AM I TOO MUCH?
Or am I not enough?
Music at the limits of control
What happens when precision is pushed to the point where it begins to destabilise itself?
Am I Too Much? brings together four works that explore excess, resistance and instability as musical forces.
Feedback, distortion, repetition and amplification are not treated as effects added to the guitar, but as conditions that shape the act of playing itself. Across the programme, control is constantly negotiated rather than simply asserted: sounds threaten to tip, gestures accumulate, physical resistance becomes audible, and precision can produce instability instead of eliminating it.
The guitar emerges less as a neutral instrument than as a volatile system — one in which performer, instrument and technology continually act upon one another.
PROGRAMME
Nicolas Berge — The Ultimate Guitar Piece (2026)
Svetlana Maraš — ETUDE (2018/26)
Oliver Thurley — Polynya (2018)
Fausto Romitelli — Trash TV Trance (1992)
VIRTUOSITY WITHOUT COMPLETE MASTERY
The four works approach instability from radically different directions. Berge pushes instrumental and performative demands towards deliberate excess; Maraš works with repetition, electronics and the shifting relationship between gesture and sound; Thurley opens a fragile space of restraint and resistance; and Romitelli turns distortion, amplification and physical intensity into an unmistakable musical language.
Together, they form a programme about virtuosity without complete mastery: music in which control is necessary, but never entirely secure.