Introducing Saga Duo

Olga Siemienczuk and I founded Saga Duo, a contemporary music vocal ensemble that focuses on working with young composers, exploring the voice through improvisation, and discovering the many colors available to us as vocalists.

Last month, we received the Culture Moves Europe Grant from Creative Europe to attend the impuls 9th Festival for Contemporary Music in Graz, Austria. From the 17th to the 28th of February, we immersed ourselves in contemporary music, working with composers, teachers, and other musicians.

In the first week, Olga and I worked intensely with Sarah Maria Sun in the Voice Studio, both as a duo and as soloists. Sarah is a renowned contemporary music soprano who has performed on stages like the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Biennale Paris, Oper Leipzig, and Opéra Comique Paris. Besides performing on the big stages, Sarah also sings solo repertoire, sang in the Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart from 2007 - 2014, and performs with chamber groups and duos regularly.

In addition to performing, Sarah is also a sought-after professor of Contemporary Music at the Musikhochschule Basel and regularly gives masterclasses. I have been lucky enough to work with her several times at the Cage Academy in Halberstadt and was excited to develop Saga Duo with her during Impuls.

Despite my voice being on the fritz after being ill with the flu the week before, we were able to uncover new and interesting colors with Sarah, particularly in our improvisations and in Sarah Grace Graves’ piece, Both/And. Sarah is also a trove of information and gave us many recommendations on pieces to look at and tips on how to continue to develop our new duo.

Sarah helped us find exercises to delve into the essence of our improvisation and begin to understand who Saga Duo is. We worked on combining body improv with vocal improv and tried many different iterations to give ourselves options when in concert. After working with Sarah, we spent time improvising in small ways - starting from one pitch and very slightly changing it, working with different vowels, and trying to complete each other’s simple melodies. We performed two very different improvisations while at impuls, both of which gave us new ideas and directions to explore.

I met Sarah Grace Graves at the Darmstadt Summer Course in 2023 and fell in love with her work after hearing her perform one of her own pieces. She is a singer, composer, and performing artist whose pieces dive into the heart of the voice. They range from exploring different types of overtone singing (night vision, 2019) to exploring the different colors of head voice, chest voice, and voiced inhale (Both/And, 2018).

As classically trained singers, our teachers beat the concept of mixing into our heads - or blending the chest voice (lower voice) and head voice (upper voice). We work for years to create a single sound from the lowest part of our register all the way up to the very top. Both/And challenges us to separate the chest and head voice and make the difference clear, all while staying on one note. Although Olga and I are both high sopranos, our voices have distinctly different colors and breaks. We worked with Sarah Maria Sun to find our individual chest voice and then to find a way to match our colors. Over the course of the week, our understanding of the piece and our voices grew and gave our performance at the end more depth.

While at impuls, Saga Duo performed in two concerts. First, we performed in one of the Minute Concerts. Along with a solo flutist, a pianist who performed on a toy piano, and a bass and flute duo, we performed Both/And and an improvisation in a design gallery. We were given complete freedom to choose where to perform and tried to use as much of the space as we could.

A few days later, we performed in the Vocal Studio concert on 24 February. We again performed Both/And, and on Sarah’s suggestion, performed it facing directly outward, using subtle movements to cue each other. We finished the concert with another improvisation.

After the concerts, Olga and I had a debrief and realized that for the improvisations, we need to create stricter rules so they feel more defined. We spent the next few days working on simple improvisation exercises to give ourselves more defined tools to create exciting shapes within the improvs.

After our concert, the vocal studio finished, but Olga and I stayed in Graz to take part in Carola Bauckholt’s Instant Composing. Carola is a German composer who examines “the phenomena of perception and understanding.” Many of her works incorporate noise, extended techniques, and everyday objects to create a unique sound.

We joined her instant composing day, not quite knowing what to expect. When we arrived, there were about 40 of us - 3 singers and 37 composers. The goal of the day was to find a location, ideally outdoors, and create a 3-5 minute piece under the title “Both” using whatever we wanted to create sounds. Carola had us split into teams of 3, with the only rule being that we had to work with people we didn’t already know.

Olga and I both happened to join all-female teams. After we got to know each other, we went out in search of a location for our pieces.

We spent a few hours devising and practicing our pieces in our groups before returning. Then, the whole class plus another 30 or so audience members went on an outdoor walk, stopping to experience each piece along the way.

For Olga and I, it was fascinating to be part of the creation of a piece. As singers, we usually receive already finished pieces. Although we might have the opportunity to work with the composer and give some input, we are rarely there from the beginning of the piece. We both enjoyed having the chance to see what it’s like on the other side - and to get an insight into how composers think. Over the next few days, we brought some of that experience into our improvisation, giving it a new facet.

After Instant Composing, Olga and I spent the next few days working on Saga Duo. We tackled everything from how to found a music ensemble in Germany to planning our next concert. Besides the admin side, we also set aside time each day to work on our improvisation.

After the final concert and goodbyes, we returned by train to Berlin and Stralsund. Since impuls, we have met once a week to continue planning Saga Duo, wading through the administrative Amtsprache, and to check in with each other. impuls has fired us up and we’ve already got some exciting plans afoot. Stay tuned!

Olga and I would like to thank the Culture Moves Europe Grant for providing the funding to allow us to experience impuls.