Kammer Klang presents one of Europe's leading performers of new music, Stephane Ginsburgh to perform Frederic Rzewski's De Profundis (1992) for speaking pianist and Popular Contexts Volume 2 (2012) for sampler and piano by Matthew Shlomowitz, and sound artist and composer, Kaffe Matthews performs 'love sharks' - a new four channel solo in which she duets with 6 hammerhead sharks driving oscillators recorded during her 2009 residency in the Galápagos Islands.

www.kammerklang.co.uk

STEPHANE GINSBURGH

Stephane Ginsburgh, a musician based in Brussels, has been praised for his daring and mature piano playing. He appears regularly in recitals and chamber music in Europe, the Middle East, Russia and the USA. He performs Contemporary music as well as the Classical and Romantic repertoires that he often associates in his programs. After studying at the Conservatory, he worked with Claude Helffer in Paris and Jerome Lowenthal in New York. He studied philosophy at the Université libre de Bruxelles and translated into FrenchEric. J. Hobsbawm's Uncommon People: Resistance, Rebellion and Jazz. The book is published by the Brussels editor Aden.

He is in the process of recording Morton Feldman's works for solo piano (5 CDs & 1 DVD, Sub Rosa) and has recorded Vexations by Erik Satie on the composer's piano (Sub Rosa). In 2009 his projects included an evening around Karlheinz Stockhausen's Klavierstücke and Kontakte with percussionist Miquel Bernat for the Ars Musica Festival and in 2011 at Agora/Ircam Festival. In 2010 he was asked by the Queen Elisabeth Competition to rehearse and record the compulsory concerto composed for the finals.

www.ginsburgh.net

Popular Contexts volume 2 for piano, sampler, voice and physical actions by Matthew Shlomowitz. (commission by Centre Henri Pousseur 2010)

Popular Contexts is a series of pieces that investigate aspects of everyday and popular culture with the aspiration of opening up a listening experience that enhances perception of the familiar and draws attention to sounds that we usually ignore or don't take seriously. This volume combines pre-recorded sounds with live instrumental music. The recordings consist of familiar sounds such as a rollercoaster ride, strummed guitar chords, electronic machine noises and New Year’s Eve celebrations. The instrumental music is equally varied, made of melodies, chord progressions and textures that evoke various musical idioms. In this volume, the performer additionally speaks and enacts physical movements to further explore everyday and popular culture, as well as relationships between text, action, recorded sound and music. (Matthew Shlomowitz: www.shlom.com)



De Profundis for speaking pianist (1992) by Frederic Rzewski

De Profundis is a 30-minute composition for piano solo, in which the pianist recites a text consisting of selected passages adapted from Oscar Wilde's letter to Lord Alfred Douglas, written during the author's imprisonment for "gross indecency" in Reading Gaol. The piece could be described as a melodramatic oratorio, in which eight sections with text are preceded by eight instrumental preludes. My composition was inspired by Luke Theodore, an old friend from the Living Theatre to whom the piece is also dedicated. In 1989 the filmmaker Larry Brose asked me to write a piece for the pianist Anthony de Mare that could serve as the basis for a film. [...] All of us as well shared an interest in the politics of sexuality. The piece was finally written in the Summer of 1992. Since then it has been performed by a number of pianists, gay, straight, male and female. [...] The music demands a combination of virtuoso technique and a total lack of inhibition on stage, thus virtually guaranteeing that no mediocre or conventional performer will dare to go near it - (Frederic Rzewski for Nonesuch Records)

KAFFE MATTHEWS

Kaffe Matthews was born in Essex, England and lives and works in London. Since 1990 she has been making and performing new electro-acoustic music worldwide with a variety of things and places such as violin, theremin, wild salmon, Scottish weather, desert stretched wires, NASA scientists, hammerhead sharks, and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Currently she is researching interactive composition for outdoor enjoyment with sonic bicycles and sustainable vibratory interface design with ‘music for bodies’. Acknowledged as a pioneer in electronic improvisation and live composition, Kaffe has released 6 solo CD’s on the label Annette Works.

'Sharks are older than dinosaurs. They have evolved with the planet developing extraordinary perceptive mechanisms, and have learnt to navigate in straight lines by tracing the shifts in the earth's magnetic crust at depths as great as 400m. They are still considered violent attackers and continue to be slaughtered in vast numbers just for their fins to make soup. The truth is that a shark has to be one of the most sophisticated and beautiful of animals.'

love sharks is a new four channel solo by Kaffe Matthews in which she duets with 6 oscillators driven by 6 hammerhead sharks whose journeys were recorded north of Wolf Island, Galapagos April 2009. Matthews dived with, recorded underwater and filmed hammerheads whilst on a month's residency on the Galapagos islands 2009. Her 3D sound installation, You might come out of the water every time singing is currently showing at a venue near you.



Check www.kaffematthews.net/sharks for details.
Software instrument collaboration and programming Adam Parkinson.
www.kaffematthews.net/works
www.musicforbodies.net