Wednesday 18 January 2017, 7.30pm
“Ankersmit constructs a musical world that feels alive and capable of going anywhere, and yet also manages to give the music a strong sense of structured purpose, a degree of compositional control unusual in this area of live performance. It is the fine balance between the sense of chaos that threatens to pull everything apart and the controlled formation of the music into clearly defined sections of differing intensities that raises the work above that of so many of Ankersmit’s contemporaries.” – Richard Pinnell, The Wire
Thomas Ankersmit (1979, Leiden, Netherlands) is a musician and composer based in Berlin and Amsterdam.
Acoustic phenomena such as sound reflections, infrasonic vibration, otoacoustic emissions, and highly directional projections of sound have been an important part of his work since the early 2000's. His music is also characterized by a deliberate misuse of the equipment, using feedback and disruptions to the signal, and the extremes of frequency and dynamics, to create visceral but finely detailed swarms of sound. Since 2006 his main instrument, both live and in the studio, has been the Serge modular synthesizer.
Ankersmit collaborated with Sicilian composer/performer Valerio Tricoli on Forma II, a series of electroacoustic pieces released on the PAN label, and on music based on the acoustics of abandoned radar domes. Both projects were honoured by Ars Electronica. Other recent collaborations include recording sessions with Kevin Drumm at GRM in Paris, and a new Phill Niblock composition for Serge modular synthesizer (Niblock’s first piece for an electronic instrument).
Leila Bordreuil is a Brooklyn based cellist, composer and sound artist from France. Her cello playing is often improvised, and mainly focuses on texture variations and a collage of phantom overtones and pitched utterances. Through an original vocabulary of extended techniques, preparations, and imaginative amplification methods, her instrument is used as an abstract resonant body to challenge conventional cello practice. Her composed works draw from a similar texture-based musical aesthetic, but also focus on the relationship between sound and space. In her site-specific electro-acoustic compositions, architecture is the foundation of the piece and musicality arises from an organized spacialization of sound.
Bordreuil's collaborative projects include duos with Michael Foster and Tamio Shiraishi, a trio with Sean Ali and Joanna Mattrey, and the no-wave band “Signal Break”.
Since moving to Brooklyn in 2012, Leila has maintained an active concert schedule performing with Marina Rosenfeld, Eli Keszler, Tom Chiu (Flux quartet), Anthony Coleman, Peter Evans, Nate Wooley, SENYAWA, Toshimaru Nakamura, Tetuzi Akiyama, Bill Nace, Lee Ranaldo, Weasel Walter, Chris Corsano, Lea Bertucci and more.
