Rewind 2017

REWIND 2017  with play-lists to (re)listen to:

"Méta-musique pour poussières célibataires"

"The music room", a tribute to the choregrapher Alain Buffard / CND october 2017

”Aventures musicales” for WebSYNradio
 
"Les musiciens du Nihil / Cairo music"  on Epsilonia (Radio Libertaire)

The Beatles playin for few dancers in 1961 - unknown pic. source

& 

the amazing Akio Suzuki and his concrete sounds on the blog The Hum
"Tapage Nocturne", a french radio show with Akira Rabelais
Ray Nance, the violin player of Duke Ellington  
a serie of grooves

& the amazing concerts I've seen and listen to this year: 

the libanese musicians Mazen Kerbaj + Sharif Sehnaoui + Tony Elieh
the great violin player Sébastien Surel trio with Radais & Sabouret: some of Bach' Variations Goldberg
DDAA live at "Semaine du Bizarre"
the vocalist Anaïs Maviel
Cyrius with his new opus "Yokohama"
Fen with Otomo Yoshihide, Yan Jun, Ruy Hankil & Yuen Chee Wai

"Coro" composed by Luciano Berio - interpreted by EIC & conducted by Matthias Pintscher
Vincent Segal, Nasheet Waits & Yacine Boularés as "Abu Sadiya"

*****

BEST VIBES FOR 2018

& don't miss the guitar player Mariachi, the Lithuanian composer Zibuokle Martinaityte, the city of Marseille, the Hoger Czukay's hit Canaxis, the great harpsichord player Elisabeth Chojnacka, Teo Usuelli, Zebra Katz, Sote aka Ata Ebtekar, the performing artist Tamer Abu Gazaleh from Cairo, the Iranian Saba Aminikia, Sarah Neufeld...

& "blues aint nothing but a woman"  with an amazing casting
Helen Humes (vocal), T Bone Walker, Sonny Terry (Harmonica), Brownie McGhee (Vocal & Guitar), Willie Dixon (Vocal & Bass), T-Bone Walker (Vocal & Guitar), Memphis Slim (Vocal & Piano), Jump Jackson (Drums) 

Centuries of sound

 

How it sounded in the past, before our new ways to record?

That's one of the purpose of the blog "Centuries of sound" 

An interresting serie of mixes created with sound material from the past from 1859 to 1895 (work in progress along this year which will be continued in the future... we wait for!).

"The story you may have heard about the birth of sound recording goes something like this; Thomas Edison, alone in the lab after a hard day’s work, manages to record a recital of “Mary Had A Little Lamb” onto a wax cylinder. You may have even think you have heard the recording, but you haven’t. The recording in circulation comes from a 1927 recreation for the Golden Jubilee of the Phonograph ceremony, the original being lost on a sheet of re-usable tinfoil fifty years earlier.
But it really doesn’t matter. The real start date for us is seventeen years earlier than that, on the 6th of April 1860, when French printer and bookseller Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville decided to add a tuning fork to his experiments with recording the acoustic properties of the human voice."
Centuries of sound's source

 

Here is the 1893's mix with some popular tunes of this year

Radioscapes & Discsection

Radioscapes, Nicolas Montgermont
AKA 14 - 2017

Radioscapes est un disque qui invite à la découverte des paysages électromagnétiques qui nous entourent. 

Les deux faces du vinyle proposent d'écouter et d'observer deux contextes radio trés différents : le périphérique parisien (face A) et une ferme isolée en Bourgogne (face B). 

Dans chaque lieu, l'ensemble du spectre radio a été méthodiquement enregistré pendant deux semaines puis retranscrit en une seule piste audio. Sur chaque face, une image représentant les niveaux des fréquences captées est imprimée sous le sillon du disque de manière synchronisée avec le son.

Concept : Cécile Beau & Nicolas Montgermont 

Enregistrements & data processing : Nicolas Montgermont 

Mastering : Yann Leguay | Cut : Flo Kaufmann| Pressage : R.A.N.D Muzik 

Production : Artkillart  - décembre 2017

************************

& "DiscSection" by Yann Leguay
AKA 03 - 2009
on Artkillart

___________________________________________


& some circles archives

QUIXX

Hans - Joachim Hespos is a german composer, born in 1938, who uses unconventional and extreme techniques to create unusual sounds.

pic:Wolfgang Osterheld, Luxembourg

Hespos' scores very frequently employs graphic notation, verbal instructions, traditional music notation or some combination thereof: it always constitute incitements to action rather than instructions to be executed neutrally. Inspired by Adorno and Artaud, each composition forms itself unfettered during the act of composition. Many of his works involve improvisation and don't need any conductor. 
This radical subjectivity should communicate itself to any audience of Hespos' work, his aim being, to quote Artaud "To reach a point at which things must burst if there would be a new departure/beginning ... to lead the spirit to a frenzy, to a rising of its energies". 



"Hans-Joachim Hespos´s music does not quite dely description, but it raises unexpected questions for the perceiver. Incorporating mime, found objects, exotic and esoteric instruments, dress codes, theatre, implements, graphic and text notation, including instructions that are written in his own language themselves. In one sense, the only approach to take is to dive right in, trying to capture the energy required and hone the details along the way. (...)
Many composers set out to "capture forces" in their music, often volatile and energetic and Hespos is no exception: however, his music also embraces the ambiguous and complex border between life and art, sometimes frantic, and always fascinating."
Mic Spencer - 2015 - program note to the celebration of the music oh Hans-Joachim Hespos in the international concert series at University of Leeds, United Kingdom on 4th december 2015


"QUIXX" is a vocal piece composed in 2010
more infos (in german langage) here

No Tongues

No Tongues est un groupe de 4 instrumentistes français dont le projet est une "adaptation-retranscription" instrumentale d'un célèbre triple CD intitulé "Les voix du monde", publié par Harmonia Mundi en 1996.

 

"Les voix du monde" est une formidable anthologie des expressions vocales à travers le monde, le fruit d'une recherche réalisée dans le cadre de l'UMR 9957 du laboratoire d'ethnomusicologie du CNRS, sous la direction d'Hugo Zemp, Gilles Léothaud, Bernard Lortat-Jacob avec la collaboration du compositeur Jean Schwarz et du musicien et chercheur Trân Quang Hai.

Les différentes pièces du groupe No Tongues  sont de formes variées: parfois avec leur propre version, leur "translation instrumentale", et aussi par superposition des extraits vocaux originaux sur lesquels ils travaillent.

Le résultat est tout à fait probant, et les pièces ainsi composées nous rappellent parfaitement de quel extrait vocal de l'anthologie et de quel endroit du monde sont issues leurs inspirations.

"Les fabuleux duels de grognements des Inuits seront l’occasion de contrechants, plus ou moins imitatifs, plus ou moins divergents, puis de variations tandis que l’enregistrement original disparaîtra du champ sonore. Différents évocations de rites des Iles Salomon ou du Tibet se passeront de leurs modèles sonores, et l’on entendra même une pièce de pure imagination recentrant l’attention de l’auditeur sur la seule abstraction sonore où les quatre musiciens brouillent la dimension mélodique dans le tissu bruitiste et rythmique avec des gestes virtuoses d’un infinie précision, sur des instruments préparés ou non, souvent détournés de leurs usages conventionnels: électronique, jeux de souffle et de clés sur les instruments à vent, avec ou sans bec/embouchure, contrebasse de Ronan Courty ... (où) ...

la caisse est frottée de la paume, cognée du poing, l’archet ne se contente pas de faire hurler les harmoniques ou gronder la saturation des cordes, mais il frotte le cordier et les cordes sont encore soumises au va et vient d’un manche de mailloche glissée entre elles, etc… "

Franck Bergerot - Jazz Magazine - avril 2016

NO TONGUES

Alan Regardin – trompette et objets

Ronan Courty – contrebasse et objets

Ronan Prual – contrebasse

Matthieu Prual – saxophones et clarinette basse

Leur CD "Les voies du monde" sort en 2018

Making vinyl

How to make a vinyl record?
A RCA Victor's document from 1946.

Sismographie des luttes (2)

Quelques couvertures de "revues de luttes" évoquant la musique et le monde du sonore.

Le fruit de recherches de plusieurs chercheurs et l'objet de l'exposition à ne pas manquer:

"Sismographie des luttes"
vers une histoire globale des revues critiques et culturelles.

Du 10 novembre 2017 au 20 janvier 2018 - 14H30 / 19H30
du mardi au samedi

Galerie Colbert, salle Roberto Longhi - INHA - Institut national d’histoire de l’art
2 rue Vivienne  ou  6 rue des Petits Champs - 75002 Paris
entrée libre

 more informations 

 

African Arts - 1968`

  African Arts - 1970

 Amauta (Pérou) - 1928

  Amis du Laos - 1987

 Les cahiers de la Réunion  - 1976

Disco (Argentina) - 1945/1947

 Drum (South Africa) - 1955

 La Lira Chilena (Chili) - 1906

  Megafono (Argentina) - 1931

Mexican Folkways - 1930

 

Rohani (revue Kurde) - 1945

 

 

La voix du Congolais - 1952

Klaxon - may 1922

***

 

Sergey Khismatov

 

Sergey Khismatov, born 21 February 1983 in St. Petersburg, is a composer gradueted at European University in St. Petersburg.
He participated in workshops and open lectures of composers such as Boris Filanovsky, Pascal Dusapin, Sandeep Bhagwati, Enno Poppe, Helmut Lachenmann.

He composes for voices, instrumental ensemble and experimental electroacoustic experiences, as a quatuor for 4 performers and 4 microphones and a piano.

He also rebuild the famous Arseny Avraamov's "Symphony of industrial horns"  in Athens for Documenta 14.

To listen to his music: his Soundcloud: <<<here>>>

Don't miss "Quasar" for organ and accordion

and this version of "Microphones quartet" live at Paradiso in Amsterdam in 2012

Interim

"Interim" is a Stan Brakhage (1933 - 2003)  film, directed in 1952.

Inspired by Italian Neo-Realism and relatively conventional in structure compared to his later works, this first  Brackhage's film suggests a tentative encounter between a teenage boy and girl who meet under the city viaducts.
The young man meets the young woman under a bridge by a railroad. They shelter from the rain and exchange a kiss. The man grows sullen and leaves. The film starts with him and ends with her. 
The music is composed by James Tenney.  

 

 

 

***

Tomeka Reid

Tomeka Reid  is a Chicago based cellist, composer and educator.
Equally adept in classical and jazz contexts, Tomeka Reid  predominantly finds herself in experimental and improvisatory settings and composes for a wide range of instrumentation, from big band to chamber ensemble. Her music combines her love for groove along with freer concepts.

” (…) I’m loving to perform purely free these days. That used to be such a source of anxiety for me ... to be so naked and create something from nothing in front of people and sometimes with people I’ve never improvised with! (…) Do I solo? Do I become a member of the rhythm section? What can I do to make something happen? (…) I like being pushed and even though I am sometimes stubborn, I like to be forced out of my comfort zone (…) I also enjoy through-composed settings and pieces with structure that include improvisation. It’s nice to know where you’re going sometimes but it’s also really nice to know that if you end up somewhere else that’s ok too! (…)”  
 Tomeka Reid - 2015

A long interview by Troy Collins to read here

"(...) Chicago-based AACM member Tomeka Reid has honed her improvisational skills for the past decade and a half as a sideperson to such luminaries as Anthony Braxton, George Lewis and Roscoe Mitchell, as well as contemporaries like Dee Alexander, Nicole Mitchell and Mike Reed. She also co-leads Hear in Now, a string trio with New York-based violinist Mazz Swift and Italian bassist Silvia Bolognesi. Reid is poised to become one of the preeminent improvising cellists of her generation with the eponymous release of Tomeka Reid Quartet, her first album as a bandleader (...)"
Troy Collins 

*******

in quartet with Mary Halvorson (guitar), Tomas Fujiwara (dms) and Jason Roebke (dble bass),
a tribute to the violin player Billy Bang



& here with the live piece  "Tokens"  at the Hyde Park Jazz Festival in 2015
played by six strings' players and a drummer 
Amazing!

Circles (2)

all these pictures are "astrology digital art" pieces created by David Mrugala

ansd issued from a study of planets and NASA informations.

&

"Sound of Uranus" is made with code (Processing) based on the recording of the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft that passed near different planetary and moon bodies within our solar system. Voyager 1 and 2 were launched in 1977 by NASA.

Syv Cirkler

Else Marie Pade (2 December 1924 – 18 January 2016) was a Danish composer. After classical music studies at the Royal Academy of Music in Copenhagen, her life changed and her mind was turned in 1952 when she listened a Pierre Schaeffer's piece on a radio broadcast.

score of Faust 

"Syv Cirkler" (seven circles) is an electronic sound constellation consisting of layers of sine tones in an age that knew neither the computer nor the sampler.

“My work "7 Circles" was inspired directly by my trip to the World Exhibition in Brussels in 1958 (…) I was sitting in a planetarium and saw their programme, which consisted of various compositions, accompanied by light and movement in the planetarium dome...
There was one composition that completely captured me because it represented the stars, how they walk across the sky and their relation to each other. I remember that feeling that I was being lifted into the room, as if I was part of the movement – afterwards I almost felt a little seasick. It all continued to tumble around in my head for quite some time, and when I got back home, I knew that I would write a piece that would be called 7 Circles“
Else Marie Pade - Life in a Glass Bead Game (2005)
   

To read: a 2014's conversation between Jacob Kirkegaard and Else Marie Pade here

& to listen to: "Syv Cirkler", claimed as the first danish electronic music in Danemark

For Cornelius

"For Cornelius" is a piece composed by Alvin Curran in 1981. It was Curran's first release of fully composed music performed by other people, his earlier LPs containing semi-improvised solo electroacoustic works performed by Curran himself.

It was written shortly after the death of Cornelius Cardew in 1981, the great british composer and political firebrand. Curran has some additional notes about the piece at his website: <<<>>>

"For Cornelius" is performed here by Ursula Oppens.

 ********************************************************

& about Cornelius Cardew these last months:

"Scratch Cottage and Nature Study Notes", with Carole Finer and Stefan Szczelkun, original "Scratch Orchestra" members, who did activate an intervention, curated by Pierre Bal-Blanc, as part of the last "Documenta 14" in the basement of the Athens conservatory.

It was an experimental framework for exploring the methodologies, technics, and spirit of the "Scratch Orchestra", originaly founded in July 1969 by Cornelius Cardew, growing out of a series of music composition classes held at Morley College London that were attended by avant-garde musicians as well as artists interested in exploring sound. 

This three-day public workshop involving more than 20 students proposed a journey through two important works of the orchestra: Nature Study Notes (1969) and Scratch Cottage (1971). 

Sismographie des luttes

"Sismographie des luttes"
vers une histoire globale des revues critiques et culturelles.

Du 10 novembre 2017 au 20 janvier 2018 - 14H30 / 19H30
du mardi au samedi

Galerie Colbert, salle Roberto Longhi - INHA - Institut national d’histoire de l’art
2, rue Vivienne ou 6 rue des Petits Champs - 75002 Paris
entrée libre

INFOS

& colloque les 16 et 17 novembre 2017


Commissariat : Zahia Rahmani (INHA)
Assistantes de l'exposition et chargées de la recherche
                         Florence-Duchemin Pelletier (INHA) & Aline Pighin (INHA)
Graphiste : Thierry Crombet - RelativDesign
Composition musicale originale : Jean-Jacques Palix

▬▬▬▬

Une installation vidéo projette une généalogie des revues dans le monde.  
L'image des revues dans le monde de la fin du 18e siècle à nos jours, présente dans une juste articulation avec les contextes historiques et territoriaux, les revues, leurs couvertures, mais aussi des contenus historiques, textes manifestes, portraits…
La revue culturelle est un objet essentiellement moderne. Elle est le lieu de l'expérience scripturale et graphique, mais c’est avant tout un support critique, visuel et littéraire qui fait constamment irruption dans l'accompagnement des luttes que les femmes et les hommes ont mené dans le monde pour leur émancipation.

En ce sens et en raison du recouvrement mondial qu'a été le colonialisme moderne, l'on peut dire que la revue culturelle est par essence, par son hybridité, sa mobilité et son existence précaire, souvent née dans l'urgence et la nécessité, un pur objet de l'expérience coloniale : et ce faisant un laboratoire de la modernité. C'est à l'intérieur de ces espaces contraints et divisés, qu'émerge la revue telle qu'on l'entend : un espace critique et politique en quête d'autonomie. L’histoire des revues et leurs contenus ne cesse de rendre compte de ce long continuum.

La doyenne des revues culturelles de langue française serait peut-être née à Haïti, à Port au Prince, l'Abeille Haytienne en date du 7 juillet 1817. La revue ne cesse de dire une ambition d'indépendance contrariée parce-que faite à la fois nécessairement de voix singulières, d'auteurs volontaires, tentés par des perspectives politiques et culturelles renouvelées.

Présentant plus de mille revues, l'exposition ne prétend pas à l'exhaustivité mais témoigne qu'une recherche collective, multilingue et décentrée, telle qu'elle a été menée à l'INHA, conforte une histoire globale de l'art. Elle permet de réévaluer et surtout faire exister la vie intellectuelle politique, artistique et critique qui s’est exercée au cœur des empires coloniaux.



dossier de presse

 

The Force of Things

 

"The force of things" is an opera for objects.

Composed by Ashley Fure, with the complicity of his brother architect, Adam Fure, this piece was first performed in 2016 at the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music.

Ashley Fure compose acoustic and electroacoustic music as well she build multimedia installation art. Her work explores the kinetic source of sound, bringing focus to the muscular act of music making and the chaotic behaviors of raw acoustic matter.  

 

"The force of things" is an immersive work of music theater that wrestles with the animate vitality of matter and the mounting hum of ecological anxiety around us. 

Audience members are invited into a field of sculpted matter circled by a ring of subwoofer speakers projecting subaudible frequencies. Though the sounds they emit are too low for humans to hear, the vibrations these subwoofers push into the air cause disturbances to ripple through the material infrastructure of the piece.  Players slide the flesh of their palms and the surface of objects against these speaker cones while they shake, drawing them into the realm of audibility through touch. Two singers snake side-by-side throughout the space, shouting a warning that sounds like a whisper in a language no one can understand.