Sound spaces and non-linear music formats beyond the classical concert format J(IP), U(MS) and S(imone Conforti) form a music & sound laboratory named JUS bringing together musicians, composers and researchers with a common purpose defined by specific projects. JUS designs a new listening and music exploration experience by extending the traditional audience and stage setting exhibiting music itself. The most discombobulating were the two 45-minute experiences that were a cross between an installation, performance art and a concert, designed to open the composition process to public spaces. Conceived and performed by Javier Hagen, recorder player Ulrike Mayer-Spohn and Simone Conforti, and taking place in Leuk’s large, derelict Burgerspittel. In roughly equal parts fascinating, inscrutable and absurd, it would be uncharitable to call it pretentious as the whole thing was clearly designed as a holistic sound and light
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encounter in which inner connections or meanings (if any) were entirely one’s own. The performed excerpts were all taken from works composed for Hagen and Mayer-Spohn (...), two of which in particular were breathtakingly memorable. A section from by Swiss-Armenian composer Varoujan Cheterian featured Hagen and Mayer-Spohn sitting in cupboards on either side of a connecting wall. Being in separate rooms, it wasn’t at first obvious that a duet was taking place, but when the penny dropped it was if the wall between them became immaterial, the duo’s soft dialogue – flitting to and from a unison F, like an embellished drone – intimately focused and poignant. At the opposite
