Hybrid Improvisation: From Analogue to Digital | Workshop | Sustain-Delay 2025

The Malta Society of Arts’ Performing Arts Programme 2025 – Sustain-Delay’s Second Edition

Hybrid Improvisation: From Analogue to Digital – A Workshop

It takes trust to let someone alter your sound. And it takes careful listening to creatively transform someone else’s improvisation. In this workshop, you’re invited to bring your instruments — whether they’re electronic or otherwise — to transform them through collective improvisation. Sound makers of all levels and backgrounds can join, whether you’re an acoustic guitarist, an electro-curious violinist, a synthesist looking for an acoustic touch or a poet that wants to sound more like Darth Vader.

Participants are invited to playfully explore different means of live sound processing: both analogue (tape, filters, amplitude modulation, envelope followers) and digital (granular processing, filters, frequency shifting, karplus strong).

You can bring any type of instrument (including your own voice) for this last workshop in Sustain-Delay’s 2025 programme.

𝗥𝗲𝗴𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeeplxSeiE1BTP1V6FV_8-oFk6Ks02B7ACBB4Ap_MMXIe8Fnw/viewform

𝗔𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀𝗵𝗼𝗽 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿:

Denis Wouters is a Surinamese-Dutch musician and sound engineer based in Brussels. His practice includes improvisation, composition, music production and audio engineering. Sometimes alone, as LY Foulidis, often in collaboration.

As a part of electro-acoustic quintet Remorae, he revisits traditional music from the British isles and adjacent cultures. Remorae interprets folk songs, composes around traditional themes and improvises with trad elements – but always firmly rooted in the present.

Denis is currently recording and performing with jazz accordionist Stan Maris. The duo explores alternative ways of making their instruments interact with eachother, using MIDI accordion, modular synthesizer and software samplers to continually surprise themselves and each other.

Together with Joachim Bovin, Denis runs record label and radio show Anterior Insula. The label is named after the anterior insular cortex which is believed to be responsible for emotional feelings including romantic love, sadness, sexual arousal, disgust, empathy, sculptural beauty and hallucinogenic states. You can catch their monthly radio show on Kiosk Radio.

Denis also collaborated with Aurélie Nyirabikali Lierman, ZAÄAR, Shao-Huan Hung, Domenico Mangione, Sanne-Aletta van Otten, Nadav Perlman, Aidons Antoine, and others.

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𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗲 & 𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲: 16 November, 10am – 2pm
𝗟𝗼𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: Issa, 55, Triq Fra Diegu, Ħamrun
𝗗𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗿𝗲𝗴𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿: 14 November 2025
𝗣𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗲: Free, by registration. A limited amount of spaces are available on a first-come, first-served basis.

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Sustain-Delay 2025 is produced by the Malta Society of Arts and Artistic Director Kurt Buttigieg in collaboration with Arts Council Malta, and is supported by the Rock’N Malta Fund (Festivals Malta)

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This event is one of many taking place as part of the 4 Seasons of Adventurous Music presented by Sustain-Delay in 2025.

Sustain-Delay 2025 is produced by the Malta Society of Arts and Artistic Director Kurt Buttigieg, in collaboration with Arts Council Malta and is supported by the Rock’N Malta Fund (Festivals Malta)

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What is Sustain-Delay?

Exploration, interaction and sound.

In 2025, the Malta Society of Arts’ adventurous music programme, Sustain-Delay, returns to unite art forms, disrupt norms, and foster transformative dialogues. This year’s edition of Sustain-Delay presents an ambitious line-up of 14 distinct events, offering a diverse, intriguing and yet approachable selection of concerts blending electronic and classical music with experimental, jazz and folk traditions, alongside poetry and dance. Deepening its commitment to the community, Sustain-Delay 2025 also introduces engaging and enjoyable workshops designed to leave a lasting impact.

The 2025 programme unfolds over four dynamic seasons: Winter (February), Spring (April), Summer (July) and Autumn (November), with additional fringe events happening throughout the year. Each season carries its own unique concept, and the programme goes beyond concerts to include workshops and talks, hosted at the Malta Society of Arts and other venues across Malta.
Join us on this sonic adventure, and discover our programme HERE.

Sustain-Delay 2025 is a Malta Society of Arts project in collaboration with Arts Council Malta.

Follow us on Instagram and Facebook.

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[ Programme ]

14 distinct events unfolding over four dynamic seasons: Winter (February), Spring (April), Summer (July) and Autumn (November)

(Details to follow)

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[ Sustain-Delay Team ]

Artistic Director: Kurt Buttigieg
Marketing Manager: Kris Polidano
Site Manager: Francesca Zammit
Graphic Designer: Samwel Mallia

Kurt Buttigieg – Artistic Director’s Biography

Kurt Buttigieg is an “occasional artist and unwavering tinkerer”, with a perpetual organisational streak.

He read for a Master’s degree in Sound Art from the University of Barcelona and previously worked at the museum of the European Parliament in Brussels as curator for temporary and permanent exhibitions, and also planned spin-off museums in other EU capitals.

He organised numerous concerts, workshops and exhibitions in Malta and Belgium, as well as founding a small label called Complex Holiday documenting “inside-out ambient and sound art tomfoolery”. He is also a writer for several specialised magazines, including The Wire and New Noise.

As an artist and musician he released several works over that past twenty years, under his and other names, and created Malta’s first dedicated sound art installation in 1999.

A strong believer in community, Kurt is a committee member of the Banda Immakulata Kunċizzjoni (Ħamrun), Ħsus, Arsha Our and is active in other social, cultural and environmental projects.

Kris Polidano – Marketing Manager’s Biography

Kris Polidano (b.1999) teeters between the administrative side, creative and communal sides of the cultural sphere. Having graduated with a B.A. (Hons.) in English with a Maltese minor from the University of Malta in 2020, she primarily focuses on the way language impacts the way we perceive and communicate as multilingual persons. Her interests range from audio-visual archiving as the Communications and Community Manager and a researcher for the Magna Żmien Archive (2020–) to project managing and promoting experimental electronic music alongside her closest friends with the Malta Society of Arts’ Sustain-Delay Programme (2024-).

Kris also works with Festivals Malta’s marketing team where she manages the communications of multiple festivals, including Ritmu Roots Festival, a festival which celebrates musical traditions.

She is also president of the newly established Kooperattiva Strati, a cooperative focused on the arts, its social function and wellbeing. In the past Kris has also published some of her writing in Maltese in the Għaqda tal-Malti’s Leħen il-Malti (2019) , Maltese literary journal Aphroconfuso (2024). She has recently also been commissioned to write a cycle of poetry for prominent Maltese sculptor Paul Scerri for his latest exhibition The Sound of You Dreaming (Jan-Feb, 2025).

Photo credit: Leo Chircop