Cyborg Flesh, a 55-minute long composition for string quartet (Arditti Quartet),  e-guitar (Yaron Deutsch) and live-electronics (me), was supposed to be premiered at the Wien Modern festival in November 2024, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Arditti Quartet.

One week before the premiere, however, Lukas Fels broke his arm. The premiere had to be postponed to 2025, and the planned second performance at the Rainy Days Festival in Luxembourg, to 2026. However, Catherine Kontz, artistic director of Rainy Days, was so kind to still offer us the stage at the planned date, and proposed that we work out a concert program without Lukas and his cello. For this concert I proposed a 50-minute musical structure (Broken|Glued) that moves seamlessly between several sections of Cyborg Flesh, some improvisations, Klaus Lang's electric guitar solo Chansons Lointaine et douce, and Hilda Paredes' transcription of Dowland's In Darkness Let me Dwell, with the electric guitar replacing the cello. 

Lukas has recovered fully by now (hurray!), and the true premiere of Cyborg Flesh is approaching quickly (31/10/2025). I've started to reacquaint myself with this work, which I worked on for about a year (July 2023 to July 2024), but which, right now, still feels like a fremdkörper, after having had to put it in the fridge for a year. Perhaps that is how it feels to have cyborg flesh?

Cyborg Flesh is a commission by the Arditti Quartet, Wien Modern & Rainy Days Festival, supported financially by the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung.