SPECTRO DUO
FIVE RULES
PROGRAMME
Gaël Navard, Klangwelten* (2025), 12’, for two performer-musicians
Anna Sowa, Escape* (2025), 12’, for two performer-musicians
Inga Margrete Aas, Vierhändig (Cluster)* (2025), 12’, for two performer-musicians
Hanna Mesgari, NoirSilence* (2024), 12’, for one actor and electronics**
*World Premiere
**Composed as part of the NIMFA - Horizon Étendu Academy, under the direction of Pierre Jodlowski
DURARTION: 60 minutes
A Night of Radical Sonic Exploration and Performance
Spectro Duo is not just a musical ensemble—it is an ever-evolving artistic entity. At the crossroads of contemporary music, improvisation, and performance art, their approach is bold, transgressive, and deeply collaborative. Electric guitar, alto saxophone, synthesizers, electronics, visual projections, voice, and body merge to create a sonic universe that defies conventions and unlocks infinite possibilities.
For this exceptional performance, SpectroDuo presents four singular works, each questioning the relationship between sound, movement, and perception.
Throughout the evening, sound becomes a constantly evolving material. An immersive experience where acoustic and electronic textures blend and distort, like an elusive sonic alchemy. The exploration of sharing and vulnerability takes center stage through a musical and gestural dialogue, binding two performers in a choreography of sound and movement. Elsewhere, the boundary between composition and improvisation dissolves, instruments are repurposed and transformed, and tension builds through an unpredictable narrative. Finally, voice intertwines with music, resonating with poetry, evoking both wandering and the intensity of words in a world that is at once intimate and theatrical.
Between shifting soundscapes, physical interactions, and the deconstruction of classical forms, SpectroDuo invites the audience into a space where every vibration, every gesture, and every silence opens a door to the unexpected.
The Five Rules of SpectroDuo:
We read scores.
We improvise.
We are virtuosos—but not in the way you imagine.
We are an artistic entity.
We cherish freedom.
NOTICE
Gaël Navard - Klangwelten
Klangwelten is a world-piece; a universe to be explored, immersing musicians and listeners in an ever-changing environment. Each space is a living sonic material to be discovered. Each movement reveals and shapes the different layers that make up the work. Every gesture interacts with the partner's discoveries. Thus, Klangwelten unfolds like a shifting map where the present moment constantly redefines the contours of the soundscape. The piece does not impose a linear path but leaves room for the unexpected.
The music is built through exchange, interaction, blending of textures, erosion, and articulation of forms. The musicians move according to their perceptions, shaping this world with its evolving contours. From underground murmurs to surface flashes, from vibrant drones to fragmented textures, every place crossed becomes a musical playground, an invitation to listening and imagination.
Anna Sowa - Escape
The inspiration for the piece was paradoxically the title of the composition, which came first (and this rarely happens in my artistic work). We are currently living in a time in which we do not know what will happen next, in which the word ‘escape’ appears very often. Whether it is in relation to fleeing directly from a place of home, from war or even, very prosaically from one's own thoughts. The key moment and direct inspiration was a book by one of Norway’s most important contemporary writers Carl Frode Tiller ‘Flukt’, translated as ‘Escape’. In it, there is a tension between two people which, when translated into musical language, can become a universal, inner ‘escape’ from situations and confrontations. I want to capture this energy in my new piece.
Inga Margrete Aas - Vierhändig (cluster)
To share something can be both practical and inconvenient. Sharing can also be vulnerable, erotic and confusing. The blurring of responsibility and boundaries that comes with sharing can give rise to new experiences and composite bodies. Sharing is a necessity for our mental and physical health and our social organization. And yet, to share in deeper and more generous ways than the social norm allows is usually seen as radical and subversive.
Vierhändig (cluster) is, in a very concrete way, about the practice of sharing. A guitar and an overhead projector is shared equally between two entangled performers, such that nothing will happen without their careful collaboration. With this as a starting point, sound, music and actions unfold.
The five years I’ve had the joy of knowing Idin and Martyna I’ve rarely seen them apart. When I got the opportunity to make a piece for them I wanted their close relationship to be at the core of the work, and the idea of a situation with two performers entangled in their shared responsibility of performing two very different tasks simultaneously came to mind.
Hanna Mesgari - NoirSilence
I discovered Arthur Rimbaud’s poem “Eternity” through Jean-Luc Godard’s film Pierrot le Fou, and it left a deep impression on me. This experience led me to explore A Season in Hell by Rimbaud, from which I selected several passages for a staged performance.
In this piece, I sought to depict Rimbaud’s state of confusion and wandering through the performance of an actor. Certain passages are also read by a recorded narrator, embodying a spectral voice — a kind of spirit — who interacts with the main character, a living representation of Rimbaud.
Special attention was given to the music, which was carefully composed to reflect Rimbaud’s pain, suffering, and despair. It aims to offer the audience a deep emotional experience, in resonance with the themes and poetry of the work.
This piece was written for the group Spectro Duo, whose artistic abilities profoundly inspired and motivated me to complete this creation.
SPECTRO DUO
Spectro Duo is a composer-performer duo formed by Martyna Kosecka and Idin Samimi Mofakham, dedicated to experimental sound and electroacoustic projects. Their work explores drone sounds, beating phenomena, glitch aesthetics, and Oriental modalities, blending technical expertise with artistic innovation.
Expanding beyond sound, the duo also engages with visual arts, creating immersive performances that transcend traditional boundaries. They have performed at renowned festivals such as Extreme Chill Festival Reykjavik (Iceland), Ars Electronica Linz (Austria), AudioArt Festival Kraków (Poland), Musicacoustica Beijing (China), and Tehran Contemporary Music Festival & TADAEX (Iran).
Martyna Kosecka
Martyna Kosecka’s music grows out of her interest in philosophy, physics, linguistics and the mythologies and fables of the world. She is a Polish composer, performer, conductor, curator and researcher in new music. In her projects she works with narratives, microtonality, symbolism and ritualism, by using multidisciplinary solutions. She emphasises the richness of transcultural relationships in art, drawing from the cultures of Iran, Poland and Norway, the countries she has connected through her life. Since 2023, Martyna holds a Ph.D Research Fellow position at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo (Norway), pursuing her research on mini-opera and the role and treatment of women in contemporary society. Her compositions are published by Donemus Holland. Her music is performed at festivals and concerts around the world, including the International Festival of Contemporary Music Warsaw Autumn, rainy days festival, OstravaDays Festival or Music Biennale Zagreb.
Idin Samimi Mofakham
The music of Iranian composer/performer Idin Samimi Mofakham (b. 1982) is deeply rooted in the traditional and regional music of his home country. Since 2015, he has been developing his own musical language based on non-Western tuning systems, just intonation and psychoacoustics. In 2023 he received his PhD from the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo with a research thesis on medieval tuning systems from Iran and their creative use in contemporary composition. Since 2013, Idin has been the co-founder and artistic manager of Spectro Centre for New Music. Between 2015 and 2019, he was a board member and senior curator of the Tehran Contemporary Music Festival, the only international festival focusing on contemporary and experimental music in Iran. He plays in the experimental band Spectro Duo, which he founded with his wife, composer Martyna Kosecka. Their musical focus is on drone, noise, beat phenomena, glitch, field recording transformation, microtonality and oriental modalities. Idin’s music has been performed or recorded by Orchestras and ensembles such as Norwegian Radio Orchestra (KORK), Iceland Symphony Orchestra (ISO), National Symphony Orchestra of Uzbekistan, Klangforum Wien, Microtub , POING, NyNorsk Messingkvintett, Explore Ensemble, Black Page Orchestra, AuditivVokal Dresden, Ostravská Banda, Stockholm Saxophone Quartet, Oslo Sinfonietta, Abbyss Quartet and, in Iran, most notably by Nivak Ensemble and Nilper Orchestra.
BIOGRAPHIES
Gaël Navard
Gaël Navard (b. 1982) is a professor of electroacoustic composition and research associate at the Conservatoire of Nice, as well as a lecturer in computer music at Université Côte d'Azur.
A composer, percussionist, and electronic musician specializing in experimental music and new technologies, he is currently coordinating the artistic, technological, and educational research project Elektronizza, focused on new digital instrument-making.
Anna Sowa
Anna Sowa is experimental composer and artist, mainly focused on exploring electronic music and fields of performing arts. She isinterested in the intersection of movement, gesture and theatricality in relation to electronic and instrumental music.
Born in 1987 in Limanowa (PL), currently resident in Basel. She graduated from the Bacewicz Academy of Music in Lodz (PL) with masterdegree in eurhythmics (2011) and composition (2016) where she had studied with Zygmunt Krauze. In 2021 she graduated withdistinction ’Specialised Master’s in Composition with Caspar Johannes Walter and Johannes Kreidler.
Her works have been performed at the festivals: ECLAT in Stuttgart, Warsaw Autumn (PL), Transit Festival (BE), Biennale Aktuelle Musik
in Bremen, MINU Festival in Copenhagen, Sacrum Profanum (PL), Ad Libitum (PL), Musica Polonica Nova (PL), Periferien Concert Series
(NO), Festival of Premiers in Katowice (PL),C.A.R. contemporary art ruhr in Essen (DE), Bauhaus/Dessau Kurt Weil Festival (DE), Arkady
Kubickiego at Royal Castle in Warsaw (PL), Sao Paulo Contemporary Composers Festival (BR).
Anna Sowa's works have been performed in Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Switzerland, Brazil, Israel, Italy andBelgium.
She received scholarships: KAAD Bonn (Germany) 2015, Full Scholarship from the China Government 2017 – 2018 and Witold Lutosławski scholarship (2019) founded by the Lutosławski’s family and Nicati-de Luze Foundation Scholarship 2020 and 2021 (CH).
Website: https://annasowa.eu
Inga Margret Aas
Inga is an Oslo-based composer, improviser and musician, working in the field of experimental music. As a performer you might find her playing circle bow on double bass in the improv duo Vilde&Inga, delicate noise sounds on viola da gamba in the free folk band O, engaged in a counterpoint with the classical chamber orchestra Ensemble Allegria or taking part in short term projects. Beside playing their own improvisations Vilde&Inga also commissions new works and engage in interdisciplinary collaborations. As a composer Inga believes that the musical work provides an opportunity for asking questions, listening in new ways, thinking in other trajectories and imagining something else. She believes that composition can be about positioning sounds, actions, objects, text, light and technology in relation to each other, following a musical logic (i.e. the logic of the muses). Inga is currently working on pieces for Boyes musikkompani, Musica Vitae, Jennifer Gersten and Tøyen fil og klafferi.
Hanna Mesgari
Hanna Mesgari was born in 1998 in Tehran, discovered the Târ, a traditional Iranian instrument, at the age of 13. In 2017, she entered the University of Tehran, where she earned a Bachelor's degree in Iranian music performance, deepening her mastery and understanding of this art form.
Since moving to Paris in the winter of 2023, she has developed a strong interest in electroacoustic music, beginning with a composition course with Alireza Farhang, which led her to explore this field further. In September 2023, she joined the Conservatoire de Paris (CRR de Paris), where she studies electroacoustic composition under the guidance of Paul Ramage and Jonathan Prager.
In the winter of 2024, she expanded her training by participating in a composition program with Pierre Jodlowski as part of the NIMFA composition academy.
As an artist, Hanna Mesgari has presented some of her works at concerts and festivals in Germany, Norway, and France.