Jagoda Szmytka
(*1982)
Composer. Szmytka’s understanding of music is extensive and verges beyond the sense of hearing towards those of sight and touch, while also utilizing “unwanted” sounds: humming and noise. Szmytka stresses the physical aspect of sound resulting from a specific arrangement of the musician’s body and their instrument. The coarse and rough tones of Szmytka’s compositions is nearly palpable, if not painful, to the listener. Her music is also characterised by its communicative clarity: to Szmytka, creating music entails cooperation between the composer and the musician, as well as an interaction between its performers, and a sense of dissolution in the rush of present-day stimuli at the intersection of the real and the virtual. (KS)