ABSTRA FEAT. AB BAARS & WOLTER WIERBOS

Borusan Music House reunites with its audience after a long hiatus. On the first evening of resumed events, Wolter Wierbos and Ab Baars will be joining ABSTRA.

ABSTRA is an ensemble named after the title of a 2006 piece for piano by the American composer Garret Byrnes. In 2010, Gülşah Erol founded ABSTRA to make electro-acoustic music; in line with her responses to electronic interventions, she aimed to navigate the boundaries of the cello and make new discoveries. ABSTRA, which centres on the voyage of sounds in space created by the harmony and dissonance, balance and imbalance achieved with guest artists, and employs technological elements, performed at Borusan Music House for the first time on March 26, 2011. Gülşah Erol, who has shared the stage with Peter Brötzmann, Evan Parker, Joe Mcphee, Jürg Solothurnmann, Andreas Kaling, Bart Maris, been involved in many projects with Korhan Argüden and countless other musicians, continues to carry out improvised music concerts featuring international guest artists, drawing on musical elements such as avant-garde jazz, free jazz and free improvisation from within the framework of today’s new music.

For trombonist Wolter Wierbos, it’s all about fluidity... “I see myself as some kind of sculptor or painter,” he says. Indeed, he adds sound, rhythm and form into music and successfully conveys the improvisational elements of his music to his listeners. For Wierbos, who has had long tenures in the ensembles and orchestras of Gerry Hemingway, Maarten Altena, Guus Janssen and Sean Bergin, as well as many performances at major festivals, improvisation is the most important way to communicate with musicians: “Communicating with my fellow musicians, that’s the whole idea. I try not to be a show-off. Musical communication in improvised form is very difficult, and calls for a lot of openness from the players. It’s always work in progress. With some musicians it’s easy because you speak the same language. With others it’s almost impossible—but even then, it can be an adventure.”

Dutch musician-composer and band leader Ab Baars performs on the tenor saxophone, clarinet and shakuhachi. He focuses mainly on his groups Ab Baars Solo, Baars-Buis, Fish Scale Sunrise, Perch Hen Brock & Rain, Ab Baars Trio, Duo Baars-Henneman and the ICP Orchestra. Baars’s interpretations are colourful in addition to being charming and surprising...

IMPORTANT NOTICE FOR THE AUDIENCE: All our concerts will be held under Covid-19 measures. In accordance with the circular of the Ministry of Interior, spectators will be able to enter the events by showing their vaccination cards or PCR tests with a negative result up to 48 hours ago. Controls for entry will be provided through the Hayat Eve Sığar (HES) application. Before coming to our concerts, we kindly ask our audience to download the current version of the HES application to their mobile devices and share the fields of vaccine, disease and test status.

Please click for the event rules.