resonating_albert
– Five sound works featuring original audio recordings from Albert Mangelsdorff’s audio archive
Albert Mangelsdorff (1928–2005) was one of the most influential and internationally renowned figures in the history of German jazz. Born in Frankfurt and raised in the Ernst May housing estate in Praunheim, he became the artistic centre of Frankfurt’s jazz scene after the end of the Second World War. His highly virtuosic instrumental style earned him international recognition, from Poland and France to the Newport Jazz Festival in the United States. Nevertheless, he always remained closely connected to his home city.
The works brought together in the media library explore different aspects of his sonic world: multiphonics and layers of overtones, breath and noise, and the translation of instrumental playing into electroacoustic and generative processes. What they have in common is the question of how Mangelsdorff’s sonic impulses can be transformed and transferred into new acoustic contexts twenty years after his death.
The Soundpieces
Interferenzen – Uwe Dierksen (Eng: Interferences)
29:14 Minutes | 2025 · Electroacoustic composition
Uwe Dierksen describes Mangelsdorff’s multiphonics, layers of overtones and interference tones as a sonic space through which the musician moves improvisationally. Interferenzen takes up this idea and explores the sonic spaces created by the superimposition of tones and overtones. The work was created as a world premiere commissioned for Memento Mangelsdorff and was presented, among other venues, as part of the sound installations at KunstKulturKirche Allerheiligen.
Vogel-Zug – Alper Maral (Eng: Bird migration)
38:22 Minutes | 2025 · Electroacoustic composition
Alper Maral connects his personal encounter with Mangelsdorff’s music with his own artistic practice as a composer and bass trombonist. Mangelsdorff’s multiphonics were a particularly important influence for Maral: he understands them as a principle that makes the familiar sound different. Vogel-Zug takes up this artistic engagement and combines sonic and verbal ideas in a multilayered work dedicated to Mangelsdorff. It also reflects nature and bird recordings from Mangelsdorff’s artistic work.
Bone-Breath-Noise – Vollmar + Seipel Soubrier
8:30 Minutes | 2025 · Electroacoustic composition
Bone-Breath-Noise understands itself as a continuation of Mangelsdorff’s sonic language and playing technique in a digital context. Sonic particles develop into processes of densification and dissolution, transformed through digital filters and effects. The solo trombone remains present as the source and resonating body of the sound. MIDI controllers transfer the physical dimension of playing into the digital sphere. Digital processes expand the sonic spectrum, serving as an electronic counterpart to Mangelsdorff’s sonic polyphony and his use of multiphonics.
Hin und Zurück – Harin Choi (Eng: Back and Forth)
8:50 Minutes | Electroacoustic composition
The composition is based on historical source material from the Mangelsdorff Archive at the Institute for Urban History: trombone solos, breathing sounds, and bird and nature recordings, including sounds from Frankfurt’s Anlagenring parklands. Short and long fragments are prepared as SFZ presets and processed generatively in a Lisp environment. Breathing sounds develop into noise-like phrases, while short segments become pointillistic textures. Transformed multiphonics and tongue slaps form a multilayered spectrum of noise, while bird sounds appear as fleeting gestures. The three sections flow into one another without interruption; the open ending remains suspended between suggestion and resolution.
aaur fcro afacurro – Bruno Bolz
10:03 Minutes | 2025 · Ten-minute electroacoustic composition for fixed media
The work was created as part of the open-call composition competition Albert_25, organised by the Frankfurt Society for New Music (FGNM) in cooperation with the City of Frankfurt’s Department of Culture in late summer 2025. It engages with Albert Mangelsdorff’s work and life, combining elements of jazz and twentieth-century art music, particularly electroacoustic music. It is also based on the principle that the combination of two or more things can produce something third—a concept closely connected to Mangelsdorff’s use of multiphonics.