Into the Blue is about embracing the turning chapters within our lives. As we finish our current chapter and enter the next we are often met with 2 opposing emotions; anxiety, and excitement. We can choose to be overwhelmed with fear and doubts about the unknown. Or, we can choose to embrace change, living with the excitement that maybe what we haven’t experienced yet, will be a good surprise. Into the Blue emulates the duality of change; anxiety and excitement, fear and courage, doubt and hope. This is not a battle of emotions, but rather a balance. These pairings will always be two sides of the same coin, and that’s okay. I hope this piece can help listeners embrace and celebrate the ever-turning chapters in their lives. 

“Sometimes it feels like I got a war in my mind
I wanna get off, but I keep riding the ride
I never really noticed that I had to decide
To play someone’s game, or live my own life
And now I do,
I wanna move
Out of the black (out of the black)
Into the blue (into the blue)” - Get Free by Lana Del Rey
	
Commissioned by the Le Mars High School Concert Band, to honor the retirement of Mary Kay Benton, whose passion, dedication, and unwavering leadership, shaped countless musicians.

Into the Blue - Performed by the Le Mars High School Concert Band

Ute Wassermann interweaves her voice with field recordings of birds, insects, frogs – of creatures that move across the boundaries between air, water and earth and finds new and different resonance places far away from their original environment. Fragile, seemingly natural sounds, such as the buzzing of bees under water, can be transformed into technoid drones. Snippets of soundscapes ghost through objects.  Does the singer retain her identity or does she become the ‘other’? The boundary between self and environment becomes fluid, so that the latter itself becomes an illusion in favour of a more complex reality. The binaries of animal and human, object and human, nature and technology are turned upside down in favour of interwoven relationships based on reciprocity.

Ute Wassermann: voice, bird whistles
Felix Blume: field recordings 

Biography

Ute Wassermann is one of the outstanding contemporary vocal artists of our time. She combines composition, improvisation and performance art to create her own form of Gesamtkunst, in which environmentally relevant themes play an essential role. At the centre of her research is the continuous and uncompromising exploration of her voice. Ute Wassermann’s singing goes far beyond the human voice and manifests itself in multidimensional sculptural sounds that oscillate between electronic, animal, inorganic and human qualities. She takes this to the extreme by creating a visceral sound space through the use of different types of microphones. In addition, she expands and alienates her voice through the use of bird whistles, lo-fi electronics, resonators, field recordings and objects.

She has been touring the world as an improviser and performer of contemporary music for many years. In the last ten years, she has increasingly realised audiovisual performances, installations and compositions for soloists and ensembles.

“Imaginary Habitats” is a co-commission between Goethe-Institut Glasgow and Radiophrenia. We are grateful for their support.

Photo credits: Cristina Marx/Photomusix

https://utewassermann.com

Ute Wassermann - Imaginary Habitat



Year of the Dragon. A mother draws a circle. Spins round. Pins everything but the tail on the donkey. She wants to know how the dragon makes fire, gets inside it. On the inside things slow.

Written in the Year of the Dragon, Zara Joan Miller’s long poem traces fire across a year. The figure of Saint Margaret, who freed herself from the belly of a dragon, is relocated in living voices that challenge structures of oppression today. A year of feeding fire, of dousing and soft loving. A mother waits in disguise by the fire exit.

Biography

Zara Joan Miller is an artist working across poetry, performance and film. Her work seeks to unravel boundaries between human and non-human nature, often playing with movement and sound as a way of reimagining a body’s rhythm. Zara is the author of poetry collection BLUE MONDAY (JOAN Publishing, 2022), which was also released as a duo LP with cellist Ute Kanngießer (Reading Group 2023). Her work has recently been presented at Barbican Centre, Muse Gallery, Horse Hospital, Cafe OTO (London), In Vitro (Brussels), Default

https://zarajoanmiller.com

Year of the Dragon is co-commissioned by Radiophrenia, TACO! and blurt. blurt is an experimental platform supporting artists to develop text-based works for live reading and performance, and synchronous live-to-air broadcast on rtm.fm. In this testing-site for testing text, four artists and artist-groups consider radio broadcast as an expanded form of publishing. This co-commission is supported by the Outlands Network Exchange programme.

https://taco.org.uk/About-Us
https://outlands.network/


Zara Joan Miller - Year of the Dragon

Tape letters between two friends, one living in a blanket fort, the other in a house of paper, and both deeming each other’s homes unsound, can’t seem to agree on who should visit the other. So instead, one of them builds a house they can meet in, out of the safest material: Noise.

Biography

Yara is a musician and puppeteer based in Beirut, Lebanon. She incorporates accordion, metallophone and electronics in her live performances. In addition to her musical work, she has participated in exhibitions where she featured sound and video installations including ‘Sonatina for 19 Music Boxes’ (interactive sound installation), ’The Cut-Throat Finch Preludes’ (tape loop installation), ‘I Liked it Better When We Lived on See-Saw Hill’ (video installation) and ‘Lapses’ (interactive sound installation). Last year she released  ‘Mr. Samuel’s Teatime Stories for Good Kids and Confused Adults’ – A puppet film in four parts.

https://yaraasmar.com/

https://yaraasmar.bandcamp.com/album/stuttering-music

@microwave.blues

Yara Asmar - I am building a house

“Administrative Embrace” grants unprecedented access to the inner workings and concealed logic of the enigmatic Office for Joint Administrative Intelligence. This transmission crosses rustbelt landscapes, pedestrian tunnels, flyovers, debris fields, and timelines, charting states of decline, delirium, immortality, and heroic obedience. Listeners are invited into the vast and impressive O.J.A.I. world headquarters. Through spoken word, modular sounds, architectural and bureaucratic fictions, lists, timelines, and ambient musical accompaniment, “Administrative Embrace” offers an hour-long exploration into institutional conjuring, information overload, camaraderie, and magic.

Produced by O.J.A.I. in 2024/25 for Radiophrenia Glasgow

Text and voice by Gary Farrelly
Sound and mix by Chris Dreier
Piano by Tim Löhd

Biography

Office for Joint Administrative Intelligence (O.J.A.I.) is the collaborative practice of artists Chris Dreier and Gary Farrelly based in Brussels and Berlin. The work is fuelled by recurring fascinations with architecture, infrastructure, finance, esoteric practices and institutional power manifesting in postal correspondence, installations, sound, performance and walks as well as limited vinyl editions and publications. The work has been presented at Hugh Lane Gallery (Dublin), Damien & the Love Guru (Brussels), Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles (Paris), Marres House for Contemporary Culture (Maastricht), De Garage (Mechelen) and Contemporary Art Center (Cincinnati, US), among many others.

O.J.A.I. produces a monthly music radio show for Dublin Digital Radio and for Cashmere Radio Berlin.

https://jointintelligence.org/    
@jointintelligence

OJAI -ADMINISTRATIVE EMBRACE

Budhaditya Chattopadhyay - Sonic Psychogeographies II

It's Awake! was written in August of 2025. I remember one of my favorite things to do as a kid was put on some music and imagine some kind of narrative for it - letting a movie play out in my head. Being someone who grew up on Disney's Fantasia, I suppose this was just something I couldn't help. Anytime I got the chance to go watch a performance, whether it was chamber music or a symphony, I'd always walk out with entire plot lines in my head. A musical story. 

Having worked as an usher with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra for two years, I had the privilege of seeing students hear an orchestra for the first time over and over again. Working school time concerts was one of my favorite things for that reason. I was able to relive the origin of my love for music over and over in the excited reactions I saw in the hall.

I decided to write this piece with that in mind, creating a vivid narrative that could provide a solid stepping off point for an audience to imagine a story with music:

​You find yourself lost in a dark labyrinth. As you search for an exit, you knock over some heavy object. In the dreaded silence following this crashing blunder, you hear a monstrous grumbling. There's something down here with you, and now it's awake. What happens next, is up to you.

I'd love to be able to feature a live recording soon! If you're interested in being the ensemble who premieres this piece, please contact me for the score and parts.

Thank you for listening!

It's Awake!

for thenlike?now

bassoon - Victoria Donaldson
percussion - Benjamin Damann

Into the Blue - Performed by the Le Mars High School Concert Band

Mickie Wadsworth

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