Anna Zaradny | Lab 4: El-sono

Anna Zaradny, born in Szczecin, belongs to a group of such versatile contemporary artists that it is virtually impossible to mention all the fields of her activity in one breath: composer, improviser, visual and sound artist, author of sound installations, animator of music festivals.

She studied conducting and theory of music in the Szczecin branch of the Academy of Music in Poznań. Since the 1990s she has performed with a variety of ensembles, moving through the entire spectrum of genres: from contemporary music through free-jazz, punk rock and ska-punk to noise-rock. From 2002-2009 she was co-organizer with Robert Piotrowicz of the experimental and improvised music festival Musica Genera.

The instruments on which Zaradny creates and improves include the saxophone and the laptop, which in itself shows the revolution that contemporary composition has recently undergone. The artist draws heavily on the latest technologies and their ability to create and manipulate sound. An important element here is also the process of improvisation, focused on the experiment and the use of atypical articulatory means and techniques.

Zaradny's work is not limited to music in the traditional sense, but rather to the art of sound (sound art). Hence the composer also engages in interdisciplinary projects that go beyond contemporary music, and closer to the visual arts – as she claims, she does not want to separate music from art.