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.

Nine Bells by American composer Tom Johnson is a spatial composition for solo percussion, in which the performer moves among nine suspended bells, pealing them in precisely determined sequences. What at first appears to be a perfectly pure, almost mechanical process with predictable results is constantly disrupted by the humanity of the performer – the unevenness of each step, the breath, or the sound of the body in moments of “stillness.”

In the subtle tension between strict structure and imperfection, the piece becomes not only an exploration of sound in space but also an inquiry into labor, presence, and the fragile beauty of embodied performance.

The audience is free to observe this unfolding process from any position – sitting, standing, lying down, or moving – allowing their own bodies to become part of the shifting perspective of the work.