Elo Masing
March 28, 1984Member of the Estonian Composers’ Union since 2015
‘On the one hand, Elo Masing’s music focuses on the physical side of instrumental performance; on the other, precisely through [the use of] sheer physicality, she manages to reach entirely new and profound mental/numinous spaces.’ (Saale Kareda in Teater.Muusika.Kino, February 2023)
Elo Masing is a composer/free improviser/sound artist of Estonian origin, currently based in Berlin, Germany. Her music has been performed internationally by renowned soloists and ensembles, such as Estonian National Symphony Orchestra (EE), Ensemble L'Itinéraire (FR), Ensemble Adapter (DE), Ensemble Fractales (BE), Ensemble mmm... (Japan), Ensemble Synaesthesis (LT), Ian Pace (UK), James Aylward (AU/NL), and many others, and has appeared on labels such as Squeaky Kate, squib-box, CRAM, Creative Sources, and 577 Records. In 2015, she was awarded a PhD from the Royal Academy of Music, London, where she explored the physicality of instrumental performance in chamber music, and with support from the Academy, received private tuition from Rebecca Saunders in Berlin.
With composer-improviser Dave Maric, she forms the free improvisation duo Vicious Circus, whose debut album was released to critical acclaim in 2014 (including a review on BBC Radio 3), followed in 2015 by the innovative "Hand Written Tweets", recorded live in a flying saucer on the roof of Matt’s Gallery, London onto 12 unique wax cylinders.
Masing is member of the Berlin-based composers’-improvisers’ ensemble Reanimation Orchestra and works regularly with musicians on the Berlin scene, such as Jack Adler-McKean, Ingólfur Vilhjálmsson, Hui-Chun Lin, Sabine Vogel, Vincent Laju, Guilherme Rodrigues, and many others, as well as dancers, such as Meltem Nil and Siri Salminen. She also plays and arranges music in the experimental rock band Golden Dark.
Masing’s current compositional as well as performance practice engages deeply with post-humanist theory, drawing inspiration from thinkers such as Donna Haraway, Vinciane Despret, Emanuele Coccia, and others. For the last 13 years, she has been engaged in an ongoing artistic-ecological experiment, sharing her living space with birds, with the experiment culminating in the interspecies collaboration albums "Music for Birds" (2018, CRAM) and "Music with Birds" (2022, Creative Sources).
Catalogue of compositions: Estonian Music Information Centre
Selected compositions (audio): Soundcloud
Music with Birds: Bandcamp | Kakaduu
Hand Written Tweets (making of): Vimeo
Zeilen (with Vincent Laju): Vincent Laju
Buratino Quintet (live at Kühlspot): Youtube