Sunday 8 May 2022, 2pm
O YAMA O is a music project of artists Keiko Yamamoto and Rie Nakajima. Using a combination of kinetic devices and found objects, they create soundscapes inspired by Japanese myth, ritual, anthropology and everyday, non-spectacular sound worlds. Works are often composed of Yamamoto singing while Nakajima’s constructs escalating micro-orchestras in direct response to unique architectural spaces. O YAMA O has been collaborating with Billy Steiger, Marie Roux, and David Cunningham. O YAMA O has been performed at : Borealis Music Festival (Bergen), NoShowSpace (London), Mayhem (Copenhagen), LCMF (London), Novas Frequencias (Brazil) and some other places.
“How often are we in such intimate closeness to the materials of sound, the physicality of a naked voice, without chairs, microphones, distance, so conscious of light, climate, atmosphere, the nearness of other bodies, the permeability of a structure that is outside as much as in?” - David Toop
Billy Steiger is an artist working across performance, recording, drawing, and printmaking. This work often takes systems of reproduction, transmission and mediation as both material and subject.
Active/upcoming solo projects include:
- a proposed (re)history of technology, using the vibrating string as framing mechanism.
- an album of modified pipe organ recordings, to be released by OtoRoku in 2027.
- an ongoing investigation into audio compression algorithms and the artefacts and loss inherent to digital/analogue boundary states.
Active group projects include:
- O Yama O (w/ Keiko Yamamoto, Rie Nakajima, Marie Roux)
- X-Ray Hex Tet (w/ Paul Abbott, Edward George, Crystabel Riley, Pat Thomas, Seymour Wright)
- Portraits (w/ Daniel Blumberg, Seymour Wright)
Completed(?) solo projects include:
- composing and recording the score for Stacy Martin's short film Amaretti
- Box (for EKM) for piano and string quartet, premiered by Apartment House in 2024
- Loud Object, a 2023 violin record.
https://billysteiger.bandcamp.com/
Daniel Blumberg is a London-based composer and artist. He is best known for his Academy Award and BAFTA winning score for The Brutalist (dir. Brady Corbet, 2024). Most recently he composed music for The Testament to Ann Lee (dir. Mona Fastvold) and Sotto Le Nuvole (Pompei: Below The Clouds) (dir. Gianfranco Rosi). He has released four solo albums on Mute and is a visual artist who draws with silverpoint with a forthcoming exhibition on show at Balice Hertling, Paris.
Some people know David Cunningham's work as an artist whose large installation works explore the spectator's real time experience of the acoustic properties of a space - these works have been shown at Chisenhale Gallery, Tate Britain, Ikon Birmingham and ICC Tokyo. Others are more familiar with his parallel work as a record producer and musician who over many years has worked with an eclectic range of people, amongst many others The Flying Lizards, This Heat, Michael Nyman, Patti Palladin, Martin Creed and most recently O Yama O.
