The sixth “Festival for Automated and Contemporary Organ Music,” AGGREGATE, is taking place in collaboration with Konzerthaus Berlin  for the first time. For this event, the Jehmlich organ in the Great Hall has been converted into a so called Hyper Organ —for the first time, the instrument can be controlled directly by computer via a MIDI interface.

The duo gamut inc, founded by Marion Wörle and Maciej Śledziecki, is the resident ensemble for our organ series this season and will perform the opening concert on September 30. We asked  Marion Wörle a couple of questions.

gamut inc. has been around ever since Maciej Śledziecki and I started working with automated machines. We chose the name in 2013 because “gamut” refers to the spectrum of all colors that a device can reproduce: Depending on the project, very different teams are part of gamut inc.

I come more from the world of electronic music, while Maciej studied guitar and composition. When we discovered the computer-controlled organ, that was the moment we realized these two worlds simply came together in perfect harmony. We first encountered a computer-controlled organ in 2009 at the Kunststation Sankt Peter in Cologne.

Every organ is one of a kind and is shaped by the architecture in which it stands. Each one has its own unique sound aesthetic, not least in terms of room acoustics, reverberation times, and so on. For us, this is an inexhaustible musical realm that never ceases to inspire us. That’s why we’ve stuck with organs. Almost every organ we program is being controlled by a computer for the first time, because the path to that point isn’t easy: You need access to the locations where the instruments are housed, and so far, relatively few people are familiar with the necessary technology. And, of course, that technology has to be available on-site.

Some organs have had MIDI access since the 1980s. It was set up back then to make it easier to tune organs without sitting at the console or to play back musical pieces. But as far as we know, no one actually used it. However, we’ve already been able to access quite a few organs this way. Over the past 15 years, many modern, faster, network-connected systems have been introduced. We initiated the possibility of playing the Jehmlich organ at the Konzerthaus as a Hyper Organ through an extended process of communication, and the organ-building firm sinua from Düsseldorf created the technical infrastructure for it.

Black Square is our new modular organ, which we developed last year in collaboration with the Belgian organ builder Decap. It allows you to control the attack and decay of the sound—something that isn’t normally possible on an organ. It features valves that let you control the air pressure for each pipe individually in a matter of milliseconds. This opens up entirely new sonic possibilities. At the festival, we’ll be combining Black Square with the Jehmlich organ as a kind of remote organ.

Exactly, nothing comes out of the speakers. It’s always fascinating to hear thousands of pipes. It’s a completely different experience from sound systems: it’s all air being moved by the pipes, and the sound truly fills every corner. What most closely connects our concerts to a church service is that they, too, have a kind of ritualistic character: you walk into this space, close the door, find yourself somewhere else entirely, and become completely immersed. That’s the most wonderful state I could wish for the audience.

Our vision of music doesn’t draw on the church repertoire, so we already have a different audience than classical organ concerts. It’s very diverse. For our projects, we also bring artists to gamut inc who don’t come from an organ background but who work with the instrument here—adapting pieces or writing for it and treating it like a synthesizer. They, too, attract a diverse audience.