Paul Pankert (1965, Belgium) studied violin at the conservatories of Liège (B), Düsseldorf (D) and Maastricht (NL). As a violin soloist in the Dutch contemporary music ensemble Ensemble’88 he analysed and played hundreds of compositions including numerous first performances. He was able to explore just as many composition styles. He teaches violin and chamber music at the East-Belgian Music Academy. Since June 2014 he has served as the artistic director of Ensemble’88. In 2018 he founded with other composers the East-Belgian based Kl-Ex Ensemble.

His first composition Spaltung (division, splitting) for two violins and harpsichord based on a symmetric quartertone-construction around the tone A has been awarded with the Prix de composition de l’Académie Royale de Belgique in 2008. Since then he realized many compositions – among which commissions by the Orgelpark Amsterdam, the Ars Musica Festival in Brussels, the Orchestre Sturm und Klang, the Quatuor MP4, the Festival van Vlaanderen (B-Classic), the Ostbelgienfestival and Flagey in Brussels. He was awarded the title of Künstler Ostbelgiens in 2017. The CD/LP production “connected” in 2020 marks the conclusion of this period.

About the work

Breaking news for cello & live electronics deals with the flood of news that hits us every day, especially in times of pandemics, and which is often commented on or refuted by new reports before we can even think about it…Throughout the entire piece, an automatic voice (e.g. google text to speech) reads current news from the day of the performance. News websites in different languages are selected for this purpose.This voice is mixed with the cello sound via a vocoder.