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Mark Your Calendar: KLAVIERKLANG Goes Live April 21
KLAVIERKLANG, our cinematic tone poem is on its way to becoming public video art.
On April 21, it will be posted on the Music on Main's YouTube Channel – available for all to enjoy. For free. Forever.
Mark your calendar now and tell your friends – musicians, teachers, students, artists of all disciplines, music and film lovers alike. And get ready on April 21 to experience KLAVIERKLANG, a 15-minute feast for the eyes and ears.
KLAVIERKLANG follows a young girl in post-war Germany who falls in love with the piano, only to have her passion silenced by the fear of making mistakes. Years later, she finds an abandoned piano in a ghost town in British Columbia, a ruined instrument where no sound could be wrong, which sets her free to learn and experiment. That girl went on to become celebrated composer Hildegard Westerkamp.
In this experimental music video, Hildi joins forces with renowned pianist Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa. KLAVIERKLANG is edited by Michael Brockington and very proudly directed by Nettie Wilde. Cinematography by Jeremy Cox and Andriy Lyskov.
KLAVIERKLANG’s world premiere was on opening night of Music on Main’s Modulus Festival (2025) and was just screened as part of the official program of Montreal’s prestigious International Festival of Films on Art (2026).
On April 21, KLAVIERKLANG will be available to watch online. If you’re up for it, watching and sharing the film helps it reach a wider audience. Thanks, as always, for spreading the word. Your word of mouth and personal outreach is golden.
Hildegard Westerkamp at 80 at Music on Main April 21, 2026
Details here: https://www.musiconmain.ca/eve...
TUESDAY, APRIL 21, 2026
FOX CABARET | 2321 MAIN STREET | Google map
Doors at 7:00PM | Concert starts at 7:30PM
General admission seating. 19+ only.
featuring:
Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa, piano
Norman Adams, cello
Terri Hron, recorder and electronics
TICKETS | from $25
or Pay-what-you-will, student/arts worker
This special evening at the Fox Cabaret celebrates the groundbreaking work of Hildegard Westerkamp, a pioneering composer whose music transforms the act of listening into an art form.
From the urban buzz of city streets to the stillness of wilderness, Westerkamp’s compositions invite audiences to hear a new world. Drawing from the intricate relationship between living beings and sound, her music features voices of children, adults, noise, silence, electronic sounds, songs from different cultures, and more.
Award-winning performers Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa, piano; Norman Adams, cello; and Terri Hron, recorder and electronics; will bring Westerkamp’s music to life, weaving sound, space, and emotion into an unforgettable live experience.
Whether you’re a devoted contemporary music fan or simply curious to experience sound in a new way, this concert promises to be immersive, thought-provoking, and deeply moving.
KLAVIERKLANG WORLD PREMIERE SCREENING
Modulus Opening Night Concert
November 7, 2025, 7:30 pm,
Annex, 823 Seymour Street
KLAVIERKLANG, a cinematic tone poem, follows a young girl in post-war Germany who grows up loving the piano. She takes piano lessons—but instead of freeing the girl to play, the lessons make her frightened of making mistakes. The girl’s ears shut down, making music an uninspiring chore.
Later as a young woman, she travels to central British Columbia, to a ghost town and an abandoned house. There she spots a piano—perfectly ruined, a piano on which no note could be a mistake. She learns to listen again—and the girl and her music are free.
That girl went on to become celebrated soundscape composer / activist Hildegard Westerkamp. In this experimental music video, she joins forces with performer Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa, a renowned pianist who also performs Klavierklang’s text. Together, they explore the liminal space between music and sound.
In a celebration of the piano as an extraordinary instrument, Iwaasa plays both its keys and plucks its strings, as if exploring a sound sculpture. Her non-linear spoken narrative interacts with intricate soundscapes evoking Westerkamp’s childhood in Germany. These are layered and digitally manipulated with Iwaasa’s recorded reflections on the piano, “this creature, this instrument, that you think you know.”
Filmmakers and installation artists Nettie Wild (director) and Michael Brockington (editor) capture this performance, interpreting the composition’s drama with lyrical imagery coloured and shaped by the music itself.
Duration 17 mins 35 secs including credits
[Film Still from KLAVIERKLANG
Jeremy Cox, Cinematographer; Michael Brockington, editor]
News Archive
Paris, March 5, 2016: Multi-channel presentation of Into the Labyrinth and Talking Rain during the annual festival PRESENCES électronique
Université Paris 8, March 22, 2016: Multi-channel presentation of Für Dich - For You at Séminaire International Espace-son
Hildegard Westerkamp: A Pioneer in Sound Art and Perceptual Appreciation by Sophie Arkette
Cricket Voice and Whisper Study played at the Helicotrema Festival in Rome, Italy, April 18 - 21, 2013.
Playing with the Voice and Blurring Boundaries in Hildegard Westerkamp’s “MotherVoiceTalk” by Alexa Woloshyn
In MotherVoiceTalk (2008), Hildegard Westerkamp uses archival and field recordings of conversations, reflections and nature. The work negotiates boundaries that are often blurred in the electroacoustic medium: public and private, self and other, time and space. For details, go here:
Concert, Portland Oregon, March 26, 2012. Details here
Harbour Symphony at ohrenhoch at the Noise Shop, in Berlin, Sunday, 9 and 16 October 2011, 2pm - 9pm. For details, go here
Shattering the Silence 2011
Breaking the Sound Barrier: Electroacoustic Focus Jan 19-23 2011 Acadia University, Wolfville, Nova Scotia
Für Dich - For You (2005)
has now been published along with compositions by Nicolas Bernier * Darren Copeland * Francis Dhomont * Louis Dufort * Gilles Gobeil * Robert Normandeau * Barry Truax on trans_canada, a DVD by empreintesDIGITALes. More imformation
An interview with Hildegard in a new book by Paul Steenhuisen
Sonic Mosaics - conversations with composers
In Sonic Mosaics - conversations with composers author Paul Steenhuisen offers readers insight into the creative process and suggests ways of listening to and interpreting new music. Steenhuisen talks one-to-one with thirty-two of his contemporaries with a colleague's candor, sympathy and expertise.
The University of Alberta Press, January 2009 For more details and to order: The University of Alberta Press
Hildegard Westerkamp presenting at:
The 8th SCHOOL OF SOUND International Symposium
15 - 18 April 2009
Purcell Room - Queen Elizabeth Hall
Southbank Centre, London SE1
and at Goldsmiths, University of London:
20 April 2009, 14:00 - 17:00
Art and Soundscapes
Composer and acoustic ecologist Hildegard Westerkamp will present and discuss her compositional work.
For more details see the calendar: http://www.gold.ac.uk/calendar/?id=2751
World Premiere of New Compositions:
Seascapes
By Hildegard Westerkamp
a newly created sound environment for Audrey Capel Doray's Electronic Seascape (mixed media sculpture)
Shown as part of Idyll: Three Exhibitions
16 May - 10 August, 2008
Opening reception Saturday 31 May, 1 to 3 pm
The Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery
The University of British Columbia
MotherVoiceTalk
By Hildegard Westerkamp
performed in the context of Vancouver New Music's Marginalia, re-visioning Roy Kiyooka
20 - 23 February 2008 | 8pm
Vancouver East Cultural Centre, 1895 Venables Street
Winner of the 2008 Alcan Performing Arts Award, Marginalia wishes to create an opportunity for the public to consider aspects and values of art making, Kiyooka's multiple practice and the inspiration stemming from its richness and diversity. The idea of referring to different works by Kiyooka, consists then of composing a form in which these layered differences can become a practical piece. Simultaneity, polycentricity and overlapping points of view will be the characteristic elements of Marginalia. BC composers Jocelyn Morlock, Stefan Smulovitz, Stefan Udell and Hildegard Westerkamp will be the commissioned artists who will be writing the four new works within a strong relationship to Kiyooka's works. The new compositions will take cues and motivations from specific characters, ideas and passages in Kiyooka's works and will become an organic stimulus for an inner dialogue between Kiyooka, his displayed works, the composers, the performing musicians and the audience. Like a musical palimpsest the dialogue among the various components of Marginalia will not be just an echo of Kiyooka's work, not simply a response; it will have a life of its own in the interactive relation between the composers and Kiyooka, his cross-cultural and polymorphic artistic approach and his inner dialogue and research.
News from the Film World
Excerpts of Hildegard Westerkamp's compositions have been included in the soundtrack of Elephant and Last Days, two recent films by Gus van Sant.
CDs of both soundtracks have been released in France by mk2 music.