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ORLANDOviols

Viola da Gamba

Viola da Gamba

We are a professional viola da gamba ensemble, historically informed and performing in the 21st century.

Contemporary

Contemporary music

Our repertoire reaches from 16th century fantasies via Johann Sebastian Bach to Minimal Music and compositions by John Cage.

Experimental

Experimental performances

Electronic processing, spatialisation, audio-visual installations, bicycle interaction.


Harmony of the Spheres

The movements of celestial bodies have long held a particular fascination to mankind. Astronomers and philosophers in the renaissance carefully studied the movements of celestial bodies; in their models the sun, the moon, and the five planets known at that time moved in a universal harmony, the Harmony of the Spheres. This fascination with mathematical and astronomical regularities and patterns inspired many composers, most notably during the 16th and the 20th centuries; a time when the aesthetics of numbers and proportions played a large role in the arts, from architecture to music.

In our performance, we explore musical concepts in a spatial context. Picforth's 16th-century “In Nomine Fantasy” draws inspiration from planetary movements. In our performance, each voice represents a planet and moves around the audience. Steve Reich's 1967 composition “Violin Phase” sees the voices shift both temporally and spatially, creating an interplay between uncertainty and perfect harmony.

Harmony of the Spheres

Electro-acoustic concert

In our performance, we project musical concepts into a spatial dimension using 15-channel loudspeaker reproduction and real-time, low-latency signal processing. The audience is surrounded by musicians and loudspeakers. This breaks with the traditional concept of a frontal stage, placing the audience at the heart of our performance. The musical concepts are supported by a light installation. The sound processing has been carefully tailored to the historical instruments to offer the audience an unparalleled concert experience.

Harmony of the Spheres


Die Chymische Hochzeit von John Dowland - Teares and Raptures.

In 2023 the Lutenist and composer Lee Santana wrote a piece for ORLANDOviols with our electro-acoustical setup: “Die Chymische Hochzeit von John Dowland - Teares and Raptures.”. This literary work is a seven-day spiritual journey through the secret society of the Rosicrucians. In our concert, each day of this journey is represented by one of John Dowland's seven pavanes, complemented by a harmonious, melodic counterpart from Santana.

“I tried to develop a dialogue between the seven pavanes and my seven dances. I hope that, at least on a subconscious level, it creates complementary colors between my music and his. It's nothing less than an alchemical process of turning mud into gold. From the bottom up, so to speak. This image fascinated me, and then I thought about how clay and lead and bronze and silver sound, then I composed a few things and left the rest more or less open. It's like a spiritual exercise, and it goes into areas that cannot be described rationally. That blew me away and has stayed with me to this day.” – Lee Santana, composer.

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ovbox concerts

Spatially separated, but still united in a virtual concert hall through our newly developed device: the ovbox, we played consort music in times of pandemic.

The concerts and other videos can be found on our YouTube channel.


Remote collaboration project: 'ovbox'

Since in 2020 all our concerts were canceled due to Covid19 pandemic, we used the occasion to develop a remote rehearsal device. Now we meet virtually almost every day to explore new repertoire and to rehearse - with a small box connected to the network, the ORLANDOviols consort box, or in short, the ovbox. Through this device we can hear each other as if we are in the same room. We believe in sharing our knowledge and made the technology publicly available: ovbox.de.

ovbox

Line-up

Hille Perl
Frauke Hess
Júlia Vető
Marthe Perl
Claas Harders
Giso Grimm

ORLANDOviols

Contact

Júlia Vető, Giso Grimm
Tel.: +49 (0)176 2180 2636
info@orlandoviols.de