With Protest of the Physical, lovemusic presents a performance in four tableaux. The musicians' bodies are not simply vehicles for instrumental performance, but are fully engaged in expressive physicality. They are both intrinsically linked to the music and its physical demands, and serve as a foil for the way gesture shapes our listening experience.

By integrating artists from different disciplines into the creative process, rethinking the role of the audience and reclaiming the body as a powerful communication tool, the collective's performers boldly assert their singular identity as performers.

Notes on intent
In Protest of the Physical, lovemusic continues its in-depth exploration of the body as an essential source and vector of musical creation. This new project includes three new works created for the collective's musicians, in which gesture, sound and perception intertwine to offer an embodied experience.

hands, drum - three bones - 12 min. (2025)
Nik Bohnenberger
for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, electric guitar, electronics, video and audience participation
Premiere, commissioned by Philharmonie Luxembourg for lovemusic

In hands, drum - three bones, it's the audience that physically engages with the music. Nik Bohnenberger proposes music in dialogue with an immersive device in which the audience is invited to act physically on its own listening. By covering or orienting their ears, spectators influence their perception of sound, revealing the body's sonic activity. The ear is no longer a simple receiver, but a vibrant actor in the musical experience.

In die Ferne, dem Berg zu - 15 min. (2025)
Annette Schlünz,
Anne-Hélène Kotoujansky
for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, electric guitar and choreographed gestures
Creation, Commissioned by lovemusic

In die Ferne, dem Berg zu is the result of a collaboration, proposed by lovemusic, between composer Annette Schlünz and choreographer Anne-Hélène Kotoujansky. Une mer intérieure, des corps à la dérive (An inland sea, drifting bodies): this new piece delves into the space of pain, loss and the unspoken, questioning what is produced by a body in tension, silence and resistance. The piece takes shape through a process of dialogue, exchange of gesture and sound. The lovemusic musicians become actors in a common movement, each physically engaged in the space, alone or in a group. Visible sounds, silent gestures, sound matter and physical matter intertwine. Stones are manipulated, moved around: symbols of what weighs down, of what remains. Marks on the ground, like so many landmarks to avoid getting lost. In die Ferne, dem Berg zu traverses states of flight, separation and estrangement. What we hold dear eventually slips away. The light recedes. The body takes it in. But it is precisely in this disorientation that language can emerge. Not the language of words, but the language of doing: a tension, a breath, a friction. A resonance. An attempt at transformation.

Seed - 15 min. (2025)
Bethany Younge
for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, electric guitar
Creation, Commissioned by lovemusic

In Bethany Younge's Seed, movement takes center stage in a fully choreographed score. The performers mime their instruments through a series of intense, offbeat gestures, weaving a network of physical and sonic presences where memory and body transformation are at work. It's only after this gestural journey that they actually play their instruments: a pivotal moment when sound and body identity crystallize.

[iɱˈfɛrno] (from: MAPPA) Contrapasso I - V (to Wladimir Poutine / Sergej Lawrow)
Helmut Oehring - 15 min. (2022)
for bass flute, bass clarinet, cello, electric guitar and tape
Commissioned by lovemusic and the klangwerkstatt festival (Berlin)

Written for lovemusic in 2022 for their Talking Music project, [iɱˈfɛrno] (from: MAPPA) Contrapasso I - V by Helmut Oehring is inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy, and more specifically by the concept of Contrapasso, where each sin is punished in an echo of its nature. This five-part piece alternates instrumental passages with sequences in which the four musicians perform signed gestures, a poetic sign language developed by the composer, for whom sign language is his mother tongue. The work questions the political, emotional and symbolic dimensions of language, body and sound in a contemporary context marked by war.