussion) at the Neuer Saal, GMPU Klagenfurt, Austria.
View the score here Microbiology_Score_Palme_2023
VANISHED SHORELINES (2022)
A piece for harpsichord and electronics, performed by Sonja Leipold and Pia Palme, recorded at Zacherlfabrik Vienna.
On the fragility of sounds (2019-2022)
A large-scale project in artistic research, exploring composition and music theatre from the perspective of the active composer and her practice, which involved several composers, ensembles, artists, and researchers. The PEEK AR 537 project was funded by the FWF Austrian Science Fund and hosted at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, KUG, Centre for Gender Studies.
Principal Investigator 2019 to 2022: Dr. Pia Palme.
Co-Investigator and Assistant (pre-doc) 2019 to 2021: Christina Fischer-Lessiak, BA MA.
Co-Investigator 2021: Dr. Irene Lehmann.
Student Assistant 2020: Lena Hengl, BA.
Project website: www.fragilityofsounds.org
WECHSELWIRKUNG (2020)
Music theatre for a moving soprano, a dance performer, ensemble (oboe da caccia, brec, picc+bfl, bcl+cbcl, vl, vla, vlc, db, hpd, perc, elec), premiered at the festival Wien Modern 33 at Projektraum WUK, Vienna, conducted by Lars Mlekusch, with ensemble PHACE.
This piece gives an example of the collaboration between Pia Palme and Juliet Fraser.
A video of the performance is available at
https://vimeo.com/497323866/bafbe93990
Link to a trailer, information, texts and pictures https://www.fragilityofsounds.org/wechselwirkung/
This piece was developed by a group of artists and researchers in a collaborative work and research process, and realised within the framework of the artistic research project On the fragility of sounds PEEK AR 537 based at the Kunstuniversität Graz. The artistic group consisted of Pia Palme (composer, performer, text, visual art), Juliet Fraser (singer, performer), Paola Bianchi (dancer, choreographer), Christina Fischer-Lessiak (musicologist, coordinator), Irene Lehmann (dramaturgy, theatre scholar). Every artist worked in their main field and further contributed to other artistic fields. For example, the storyboard, conception, and spatial arrangement of the performance were created in collaborative processes across two years.
The music consists of several parts, or modules, which are arranged following a timeline. The main parts are notated and conducted via a conventional score. An electronic 4-channel part was programmed and live-created via Ableton, performed by the composer. Here, Palme processed field recordings of rivers and bodies of water. She also performed improvisations with bass recorder and spoken voice along fixed texts. The complete score is a collection of instructions in various formats of notation.
Link to the score Wechselwirkung_Score