Flying high in a high-rise building

Probably the most famous haunted house in Bern is on Junkerngasse, while the largest is on the outskirts of the city. Sounds can be heard in its stairwell. The source of the music remains invisible. Individual light projections illuminate the white of the bare walls. Listeners appear - and disappear again. The scenery seems surreal. What sounds like the plot for a ghost movie is in fact the eagerly awaited "flash! (back and forward)" event organized by the pakt bern network in the former Swisscom building. The building has been empty for three years. Now, at the beginning of December, it came back to life for the first time. At least for one evening. For five hours, members of pakt bern and invited musicians performed in selected rooms of the 19-storey high-rise. One of them: the claustrophobic stairwell. Students from Bern University of the Arts (HKB) performed solo works by Iannis Xenakis, the mathematician among composers.

The 200 visitors - more were not allowed into the building at Ostermundigenstrasse 93 for security reasons despite the large crowds - were treated to their first listening experience as soon as they entered, Ending II. This fascinatingly iridescent, viscous installation, which plays with a multitude of loudspeakers distributed throughout the room, was created by students of the SoundArts course at the HKB on the basis of a composition by Tobias Reber. In the midst of the snow flurries, 19 floors higher, on the roof of the 72-meter-high building, singer Franziska Baumann sent a sublime cloud of sound merging voice and electronics out into the icy cold night. Her command center was a gondola, stolen from a ski resort, which added to the audiovisual magic of the performance.
 

A veritable panopticon of contemporary music unfolded during the five-hour event, demonstrating the pleasing breadth of the pakt bern network, which was founded two years ago to pool forces in the field of new and experimental music. Almost 60 exponents, all of whom have a connection to the city of Bern, have come together in the association, which is organized on a grassroots democratic basis: Composers, performers, concert organizers, mixed generations and genres. In the network, the classical avant-garde of today's septuagenarians meets the young and wild, improvised meets fully composed, electronic meets instrumental music. "The history of pakt bern is long, but the desire is clear: to think and create music outside the box. The network brings together those who are curious and keen to experiment," says Christian Pauli, board member of pakt bern, an association without a president, nota bene.

The "neue musik netzwerk", as pakt bern also calls itself, caused a sensation back in 2016. A "neue musik battle" was organized in the Sternensaal in Bümpliz, based on the boxing and wrestling matches that are regularly held in this traditional hall. Instead of fighting with fists, the participants attacked each other with sounds. For the first time, a broad audience gained an insight into the wide-ranging spectrum of the club, which brings together all the big names in Bern's new music scene. Even after its short existence, the association has made it a tradition to organize a major event at the end of each year. After the boxing ring, it was now the turn of a high-rise building as the venue.
 

An almost endless glissando, wrapped in the most beautiful mixture of frequencies, can be heard on the seventh floor of the former Swisscom building. This comes from the composition Chronos-Kairos by the Bernese old master Peter Streiff, produced in 1972 on one of the first portable desktop synthesizers, the "Synthi VCS3". The sensual sound journey lasts 25 minutes and puts the musical perception of time into a whole new perspective. When asked about the pakt bern network, Streiff welcomes the solidarity created by this association. "Despite the wide artistic and aesthetic range, there is enough room for individual orientation," he adds as a characteristic feature of the association.

There was a lot to discover at "flash! (back and forward)". Improvised minimalist saxophone sounds by the Konus Quartet, powerful, instrumentally produced "industrial sound" by Hamburg's Felix Kubin, played live to unknown industrial and corporate training films from the period between 1960 and 1990, or a meditative sound massage by Maru Rieben, which you could enjoy as a single guest in a passenger elevator, complemented each other to form a harmonious whole at this feast for the senses. However, no one who wants to immerse themselves in the sounds of Bern's dynamic music scene will have to wait a year. The Soap-Box concert series launched by pakt bern takes place approximately once a month at the Progr. These are parlor concerts between improvised, electronic and installation music.