echtzeit@30: Q&A with Mia Dyberg

Mia Dyberg. (c) Cristina Marx/Photomusix

Explore Mia Dyberg’s site here . Recent releases include Wide Pointillism with Matthias Müller and Horizons with Kamilla Kovacs and Asger Thomsen.

What is echtzeitmusik to you? Is what might be considered echtzeitmusik connected through any approach, process, or sound result?

I don't think I can answer what echtzeitmusik is, I alone cannot determine this, but it could be looked as more of a collective experience. Besides, my answer would already be in the past. And present time music is something that happens the moment you listen to it?

One thing I can say is that the echtzeit calendar has been a great tool for me to find out if my colleagues were playing concerts I could go and hear and thereby be part of the audience-berlin-community. Or to tell about my gigs where my colleagues, or possible fans could see that I was playing. I am very grateful for this calendar!

It is a challenge to say something general about what echtzeit music is. But if I speak from the echtzeit calendar, you can think of it as an umbrella that collects all concerts in Berlin where some musicians associated with the scene have submitted their concerts.

Now, if I just try to improvise my answer, some different groupings/divisions pop up. But groupings that can be very different but still live under the same roof: the calendar.

Minimalist improv, experimental perfromatic, dadaist improv, fff free-jazz, composed free-jazz with improv elements and much more. Very different from each other. I guess the point is visibility and a way to meet other people. But inside the different groups you could have different approaches, collective improvisation or individual expression for example. But I guess there is a collective interest and curiosity that I cherish.

I like to relate it to the Hannah Arendt plurality-concept: that we become something in the eyes of each other. The Echtzeit audience and musicians exist in the eyes of each other. Being together in the same room and being something for other people has an even greater weight in these times of isolation and increasingly more people feeling alone.

Is there something material - like demographics, affordability, or cultural practices - about Berlin that you think makes such a scene possible?

Yes affordable prices. And the audience seems somehow more open and curious about the improvisation that is going on at the moment. The audience here is used to easy access to improvisation and seems educated in listening curiously.

In what ways do you think the scene has changed since your involvement and what might have caused these changes?

Joining Klub Demboh in 2017 and performing regularly every monday has somehow give me some roots and a stronger audience-connection.

In what ways has the scene changed you and your musical practice?

Now after 5,5 years in berlin I’m aiming even more for pure/precise improvisation.

Are there any recordings, labels, venues, musicians, or other participants you would like to shout out for cultivating the scene, or that you feel are essential to it? And is there a recording of you or your work that you feel is particularly representative of the scene?

Wide Pointilisme Matthias Müller/Mia Dyberg

What did you find in Berlin that you did not find in Denmark?

Space

- Interview conducted by Keith Prosk