Composing While Black at M.Bassy
M.Bassy is realizing the interdisciplinary music series »Composing While Black. Afrodiasporic New Music Today«, co-curated by the musicologist, author and saxophonist Harald Kisiedu, inviting the international composers, musicians, musicologists and and cultural thinkers George E. Lewis, Daniele Daude & The String Archestra, Elaine Mitchener and Charles Uzor to Hamburg. The starting point of the project is the bilingual essay collection »Composing While Black. Afrodiasporische Neue Musik Heute | Afrodiasporic New Music Today«, edited by Kisiedu & Lewis in 2023. It focuses on the lives and works of contemporary composers from 1960 to the present who have been systematically overlooked by researchers, concert programmers and journalists, especially in Europe. The publication gives insight into the cultural power and creative range of Black protagonists in the field of New Music and to deconstruct the perception of this field as White.
The series at M.Bassy allows the audience to gain new perspectives on Afrodiasporic composers not only as participatory creative actors, but also as social figures within widely ramified, complexly networked communities in the ever-expanding universe of musical possibilities. In three hybrid event formats, Harald Kisiedu will enter a personal dialog with each guest under the moderation of journalist and musician Musa Okwonga. In music talks, joint listening sessions and experimental live music performances, we will develop new perceptions on a multisensory of Afrodiasporic New Music as an intercultural, cross-generational space of innovation, contemporary discourse and identity building. The first event will be with the American composer, musicologist, and trombonist George E. Lewis who is also professor of American Music at Columbia University and currently fellow at the Institute for Ideas and Imagination in Paris working on »Finding the Sound of Freedom: Artificial Intelligence in Real-Time Musical Creativity«. He will be joined by Harald Kisiedu for a music talk, listening session and opera screening. For the second event the French-German scholar and dramaturge for music, opera, theatre & performance art Daniele Daude and furthermore, three musicians of the classical string ensemble The String Archestra from Berlin will play selected compositions before Daude joins a talk with Kisiedu afterwards. Daude founded The String Archestra in 2016 aiming to perform works by BIPoC composers which have completely disappeared both from canonical music historiography and from a standardized concert repertoire. For the third event, the audience is invited to an interdisciplinary live performance between music, sound, text, improvisation and body movement by vocalist, movement artist and composer Elaine Mitchener. Following this, the interdisciplinary artist and musician from London, UK will enter a conversation with Kisiedu about the history of Black being between sound and movement.
Event #1: Music Talk, Listening Session & Opera Screening with George E. Lewis & Harald Kisiedu, moderated by Musa Okwonga
February 15, 2025, 7 PM
Event #2: Live Performance by Daniele G. Daude & The String Archestra and Music Talk with Daniele G. Daude & Harald Kisiedu, moderated by Jumoke Olusanmi – July 5, 2025, 7 PM
Event #3: Live Performance & Music Talk with Elaine Mitchener & Harald Kisiedu – Nov 22, 2025, 7 PM
Event #4: Music Talk with Charles Uzor & Harald Kisiedu
Dec 20, 2025, 7 PM
Photo by Marbeth via Tania León. Courtesy Tania León, Tania León Papers, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University