Thursday 27 January 2022, 8pm
An improvised evening exploring the meeting point between text and sound featuring special guests KMRU, Sharon Gal, Caroline Kraabel and Arturas Bumšteinas and scores by Salomé Voegelin.
Join us as we make our own shared racket to celebrate the release of Paint your lips while singing your favourite pop song. The evening will feature sets by KMRU, Bumšteinas, Gal and Kraabel set amid spoken scores by Voegelin, as together we explore the possibilities of words, sounding and processes of improvisation.
Paint your lips while singing your favourite pop song features eight pieces based on scores written for each artist by Voegelin. It includes work by Siavash Amini, claire rousay, Rie Nakajima, AGF (Antye Greie), Arturas Bumšteinas, Rebecca Lennon, Rhodri Davies and KMRU.
Paint your lips while singing your favourite pop song is released by Flaming Pines.
“I write scores to get into conversation with human and more than human things, while staying by myself. I use words to trigger an exchange that includes, beyond words, the doing, listening and sounding to and with things. My starting point is private and intimate, quiet mainly if not mute, and felt rather than heard. From there the speaking of words expands the feeling into doing, which as listening and sounding takes a contingent shape that meets that of others and other things, listening and sounding too. Thus on the basis of odd and private imaginations I start to make a shared racket and a space of things that narrate their own instructions.” --- Salomé Voegelin.
Salomé Voegelin is an artist and writer who works with sound’s relational capacities to practice possibilities of the undisciplined, and to look for the transversal in its fuzzy geographies. She writes essays and text-scores for performance and publication. Books include Sonic Possible Worlds (2014/21) The Political Possibility of Sound (2018) and Listening to Noise and Silence (2010).Her latest book ‘The Political Possibility of Sound’, Bloomsbury 2018, articulates a politics that includes creativity and invention and imagines transformation and collaboration as the basis of our living together. Voegelin’s practice engages in participatory, collective and communal approaches and uncurates curatorial conventions through performance. She is a Professor of Sound at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London and currently represents the Professorship Klangkunst in den Kunstwissenschaften at the University of Art Braunschweig. www.salomevoegelin.net
Currently studying sonic arts in Berlin, Joseph Kamaru aka KMRUis a Nairobi-born, Berlin-based sound artist whose work is grounded on the discourse of field recording, noise, and improvisation. His work posits expanded listening cultures of sonic thoughts and soundpractices, a proposition to consider and reflect on auditory cultures beyond the norms, and an awareness of surroundings through creative compositions and installations. His last three albums, 2020's "Peel", "Opaquer" and "Jar" received high praise from Resident Advisor, DJ Mag, NPR, and Bandcamp, KMRU is part of SHAPE platform roaster of artists for 2021. His works have been presented in NyegeNyege Festival (UG), CTM Festival(DE), GAMMA (RU), and Mutek Montreal and Barcelona.
Arturas Bumšteinas (b.1982, Vilnius) is Lithuanian artist working within the intersections of sound, music and art. His practices could be divided in to several categories: experimental music, acoustic sound works, sound installations, pieces for theatre, radio art… In the mid 90s Arturas was the first Lithuanian artist to use the internet to collect sounds from people around the world and make collage-compositions from these submissions. He is the initiator of various musical projects and since 2000 he has collaborated with different artists like Anton Lukoszevieze, Vladimir Tarasov, Krystian Lupa, Žilvinas Kempinas, Gintautas Trimakas, Lina Lapelytė, Vaiva Grainytė, Gailė Griciūtė, Laura Garbštienė, Piotr Kurek, Ivan Cheng. His projects have been presented across Europe and his “solo” exhibition have been held at Vilnius Contemporary Art Center, Vartai Gallery, AV17 and Galerie Antje Wachs Berlin. He has performed at The Holland Festival, Unsound, Tectonics, Sensoralia, Angelica, Vilnius Jazz, Kody, Skanumezs, Cut & Splice, Sacrum Profanum, Ultraschall, Sonic Circuits in the USA. His music is published by Bolt, Cronica, Unsounds, Edition Telemark and others. In 2013 he was awarded EURORADIO “Palma Ars Acustica” prize for his radio art and a Golden Stage Cross for his theatre work in 2021. Since 2021 Arturas also performs with his improv group Sneeze Etiquette.
Sharon Gal is an interdisciplinary artist, performer, vocalist and composer, specialising in free improvisation, experimental music and collaborative, participatory large group compositions. She works with voice, electronics, extended techniques, field recordings, found audio, video and collage; exploring presence, listening, embodiment, and the relationship between people, sound and space. Sharon performs solo and in collaborations with: David Toop, Steve Beresford, Phil Minton, Charles Hayward, John Butcher, Andie Brown, Yoni Silver, Sue Lynch, Anat Ben David and Lina Lapelyte.
Since 2007 she has directed a series of site specific, large group compositions, inviting musicians and non-musicians to take part. She curates music concerts, including the series Sound Matter, at Café OTO, and concerts at Iklectik arts lab. Her music is released by many labels, including five solo albums and various collaborations.
Past performances include The V&A, ICA, The Whitechapel Gallery, Tate Modern & Tate Britain, MACBA, and Colour Out Of Space, Borealis, Supernormal, Supersonic, TUSK, and Tectonics festivals. Her experimental work, Etudes by Sharon Gal, a collection of text & colour scores, presented as a deck of 78 cards, was supported by Sound and Music and published in 2021.
https://www.sharon-gal.com/
https://sharongal.bandcamp.com
Caroline Kraabel is a London-based improviser.
In 2022 Kraabel brought together a large improvising group made up of all sorts of women, non-binary, and transgender improvisers: ONe_Orchestra New.
https://oneorchestranew.com/
Other active groups include:
Transitions Trio (with Charlotte Hug and Maggie Nicols); Fit To Burst, a song-based trio with Sarah Washington and John Edwards (https://carolinekraabel.bandcamp.com/album/fit-to-burst); a duo with Pat Thomas (on piano); the Poetry Quintet with Rowland Sutherland, John Edwards and Sofia Vaisman-Maturana, which incorporates live poetry from guest poets, including Moor Mother.
Kraabel has performed and recorded with many other excellent improvisers, including Robert Wyatt, Louis Moholo, Cleveland Watkiss, Hyelim Kim, Susan Alcorn, Veryan Weston, Mariá Portugal, Neil Metcalfe, Mark Sanders, Shima Kobayashi, and Chris Corsano.
Kraabel’s solo saxophone improvisations while walking in London and elsewhere with her infant child/ren in their pushcair were broadcast weekly 2002-2006 on Resonance 104.4 FM as Taking a Life for a Walk and more recently (without children) as Going Outside. Other radio work includes a series of interviews with improvisers in many media (music, dance, visual art, politics, activism), Why is Improvising Important.
Improvisers and Improvisation, made with John Edwards, is a 22-hour radio piece including music, noise, electronics, live performance and new interviews with improvisers; broadcast as part of 2022’s Radio Art Zone: https://radioart.zone/saturday-10-september
Some Kraabel compositions:
Performances for Large Saxophone Ensemble 1, 2, 3 and 4, for 21-piece spatial saxophone/voice ensemble; Get Used To Balancing, a suite of pieces for alto sax, percussion and two flutes; Now We Are One Two, a 45-minute solo performance; Recording The Other, for soprano, cello, flute, piano and four recording devices; LAST 1, 2 and 3 for pre-recorded voice (Robert Wyatt) and large ensemble; many songs; numerous pieces for large improvising ensembles in London and around the world, including Une note n’écoutant qu’elle-même and Missing.
Kraabel’s 40-minute soundfilm about lockdown London (London 26 and 28 March 2020: imitation: inversion, https://vimeo.com/505430655) received its avant-première at Café Oto in 2021, is available on the Jazzed app, and won the 2021 Ivor Novello Award for Sound Art Composer.
Kraabel conducted, devised pieces for, and played with the London Improvisers Orchestra (LIO) from 1998-2022, and organised their 20th anniversary celebrations, which featured celebrated LIO members from throughout the group’s history.
http://www.masskraabel.com/
https://carolinekraabel.bandcamp.com/
https://oneorchestranew.com/
https://oneorchestranew.bandcamp.com/releases
https://lonelyimpulsecollective.bandcamp.com/
https://jazzed.com/
