Maja Osojnik

Maja Osojnik is a freelance composer, sound artist, singer and free improvising musician who in her multifaceted work uses a wide variety of sonic means such as voice, Paetzold bass, field recordings, CD players, radios, effect pedals, cassette players and other electronic lo-fi musical instruments of any origin. Moving in the limbo between analog and digital art, virtual and real spaces, she tries to expand the sonic spectra of said instruments, to deconstruct and to connote them anew or to assign them different, new roles – a process reminiscent of annagramming. In her compositions Maja Osojnik combines her love for simple songs, experimental, electro-acoustic, abstract music, old and new music, as well as elements and forms of noise and rock. The real, the surreal, the fragility, in which both the destructive, abysmal, sinister phantasm, but also the beauty, the elegance, the strength and determination, manifest another engine that defines Maja’s musical work. She composes music for dance, theater, film and various ensembles and orchestras, and writes poetry that she sets to music with her bands. For her live performances and sampling, she uses custom-built sound libraries such as the so-called “Rejects” – a library of broken sound debris or “Broken Pianos” – a collection of the sounds of out-of-tune pianos. She has been awarded several prizes and scholarships, including “SKE Publicity Prize 2007”, 2009 & 2019 Austrian State Composition Scholarship and the Passticio Prize (Ö1/ORF). In 2014, the City of Vienna’s Förderpreis für Komposition and the SKE-Fonds Jahresstipendium followed. The music of Rdeča Raketa (Maja Osojnik and Matija Schellander) for the film “Einer von Uns – One of us” (directed by Stephan Richter), honored the 27th Kinofest Lünen with the award for the best film music. In 2018 Rdeča Raketa and Natascha Gangl received the 1st Prize for their sound comic WENDY PFERD TOD MEXICO at the 9th Berlin Radio Play Festival 2018, followed by the prize for “The best radio play of 2020” in Ö1/ORF in 2021 for their new sound comic “Die Revanche der Schlangenfrau – frei nach Unica Zürn”. In 2018, Maja launched a new label MAMKA RECORDS, which is dedicated to the release of high-quality and self-produced sound recordings in small series. Since then, Maja has also been more focused on two of her great passions, printing and producing graphic sound scores. Her solo performances, works and formations, including ZSAMM, Rdeča Raketa, Broken.Heart.Collector, Maja Osojnik Band, Subshrubs, Low Frequency Orchestra etc. have been presented at various international festivals.

http://maja.klingt.org
http://mamka.klingt.org
http://mo.klingt.org
https://majaosojnik.bandcamp.com/
https://letthem.bandcamp.com/releases

Photo: Jakob Isselstein

<< back