In 2025, Ensemble Vortex presents the sixth edition of this innovative experiment in sound creation, developed with the support of the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, in partnership with L’Abri – Geneva. Five young artists are chosen for three intensive work sessions, spread over a year, in close collaboration with Vortex’s instrumentalists and composers. The pieces produced during this period can take a wide variety of formats: musical composition, sound installation, performance, musical theatre and other hybrid forms involving sound.

Ana Durán

As an interdisciplinary artist, Ana Durán (MX) creates sound objects, installations, performances, and electroacoustic compositions that explore sonic coexistence, acting as a bridge between beings and their environment.

bzz_ 4.4.0.1
Violin, viola, cello, electric guitar, and motors.

A signal, a tremor, a current shared. Between strings and motors, care and instability vibrate. Not human, not machine—only the pulse that emerges when they breathe together.

Jorge Villoslada

Jorge Villoslada Durán is a young composer focused on transmedia and interdisciplinary creation. He studied composition at the Hochschule der Künste Bern and the Anton Bruckner University in Linz, under the guidance of Cathy van Eck, Simon Steen-Andersen, and Carola Bauckholt. He has collaborated with renowned international ensembles such as Vertixe Sonora, Schallfeld Ensemble, and Neue Vocalsolisten, and his works have been presented at festivals including Wien Modern, Limina Festival, Darmstädter Ferienkurse, and Brucknerfest.

CAPTCHA #2
violin, viola, cello, bass clarinet, video & electronics

Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart
Are the performers part of a larger digital mechanism, or are they humans capable of distinguishing you from a vast machine?

Aya Metwalli

Aya Metwalli (b. 1988, Cairo) is a singer and composer/performer whose work moves between tradition and innovation. Raised in the sonic density of Cairo, she forged a voice shaped by the city’s chaos, weaving folk roots into experimental musical landscapes. Her exploration of timbre and microtonality connects her practice to contemporary composition and the wider field of new music. Her sound world often drifts between lament and dissonance, using unusual tunings to expand the boundaries of song and draw listeners into unfamiliar emotional spaces. She has collaborated with Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, presenting Cabaret Bizarre (2021/2025) at Mediterrane Perspektiven (Theaterhaus Stuttgart, 2025), ULTIMA Contemporary Music Festival (Oslo, 2022), Irtijal Experimental Music Festival (Beirut, 2022), Darmstädter Ferienkurse (Germany, 2021), Akademie der Künste (Berlin, 2021), and ECLAT Neue Musik Festival (Stuttgart, 2021). Her latest work, Salute the Groom (2025), was written for 4tet Laboratoire and premiered at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse 2025. Currently pursuing a master’s degree in composition at HKB in Bern, Aya is expanding her practice into music theater, combining music, performance, and staging.

Beauty in the Beast
String trio and voice

"She stands alone.
Clad in velvet; the whore of Babylon.
Condemned. Unrepentant.
At her feet, the Beast, three-headed. Together, they call forth an apocalypse into bloom,
not with destruction, but with delicacy and a very strange kind of beauty.
This is a revelation of power, seduction, and a monstrous grace.
Dare to behold the Beauty in the Beast.”

Zeynep Toraman

Zeynep Toraman is a composer and scholar from Istanbul, Turkey, living and working in Berlin, Germany. Her practice-based research explores the ways in which texts (in the broadest sense of this word) can interact with one another within the larger framework of musical compositions, by way of thinking of her own library as an archive, and enfolding autobiography, poetry, fiction and history within her works.

Long Lurking in the Clouds
String trio, bass clarinet & electronics