Q3Ambientfest 2022 (Documentary)

Documentary by Ana Monteiro
Production assistant & sound capture Sergio Díaz De Rojas
Post-production Joao Carrapato

Since 2017 the boutique Q3AMBIENTFEST has been bringing together established and emerging artists from various genres and diverse origins as a musical happening.

It is carefully curated by the East Berlin-born, Potsdam-based Brueder Selke. The polyinstrumental composers Sebastian and Daniel Selke have, as an award-winning cello-piano duo under their pseudonym CEEYS, become an insider tip in the international music scene. The long-term collaboration between the two brothers who grew up on the other side of the Berlin Wall is characterised by the essential elements of encounter and exchange.

The independent Q3A, with its first-class roster of talented colleagues, invites the open-minded music audience to discover a wide, contemporary sound spectrum. Each year, the curators invite like-minded friends and also renowned artists to meet on a common stage and, with performances that range between academic avant-garde and accessible pop, develop a kind of cinematic music that also audibly reflects the architecture of the UNESCO Filmstadt Potsdam between Frederician rococo, eclectic, early-European villas and socialist brutalism. The buildings where the brothers grew up gave Q3A its name: it is the abbreviation for “Querwandbau”, a type of Plattenbau that was very common in the GDR.

After the Q3A’s premiere in 2017, and the 2018 and 2019 editions, Corona regulations resulted in the artists streaming individual sets from their home studios in 2020 and 2021. To mark the 1000th anniversary of the Basilica of the Holy Apostles in Cologne, Q3A 2021 also collaborated with Cologne’s revived Ambient Festival with live-stream concerts as well as presenting Hauschka and Alvin Lucier's The Ever Present Orchestra along with a performance of their own at the Zionskirche in Berlin. Since 2017, Q3A has hosted in person and (since the pandemic) also virtually national and international artists, among them Laura Cannell, Andrea Belfi, Grand River, Hélène Vogelsinger, Yair Elazar Glotman, James Heather, Midori Hirano, Echo Collective, Poppy Ackroyd, Julia Reidy, Masayoshi Fujita, Carlos Cipa, Aidan Baker, Hania Rani, Anne Müller, Mabe Fratti and Ale Hop.

Traditional playing techniques will be expanded; classical instrumentation will be combined with electronic. A visualization of the curators staging moving still lifes in Potsdam will also be screened, which will be scored live by some of the sets. Traditionally, the Q3A focuses less on headliners and sees itself as a complement to the local cultural scene. Thus the constellation and interactions of the musicians themselves are the highlight, resulting in the spontaneous, improvised collaborations of Brueder Selke: encounter and exchange.

Until 2022, Q3A had partnered with fabrik, an idyllic venue for dance & movement art in Schiffbauergasse, the art & culture quarter in Potsdam, and in 2023 moved to the cubic Kesselhaus of the Waschhaus in the same complex. Brueder Selke is supported by international media partners, independent music initiatives, progressive record labels, custom instrument makers, underground radio stations, investigative art magazines, forward-thinking blogs, and alternative concert formats from around the world.

Q3A is part of Keychange, a global movement advocating for a sustainable music industry and gender equality led by the PRS Foundation and supported by the European Union's Creative Europe program. Since 2018, it has received funding from the Brandenburg state capital Potsdam.

The award-winning East Berlin-born, Potsdam-based, polyinstrumental composer duo Brueder Selke (CEEYS), with Sebastian Selke on cello and his brother Daniel Selke on piano, is continuously expanding the repertoire of its two main instruments and, as independent curator, regularly presents boutique musical happenings.