Rafael Toral / Bendik Giske / Nkisi

Travelling Light is the world premiere of Rafael Toral’s new guitar-based work. Developed in parallel to critically acclaimed Spectral Evolution, it reaches further into dialogue with the jazz harmonic tradition, but from a different angle.With a deeper engagement to the guitar’s culture and history, it responds to further arranging challenges, this time interacting with soloists on acoustic instruments: Bruno Parrinha (clarinet), Rodrigo Amado (tenor sax), Yaw Tembe (flügelhorn) and Clara Saleiro (flute). Travelling Light slows down time, stretching the swing to its limits so that each chord becomes an event on its own, a micro-space that draws the listener inside. 169 These harmonies, on one hand, carry a strong emotional undercurrent, in some way attuned to the feeling derived from the loss of civilisation that is pervasive in our time. On the other hand, they are a celebration of light and beauty, examples of the harmonic splendour as created by the jazz composers of the thirties, transported to Rafael Toral’s soundworld and luminous tone. Travelling Light is a new journey across Toral’s ever-expanding universe—stretching the space between open landscapes and vulnerable intimacy.

Into the Blue unfolds in the spaces between the beats – in the silences that hover between notes – where breath, voice, and body encounter reed and metal. Inspired by Derek Jarman’s intense observations on the spectrum of colour in Chroma: A Book of Color, Giske reflects on the role of observation and transcription as a subversive act. In Into the Blue, Giske explores and observes new techniques and sensibilities for his instrument and performance. Drawing from the works of Carolee Schneemann and Trisha Brown, he delves into the capacity of the human body for observation, reflection, and storytelling. What arises is not simply music, but a durational study of attention, vulnerability, and the insistence of the human sensorium in an increasingly mediated visual order. The stage environment is developed by visual artist Theresa Baumgartner along with sound direction by acclaimed instrument developer and composer Wouter Jaspers, both long term collaborators of Giske.

Anomaly Index is a live composition series investigating paracoustic phenomena and auditory anomalies drawn from archival and psychic research. Each piece operates as a case study, treating sonic residue not as an error but as a compositional source. The project navigates between ethnographic materials, field reports, and speculative listening to explore how sound can act as a medium for memory, distortion, and perception at the limits of rational explanation. The performance is structured as a trilogy. The first case study draws on historic recordings, foregrounding incidental textures – hiss, hum, scratches – that emerge as rhythmic triggers and spectral figures. The second focuses on reports of so-called “desert songs”: auditory experiences in remote landscapes that seem to arise at the edge of con- sciousness. The third investigates threshold frequencies and near-death acoustics—disembodied tones, choirs, or melodies heard in altered states. Developed through a hybrid of composition and improvisation, Anomaly Index proposes a kind of techno-séance: a form of research as performance, where ghost sounds and archival traces are refigured as speculative scores.