In addition to the solos and duos i discussed previously, there were various ensemble performances at this year’s Sacrum Profanum, though they were very far from being highlights, memorable for the wrong reasons. As far as Stephen O’Malley‘s You Origin was concerned, one already knew what to expect. However, to say that its four hours of alphorns (and, later, conch shells, because why not?) therefore didn’t disappoint would be 100% incorrect, though its blank progression of dull tones must have been an absolute wet dream for any Wandelweiser-addled acolyte. Aleksandra Słyż‘s To the Horizon for countertenor, flute, piano, drums and electronics was similarly creatively inert, though at only 30 minutes was at least bearable, whereas La Baracande‘s performance of La Novia, reimagining traditional laments, clearly had real potential yet this was systematically destroyed by some of the worst amplification i’ve ever heard.
The closing concert by Sinfonietta Cracovia was doubly challenging. First, due to the banal faux-prettiness of Eva-Maria Houben‘s seascape harmonies, more Wandelweiser-esque idiocy, a sonic equivalent of those endless third-rate paintings of seascapes churned out by hapless amateurs trying to make quick cash in Cornwall. Empty, clichéd and manipulative. One had higher hopes for Marek Pospieszalski‘s sax concerto-esque Nadnaturalny, but it turned out that while his improvisational skills are formidable, the same can’t be said for his ability to construct a cogent, convincing long-term narrative. The relationship between himself, a tape player and the Cracovia strings was essentially non-existent, flitting between them arbitrarily in 40 minutes of aimless, disjunct nonsense.
The one exception to this parade of group tomfooleries was the Independent Music March, which took place on the final day of the festival, 11 November, Poland’s Independence Day. Beginning at Adam Studziński Square, with Wawel Castle and Cathedral looming from the adjacent hill, the march focused upon the Kraków Improvisers Orchestra, essentially a ragtag bunch of players drawn from those taking part in the festival. Led by a trio of flagbearers – Sacrum Profanum’s Artistic Director Krzysztof Pietraszewski, Producer Marta Fudali and PR Representative Krzysztof Siwoń – and escorted in front and behind by police(!), the effect of the march was striking. The public clearly didn’t quite know what to make of it, though judging by the faces of most of them, surprise turned quickly to delight.
The ensemble was like an eccentric troupe of wandering players, mad minstrels serenading Kraków with something new and ancient, or more likely outside time altogether. Outside emotion too, suggesting elation and melancholy yet above all simply being its own, enigmatic self, messy undulations of line, agglomerations of electronic fuzz and squelch, chords collapsing in on themselves, delicate guitar tracery, indistinct vocalisations and loud hollers. Suddenly erupting in huge, madcap tuttis, and falling back to solo sequences – determined by the whims of conductor and saxophonist Paulina Owczarek – they processed past a stall selling novelty bird calls, blending perfectly with their musical texture, which by now had grown more static, the make-believe birdsong colouring the group’s stillness. They processed on, revelling in the crudeness, the rudeness, of their authenticity, at once playful and serious; if there’s an opposite to a danse macabre, that’s what this was. Some pedestrians looked bemused, confused: was it the unconventionality of the music? Or the lack of an obvious ‘message’? Music qua music, march qua march. All the time the main square grew closer, and there was something momentous, even triumphal about entering it, the ensemble tilting on its axis into a wild chaos of merriment, celebrating the pure act of music-making; a performative statement of intent, where message and meaning were exhilaratingly fused.
The zenith of Sacrum Profanum 2025 was a series of performances that took place in the MOCAK art gallery, in conjunction with Konrad Smoleński‘s installation Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More. Originally created in 2013, this takes the form of two large bronze bells either end of a wall of loudspeakers. Opposite the wall at MOCAK was a wooden construction where the audience sits. The product of the installation is a combination of sounds recorded in real-time within the space, plus the bells – which can be set to use hard, muffled or no clappers – which becomes processed into a torrent of complex noise, reinforced and made physical by a raft of subwoofers beneath the audience.
The installation thus unleashes a modulated response to whatever has happened within the space. Listening to it prior to the performances i was amazed at the extent of its onslaught: shudder and clatter everywhere, a blissful bombardment, like bathing in an avalanche, the muted bells utterly transformed into something critical, catalytic, catastrophic. In its wake, silence no longer sounded like silence, but had become a hot afterglow, a kind of background radiation.
Every evening, between the bells, before the speakers, an ‘InstaImprovisation’ took place, each one a duet. They consolidated a sense, suggested in that first encounter with the installation, of it serving as a quasi-sacral space. The bells – regardless whether natural, muted or silent – both a call and a herald; the speakers an avant-altar to the greatest deity of all, the goddess of sound (‘Sonæris’, could we call her?).
The first featured Mariam Rezaei (turntables) and Cath Roberts (saxophone). They were timbral siblings at first, lingering in close proximity, before abruptly becoming a fantastic binary of superfast, intricate beat patterns and high, florid lines. Rezaei’s role, though not secondary, nonetheless tended to work to facilitate or create contexts for Roberts. Ultra deep bass floors (from really slow disc rotations) and strong rhythmic grooves gave the performance immense scope, aided by a strong inner logic and mutual responsiveness, and a willingness to move through laidback territory down to almost nothing.
They plunged, marvellously, into another abyssal bass trench while the saxophone projected dying bursts of air. After this it was more about atmospherics, suggestion. The bells (muffled clappers) added rhythm but the whole remained potential, not actual. Yet it expanded, now groovy and intense, Rezaei’s beats still mellow but Roberts high powered, channelling into Smoleński’s noise to form a relentless torrent, finally evaporating into a chorus of sax fragments, echoed in the electronics.
Marshall Trammell (drums) and Colin Webster (saxophone) went hardest and fastest in these performances. Always something to say, always the need to say it. And then – the bells! They were the only duo to opt for hard clappers, yet the violent clangs seemed founded upon Trammell’s restless, impossibly fast snare drum repetitions. In conjunction with Webster it was like rock run amok, a distant wailing heard through layer upon punishing layer of ever more intricate rhythms and saturation from the speakers.
The climax was like the final release of some unimaginable pent-up energy, stored from all that had gone before. It brought to mind Marko Ciciliani’s Pop Wall Alphabet ‘spectral freezes’, the sound coursing and pulsing through our entire bodies like an extended, semi-frozen orgasm, the sax a cross between a cry and a tune, elated, in altissimus. After which, the comedown: Trammell, still fast like a racing heartbeat, but in this aftermath of overload also seemingly prosaically ordered, like a post-orgasmic list being recited, while Webster slowly descended back down to earth. Absolutely incredible.
The performance by Marek Pospieszalski (saxophone) and Guilhem Lacroux (electric guitar) was a total contrast from the previous two, showing how versatile Smoleński’s installation is, not determining how players perform but the opposite, responding in sympathy. Clear evocations of bells came from both players at the start, a nice touch. They worked together to expand them, evolving into distorted clangings replete with resonance and complex overtones. Yet there was clearly a shared urge to establish an ambient-like soundscape, slow and thoughtful.
As the bells began, one wondered if that idea would be demolished yet, using soft clappers, their contribution was limited to a metric counterpoint to the duo’s drifting tones. Sax and guitar seemed to merge, united in pitch and timbre, before abruptly ramping up, endless saxophone notes and big guitar chords, reinforced by the speakers. The result was a powerful noise-drone, with discrete material continually present, moving in and around the semi-saturated space (bringing to mind the work of Zbigniew Karkowski).
Jérôme Noetinger (Revox tape recorders) and Jakob Kullberg (cello) opted for muffled clappers. This aligned well with their reserved dual approach, soft tape pulses and airy cello pitches. They tantalised in this way, the pulses uncertain, the pitches playful, until deep drones caused Kullberg to wax lyrically, joined by Noetinger on ‘scratched’ tape loops in a strange duet with wayward contours. Noetinger had evidently prerecorded noises from the bells, and this was fed into the mix such that reality and recording were hard to tell apart, an admixture of clunks and muted clangs, the cello hovering softly above.
When the noise got going, it was impressive to hear how differently it had been recalibrated by the duo’s less demonstrative interactions, now emerging gentle and warm. Kullberg rose to squally heights above it, energised by a surge in the bass, while Noetinger threw dog barks and swooping tones at him from ground level.
The final InstaImprovisation was given by Yann Gourdon (hurdy-gurdy) and Maja S. K. Ratkje (voice). Some indication of what lay in store came at the outset, Ratkje caterwauling from beside the speakers. Gourdon set to work maintaining a grinding, burbling undercurrent, ever in flux. Ratkje, holding small chimes, approach their larger counterparts and engaged in some bell on bell action, almost like bestowing a blessing. Whereupon she seemed to transform into some kind of primordial entity invoking deep magic, at first firing blurred, buzzy sounds in the microphone.
It became glossolalia, a flood of astonishingly (ex)plosive vocalisations, heightened by Gourdon’s unstoppable droning noisefloor, which gained both additional octaves and complexity. Ratkje turned ecstatic as the duo were conjoined with the installation, the most sublime, rich tunnel of pitchnoise suffusing the space and all of us within it. Now holding the mic, Ratkje unleashed a melody seemingly in super slow motion, drenched in a torrent of overload, as everything around and beneath her merged into an almighty bass-buzz-noise thrumbthrob. This was the incredible, utterly gorgeous apotheosis of the duo’s long-form spellcasting, Ratkje’s incantation resounding like words made out of lightning. At the end, no-one wanted to leave; we stayed, caught our breath, talked, marvelled, tried to get our heads around what had happened, knowing that as soon as we stepped outside MOCAK it would start to disappear, the fading lambency of an unfathomable, amazing experience.
All five of the InstaImprovisations were recorded, and assuming what was captured does justice to the sheer enormity of these performances, the day can’t come quickly enough when they’re made available for everyone to experience. Music festivals simply don’t get more exciting than this; for me, not just within Sacrum Profanum 2025 but in the year as a whole, this was the absolute high point. i’m still coming down.
