Ensemble progress under the direction of Sylvia Hinz presents a concert that musically explores the multifaceted perception of time. At its centre stands flüssige zeit / tiempo líquido (WP) by Colombian composer Michele Abondano. She merges personal and collective time perceptions into a polytemporal sound universe. The intergenerational collective of professional musicians and music students uses traditional instruments, voices, electronic sound generators and their own sound recordings. Tensions unfold, pauses breathe, and sounds find their very own duration. Collective compositions by the ensemble spin the theme further.

Ensemble progress embodies a participatory understanding of music that has shaped Klangwerkstatt Berlin since its beginnings under Peter Ablinger. One of his compositions is performed in memory of the composer, who passed away in April of this year.

Peter Ablinger: WEISS/WEISSLICH 3 (1990)
… The name of the series Weiss/weisslich therefore refers not only to the subtle difference between white and another white, but above all to the difference between white and the perception of white. In the case of the piece that gave the series its title, the later Weiss/weisslich 3, the process of transposition was most immediate — perhaps the most direct and simple in all of my work: once again I stood before a painting and thought of music. This time in 1990, at the Gropius-Bau in Berlin, one of those enormous exhibitions of the period — I have forgotten the theme, but I remember having only just begun the exhibition, starting with the last room of the tour. And there I stood before a painting consisting solely of vertical, light-grey stripes, nothing but two different shades of grey alternating with complete regularity. I was less contemplating the painting than it was contemplating me, as I stood before it lost in thought for a while, before abruptly ending my visit to the exhibition and going home to sketch a piece consisting of nothing other than the repeated, regular alternation of 40 seconds of silence and 40" of near-silence. It was many years later that I finally discovered the painting was by Agnes Martin.
Peter Ablinger

Michele Abondano: flüssige zeit / tiempo líquido (2025)
The title of the piece was suggested by Sylvia Hinz in an early phase of the project, and I began working with her idea of a personal and collective perception of time. The compositional process, however, coincided with one of my greatest existential crises, during which I engaged intensively with Zygmunt Bauman's book Liquid Times: Living in an Age of Uncertainty. Inevitably, this composition is a response to all of these reflections. Through the superimposition and interpolation of improvisation sections, experiments and more determined sonic units, the piece leads the performers to explore sketched forms, failed utopias, uncertainty and individual escape routes. The conflict between freedom and security/control lies at the heart of this liquid time.
Michele Abondano