RAGE Thormbones

Description

RAGE Thormbones
In collaboration with Ensems 48th International Festival of Contemporary Music
VANG VIII. Avant-garde Music

In its eighth season, VANG presents a journey through music that transforms the perception of time and sound. Each concert constructs a space where time and sound expand, thicken, or become transparent.

RAGE Thormbones
Low-Frequency Duo
In collaboration with Ensems 48 International Festival of Contemporary Music
September 25, 2026

RAGE Thormbones will present two sets as part of the concert organized by VANG in collaboration with the ENSEMS festival in Valencia.

The duo—comprised of Weston Olencki and Mattie Barbier—will build their first set on material from their 2024 album, breaking ships (Tripticks Tapes), recorded entirely with two trombones despite the instrument's impressive sonic range. Through extended techniques and processing, the duo transforms the trombone into an unrecognizable source of textures, oscillating between dense soundscapes and drones reminiscent of vintage speakers with nearly ruptured diaphragms. The second set will be a world premiere. There will be no break between the two sets.

Their work proposes to move brass instruments beyond traditional virtuosity, revealing their rawest nature—the instrument as an air compressor, as a body that breathes and pushes. Physical synthesis conceived first for the loudspeaker and then returned to the acoustic world.

RAGE Thormbones is a low-frequency duo that develops its sonic practice at the point of friction between experimentation, risk, and the exploration of the unknown. The duo abandoned conventional performance paths long ago to dedicate themselves, since 2014, to investigating the physical and material possibilities of sound.

RAGE has collaborated with artists such as Clara Iannotta, Kevin Drumm, Sarah Davachi, Michelle Lou, and Scott Walker. Their work has been presented in diverse venues such as the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Darmstadt Summer Courses, the Borealis Festival, the Donaueschinger Musiktage, and the ISSUE Project Room, as well as in alternative and intimate spaces—basements, living rooms, warehouses, and crypts—where the sonic experience takes on a more direct and physical dimension.

More recently, the duo has performed as soloists with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra and the SWR Symphonieorchester, solidifying a trajectory that places the trombone in a hybrid territory between experimental composition, improvisation, and acoustic research.