M.Bassy is realizing the interdisciplinary music series »Composing While Black. Afrodiasporic New Music Today«, co-curated by the musicologist, author and saxophonist Harald Kisiedu.
 
The series at M.Bassy allows the audience to gain new perspectives on Afrodiasporic composers not only as participatory creative actors, but also as social figures within widely ramified, complexly networked communities in the ever-expanding universe of musical possibilities. In four hybrid event formats, Harald Kisiedu will enter a personal dialog with each guest. In music talks, joint listening sessions and experimental live music performances, we will develop new perceptions on a multisensory of Afrodiasporic New Music as an intercultural, cross-generational space of innovation, contemporary discourse and identity building.
 
For the fourth event, we are delighted to welcome Nigerian composer and musician Charles Uzor from St. Gallen, Switzerland for a Music Talk & Listening Session with Harald Kisiedu at M.Bassy. 
 

Charles Uzor

Charles Uzor was born in Nigeria in 1961. He came to Switzerland during the Biafran War. After graduating from school in St. Gallen, he studied oboe and composition in Rome, Bern, and Zurich. From 1986 to 1990, he received a fellowship from the Royal Academy of Music in London for postgraduate studies with Gordon Hunt, graduating in 1990 with a recital diploma and a master's degree in composition with Hans Werner Henze. He completed his dissertation on melody and inner time consciousness in 2005 at Goldsmiths, University of London. Uzor's oeuvre includes operas, dance, orchestral, and choral works, but his main interest lies in works for small ensembles and voice. In connection with electronics, Uzor deals with the phenomena of identity and deception. In Nri/mimicri, birdsong is deepened by 8 octaves and imitated by the ondes Martenot. Between 2016 and 2023, he composes sweet amygdala, Hier in diesem zierl’chen Prunkgebäude after Robert Walser, Mothertongue, and the trilogy George Floyd in memoriam (8’46’’/ Bodycam exhibit 3/ Katharsis Kalkül), as well as merrusch after Astrid Kaminski and the orchestral work Breaking of the Vessels. The formations Ptyx, OENM, KammarensembleN, London Sinfonietta, BBC SSO, LFCO, ICE, Ekmeles, Amaltea, Duo Aventure, the SWR Vocal Ensemble, the Bavarian Radio Choir, and the conductors Rupert Huber, Christian Karlsen, Ivan Volkov, and Mariano Chiacchiarini have performed Uzor's work. At the end of 2024, Charles Uzor takes part in the George Lewis Berlin Symposium always, already there. POLITICAL, Uzor's fourth Neos CD, is released in 2025. Uzor is a fellow of the Civitella Ranieri Foundation and heads the forum contrapunkt.new art music. Since 2015, he has been working on the opera Leopold II. exhibit.

Dr. Harald Kisiedu

Harald Kisiedu is a historical musicologist, author, and saxophonist who received his PhD in historical musicology from Columbia University. He also holds a graduate degree in political science and German studies from the University of Hamburg. His research interests include Afrodiasporic classical and experimental music, jazz as a global phenomenon, improvisation, music and politics, and Wagner. Kisiedu’s writings have appeared in the WIRE, Grove Dictionary of American Music, Critical Studies in Improvisation, Journal der Künste, and Darmstädter Beiträge zur Jazzforschung a. o. He has taught at the University of Music and Theatre “Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy” Leipzig, the Musik-Akademie Basel, the University of Applied Sciences Osnabrück, the British and Irish Modern Music Institute Hamburg, and the Darmstadt Summer Course. As a saxophonist, Kisiedu has performed with Branford Marsalis, George Lewis, Henry Grimes, Jean-Paul Bourelly, and Hannibal Lokumbe and has recorded with the New York-based ensemble Burnt Sugar, the Arkestra Chamber led by Greg Tate. He is the author of European Echoes: Jazz Experimentalism in Germany, 1950-1975 (Wolke) and the co-editor (with George E. Lewis) of Composing While Black: Afrodiasporische Neue Musik Heute/Afrodiasporic New Music Today (also Wolke Verlag).
 

20.12.2025, 7 PM: Music Talk & Listening Session with Charles Uzor & Harald Kisiedu, moderated by Jumoke Olusanmi

Limited seats available. Please reserve via: reservation@m-bassy.org
 
The project series is funded by the Musikstadtfonds of the Ministry of Culture and Media Hamburg as well as by the GVL.