Upstream is a concert series that brings new, forward-looking and uncompromising music and performance from the international scene to Hamburg. In reference to the metaphor "Upstream" ("stromaufwärts"), which refers to proximity to the source, and to salmon swimming upstream to migrate, the series focuses on navigating the latest currents and addressing contemporary issues in art and music.
For this year’s blurred edges, Upstream returns to the unique MS Stubnitz on 15th June for an evening titled WITHIN. Featuring Denmark-based Brazilian composer and vocalist Marcela Lucatelli and British electronic musician and composer MICHAELBRAILEY, the evening explores the idea of forces which shape us from the inside: the subconscious, the hidden, the private, the intimate.
Das Konzert ist Teil von blurred edges–Festival für aktuelle Musik in Hamburg, 31.5. - 29.06.2025. blurred edges 2025 wird gefördert von der Behörde für Kultur und Medien der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg und der Hamburgischen Kulturstiftung.
🎟️ blurred edges festival ticket holders do not need a single ticket, all others: get your ticket at Stubnitz ticket shop.
Curated by:
Marcela Lucatelli
Marcela Lucatelli is hailed as one of the most innovative vocalists and composers of her generation. Born in Brazil and based in Denmark, Lucatelli has earned international recognition for her extremely original, sensuous and politically charged performance works. A critic once referred to her works as ‘scores for the limits of body and voice’. Another critic described her inimitable vocal performances as ‘inhuman human noise’. In 2021, Marcela Lucatelli held a seminar at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts on the topic of ‘Decolonizing the Voice of Sublimity’. In simple terms: stripping away the pretense. And, in her work, Lucatelli does exactly that. For Lucatelli, a stage is not merely a place for musical performance, but rather an arena in which the struggle for art, humor, and even life itself takes place.
Lucatelli’s works are performed by vocal and instrumental elite groups such as the Danish National Symphony Orchestra (DK), Danish National Vocal Ensemble (DK) and Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart (DE), amongst many others. She won the Danish Music Awards’ 2023 prize for Vocal Jazz Release of the Year with her album Necromancy, which shows that vocal jazz has many faces – and does not necessarily belong only to the soft end of the spectrum. Lucatelli was one of the recipients of the Danish Composers’ Society’s New Ways grant in 2023 for artistic research, where she examines how alternative, decolonial compositional strategies can open our perception towards a new, intercultural epistemic experience within new music. Lucatelli has taught and lectured at Copenhagen University, The Royal Danish Academy of Music, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, The International Center for Knowledge in the Arts and Orpheus Institute, among others.
MICHAELBRAILEY
MICHAELBRAILEY works between electronic music, club culture, performance and research. Originally from the UK, he is currently based between Hamburg (DE) and Manchester (UK). His work - often foregrounding electronic music, text and his signature falsetto - makes visible methods of sense-making in the face of vast, echoic planetary scalings; the emotional ramifications of situating the self within systems not of one's own design. Recent work has included interspecies meditations, speculative conspiracy theories, poetic readings of digital meme tapestries, queer long-distance love-songs, trance-inducing ensemble works and generative installations. His music has been described as “soul-bearing” (Martyn Pepperell), “a virtual condensation process transmuting love across the heart-tech interface” (Astral Plane Recordings) and “like James Blake if he was actually any good” (Boomkat).
Michael has worked with multimedia composer Alexander Schubert (DE); electronic musician ZULI (EG); rapper/performance artist Iceboy Violet (UK); ensembles decoder (DE), Bastard Assignments (UK) and NEKO3 (DK); gallery FACT Liverpool (UK), visual artist Tomasz Skibicki (NL) and others. He has performed, DJ'd or shown work at Wigmore Hall (London, UK); Snape Maltings (Aldeburgh, UK); The White Hotel (Manchester, UK); ZKM (Karlsruhe, DE); Kampnagel, LICHTHOF Theater, Pudel (Hamburg, DE); Godsbanen (Aarhus, DK); MENGI (Reykjavík, IS) and elsewhere. He has hosted radio on NTS and ma3azef; supported/performed with artists including Tirzah and Colin Self respectively; and his work has been featured in publications Pitchfork, Dazed, FACT and AQNB.
