Lab 1: Resina | Speechless

She begins her concerts with vibrating bow movements on the strings of the cello – the instrument she studied playing at the Academy of Music in Gdańsk and which is still the heart of her musical path. Moment to moment, from note to note, the sounds transform into looped recordings combined with whispers, beats or vocals. Seemingly random phrases create a musical landscape with a clear history. This is Resina – one of the most intriguing Polish artists of the live electronics genre. She returns to our Philharmonic with her latest project. She again shows her hallmark – she connects while dividing and destroys while building.


This time, she invited the Chamber Choir 441 – an ensemble appreciated worldwide, passionate about discovering new choral music possibilities. Hertzs are famous for their versatility. They can perform Mozart's or Moniuszko’s music with expertise. Still, they also find themselves in contemporary performances, for example, by co-creating with Sven Helbig the electronic-visual performance I Eat The Sun And Drink The Rain and with the Mexican artist Tania Candiani her exhibition Language as a sound in which the choir improvised, imitating the sounds of the sea and the port. In 2019, the band joined forces and voices with Bobby McFerrin to perform the so-called Circlesongs, i.e. songs created and modified live, in front of the audience.

In Szczecin, we had the opportunity to listen to Resina – or immerse ourselves in her musical and visual performances – several times. Each of us can also listen to her music in the Netflix production ‘Two Popes’. What will she surprise us with this time? Still, using the cello possibilities in combination with electronics or percussion, I will focus more on the vocal layer, treating the human voice primarily as an instrument, while testing what the word "human" actually means in music created deliberately without the use of speech.