pssst is a series of concert events dedicated to contemporary and experimental music, performed by artists who uncompromisingly explore the peripheries of musical thought.
We live in an age of the greatest musical, compositional, and instrumental diversity in history. So, how many ways are there to play the guitar? How far do the boundaries of experiment and improvisation reach? Where do we go next from the European tradition, the grand concert halls, and the order of triadic harmony?
Event Calendar
Artists pssst: OBJEKT
Elia Moretti (1986) is a composer, performer, and researcher exploring the performativity of sound and listening as critical tools within contemporary music theatre. In his interdisciplinary practice, he creates site-specific and participatory projects that intertwine sound, movement, and objects.
In Slovakia, he has worked as curator of the Carpathian New Wave series in Prešov and co-initiated the Symposium Musicum project for the UM UM festival in northern Spiš – later released by the independent label mappa.
His work moves between radio, theatre, and dance, with projects presented throughout Europe. As an educator, he focuses on listening as a relational and transformative act that transcends the boundaries of music.
Tom Johnson (1939–2024) was an American composer, music theorist, and journalist — one of the leading figures of the second generation of minimalists. A student of Morton Feldman, he was active in New York in the 1970s, becoming an important part of the city’s experimental scene. His work is characterized by precise logical structures, conceptual simplicity, and a sense of humor. Johnson created music based on numbers, combinatorics, and mathematical principles, transforming them into surprisingly poetic musical forms. Among his best-known works are An Hour for Piano, Nine Bells, Rational Melodies, and The Chord Catalogue. From 1983 onward, he lived in Paris, where he continued his compositional, publishing, and performance activities.
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Emilie Škrijelj (1987) explores the accordion in its smallest folds and uses it both as a percussion instrument and a generator of electroacoustic materials. Inspired by her research around the turntable, modular synths and field recording, she brings the accordion to the abstract territory of electronics by manipulating the bellows, rubbing its contours and exploring its extremities.
www.emilieskrijelj.com
Michael Thieke (1971) is a Berlin-based clarinetist, composer, and performer who is equally at home across a broad range of musical environments. He is exploring the minutiae of sound, timbre and noise, with a particular interest in microtonality and related sound phenomena. The qualities of slowness are another field of his research. He has a preference for long-term collaborations and collective work. Thieke has performed throughout Europe, Asia, and the Americas, and his recordings appear on more than fifty releases.
www.michael-thieke.de
Tom Malmendier (1984) approaches improvisation as the natural and central foundation of his musical practice. He is drawn to transdisciplinary projects and often collaborates with dancers, visual artists, and poets.
www.tomalmendier.com
Marek Kundlák (1981) studied theatre dramaturgy and works across a wide spectrum of artistic expression – from writing librettos, texts, and translations to theatre dramaturgy and directing, performing, composing music for theatre, film, and concert settings, playing experimental instruments, as well as cooking, gardening, and woodworking. He has created and performed in Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Hungary, and Italy. He has worked with the Opera of the Slovak National Theatre and is currently a music dramaturg for spoken-word programming at Slovak Radio.
LinkArtists pssst: KONTEXT
Matej Sloboda (1988) is a Slovak composer, musician, and conductor. He studied composition in Bratislava, Graz, and Vienna, and took part in exchange programs at the Universität der Künste in Berlin and the California Institute of the Arts in Santa Clarita, USA. He is the founder of the acclaimed project EnsembleSpectrum and one third of the experimental music collective Critical Band.
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Michal Matejka (1977) performs with the bands Ankramu and Škvíry a Spoje, focusing on the possibilities and extended techniques of electric guitar playing, free improvisation, and contemporary song-writer music.
Štefan Szabó (1988) is the author of music for several theatre and dance performances. He performs solo as well as an improviser and composer in the duo Ranjevš & Óbasz and the trio KIN.
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Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) was a German artist, poet, and avant-garde pioneer associated with the Dada movement. He developed his own branch of Dada, which he called Merz, based on the use of found objects and the beauty of chance and everyday life. He also gave the same name to the art magazine he founded and edited during the 1920s and 1930s. His work encompassed collage, objects, architecture, poetry, and performance. He was active in Hanover, where he created the legendary Merzbau by continually transforming the rooms of his family home at Waldhausenstrasse 5 – a project that grew over several years like a living organism. Before the Second World War, he emigrated to Norway, and later to England.
Vojtěch Šembera (1995) is an experimental vocalist, composer, and opera singer. He focuses on the interpretation and composition of contemporary vocal music, free improvisation, and song repertoire ranging from the Middle Ages to the present day. He has performed at festivals such as New Opera Days Ostrava, Exposition of New Music, Dag in de Branding, Sanatorium Sonorum, and the Venice Biennale, where he co-performed pieces by Fero Király as part of Oto Hudec’s Floating Arboretum project. He is one of the few performers in the (Central) European context capable of studying and performing (by heart) the legendary Ursonate by the German Dadaist Kurt Schwitters.
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