I want to make a music that you can wrap up your soul in and, if you needed too, send it away. Music that is as experiential as a sexuality or a hot meal made by a friend or living with a puppy.

How to eat your sexuality is made up of 3 modular pieces which work like a painter making a collection of canvasses on the same subject. The first part “Just Touch” is a collection of 5 love songs which feel their way through themes of friendship, sexuality, eating and animals.

It is a whole concert piece that uses voices, orchestra and electronics to feel into an intensified sensuality of musical experience. Song as play, listening as touch and harmony like being alive in a body. It has some gay bits too, I like them. They should definitely get a dog for the office, a great big gay doggy.
(Alex Paxton)

Alex Paxton (*1990 in Manchester) studied jazz and composition at the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music in London. He is present throughout Europe as a composer and performs in various formations as a jazz trombonist and improvisation artist. He has already released three critically acclaimed albums, with two more to follow this year. His honours include the Ivor Novello Composer Award, the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation Composition Prize, the Hindemith Prize of the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, the Claussen Simon Composition Prize and the Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize. Alex’s manifest is “make magic sound stuff”, to make sound that is as sensuous as possible in every moment.

‘like minimal but loads more notes like video-games but with more song like jazz but much more gay like old music but more current like yummy sweet but more stick like paint but more scratch like tapestry but filthily like prayer but more loud like loud groove and more rude like fingers and faces too but somehow more smelly like smelly things cooking with more chew and change like louder prayers that groove with like stinking-hotpink in poo-brown but even more desperate-like than that like drums and Dream Musics …’

The seven singers are constantly searching for new forms of vocal expression in exchange with composers. One focus is the work with artists who virtuously exploit the possibilities of digital media, with a delight in networking, in playing with genres, in dissolving space, perspectives and functions. Interdisciplinary formats between music theater, performance, installation and concert staging characterize up to 30 world premieres a year. In addition to vocal chamber music theater, the Neue Vocalsolisten explore “magic spaces” together with artists and web designers – performance formats between analog and digital perception. Master classes and a digital “NVS Academy” introduce young artists to the challenges of experimental vocal music. In 2021, the Neue Vocalsolisten became the first ensemble to be awarded the Silver Lion of the Biennale di Venezia. In 2022 they received the Premio Abbiati della critica.

Open-minded, virtuosic in performance and aurally perceptive, Klangforum Wien – one of the internationally most renowned ensembles for contemporary music – devotes itself to the artistic interpretation and expansion of experiential space. A performance of Klangforum Wien is an event in the best sense of the word; it offers a sensual experience, immediate and inescapable; and the novelty in its music speaks, acts and beguiles.

Ever since it was founded by Beat Furrer in 1985, the ensemble – which, over the years, has received a great number of awards and distinctions – has written music history: It has presented around 600 world premieres of works by composers from four continents; it boasts an extensive discography of more than 90 releases, and is part of the major music festivals in Europe, America and Asia

Klangforum Wien is made up of 25 musicians from Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Finland, France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. From the start of the 2018/19 season until summer 2022, Bas Wiegers was Klangforum Wien’s Principal Guest Conductor, taking over from Sylvain Cambreling who, however, has maintained a close relationship with the ensemble as its Principal Guest Conductor Emeritus. Per 1 January 2024, Elena Schwarz and Vimbayi Kaziboni serve as the new Conductors in Residence.

Klangforum Wien has its own annual concert series at the Wiener Konzerthaus. Every year, the ensemble commissions composers and gives numerous world and territorial premieres. The repertoire choice and the ensemble’s intense understanding of the pieces contribute to diversity, and are matched by the flawless execution of the music.

Vimbayi Kaziboni was born in Zimbabwe and is widely sought-after for his depth of approach and interpretive imagination, as well as his innovative and thoughtful curation. He has led many critically lauded performances with orchestras across the globe, performing at some of the most prestigious concert halls in the world. He has led premieres of hundreds of new works by composers that include Georg Friedrich Haas, George Lewis, Heiner Goebbels and Liza Lim. Moreover, he has had a long association with leading contemporary music groups, Ensemble Modern and Ensemble Intercontemporain, where he served as assistant conductor at the beginning of his career and with whom he now prolifically collaborates as a guest conductor and curator. Appointed conductor in residence of Klangforum Wien from January 2024, he also currently serves as artist in residence with the International Contemporary Ensemble, music director of the Composers Conference, artis- tic advisor of the Boston Lyric Opera, and a professor of orchestral studies and contemporary music at Boston Conservatory at Berklee.