Ensemble OMN, directed by Szymon Bywalec, is the oldest orchestra in Poland specialising in contemporary music (that is, music truly being created today!). During the 35th Musica Polonica Nova, they will once again visit the National Forum of Music. The audience attending this experimental concert will explore their own sonic experience from various distances. The programme includes works by five composers.

Close-up – face-to-face with the music. Sitting on the stage, “dangerously” close to the artists, we will see every gesture of sound production, their knowing glances, hear the rustle of chairs and bodies, and the raw sound of the instruments positioned closest to us. Is this already intimacy? Zoom in. The musicians will premiere Jerzy Kornowicz’s Wrzenie (Rising) – a piece with choreography, as well as Marta Śniady’s SoundLAB Music with a solo percussion part, and Adam Porębski’s new work Muzyka (nie)doskonała ((Im)Perfect Music) – a quasi-piano concerto. Perhaps, attending the concert from this perspective, we will pull out our notebooks to begin analysing and dissecting the compositions?

Passage. We have to reach the new location somehow. During the journey up three floors, the space of the NFM building will be filled with the sounds of Maciej Michaluk’s b)))))))).

Distance – as far as our ears will take us. Sitting on a remote balcony, as if beyond seven mountains, we will see instrumental ants moving synchronously, monumental, suspended sound screens, a spectacle of light, we will hear a resonant and coherent sound, a satisfying reverberation. Is this alienation? Zoom out. Two premieres await us – a piece by Marcin Bortnowski and Inner Battles. For OMN Ensemble by Grzegorz Wierzba. Perhaps we will reach for our notebooks again and encapsulate the works we have listened to from a distance in idealising syntheses?

And for you – which perspective is closer (or further) – the closer one or the further one ?