In January 2021, veteran Madrid-based electroacoustic improviser Wade Matthews met with London-based improviser and performer Blanca Regina to record four short improvisations. Now, these short cuts have become Shortcuts, four brief glimpses of how two experienced and creative improvisers understand each other in sonic dialogues as surprising to them as to listeners.
Limited edition print version of the album available here.
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Blanca Regina: voice, electronics, objects and toys
Wade Matthews: digital electronics, realtime processing of recordings and amplified objects.
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Recorded, mixed and Mastered by Wade Matthews at Smiling Cow Studio in Madrid, January 2021
Cover Photo: Etching by Blanca Regina made at Taller de Grabado Fernando Sandoval, Oaxaca, México 2018.
Blanca Regina (b.1980) is an interdisciplinary artist, tutor, and independent curator who works with spontaneous composition systems creating multimedia landscapes using voice, objects, electronics, and visuals. She also makes books, prints, and films and provides lectures, workshops in the UK and internationally. With Steve Beresford - Unpredictable Series - she has co-produced three albums, working with Dave Hunt in London, ‘What Blue’ (2020) Duets with Steve Beresford; ‘Duets with Blanca Regina, Spontaneous Music, - various artists –‘ (2019), ‘Art of Improvisers (2017) - various artists.
For over ten years, she has been working with Terry Day on his art and music archives and completing a documentary film.
A recipient of the composer/ curator Grant and Paul Chagrin award - Sound & Music, her work has been supported by Arts Council England, British Music Collection, Amexcid, Photo-España, and Garage Cube. www.blancaregina.com
After studying woodwinds (flute, clarinet, saxophone) at the New England Conservatory in Boston, Wade Matthewsobtained his doctorate in composition at Columbia University, where he studied electronic synthesis at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center with Mario Davidovsky. Since then, Matthews has been active on five continents as an improviser, presenting his music in spaces such as the Experimental Intermedia Foundation, Issue Projects Room, Symphony Space and Museum of Modern Art (NYC), The National Center for the Arts (Mexico), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Santiago de Chile), the Reina Sofía Museum (Madrid), Fylkingen (Stockholm), etc. He has also taught workshops and masterclasses in France, Spain, Lebanon, Argentina, Mexico, Chile and Uruguay, including a three-day masterclass at the Conservatoire de Paris. He is the author of Improvisando. La libre creación Musical(Turner, 2012), eleven volumes of the Historia de la Música Deutsche Grammophon, and numerous essays. Besides his own CDs, he has recorded for the Atelier de Création Radiophonique of Radio France, RTVE in Spain, the BBC, SODRE, etc. As a musical creator, he has received commissions including a Commande d'Étatfrom the French Government, a Meet the Composer Grant from the New York State Council on the Arts, and touring grants from the United States Department of State, the Spanish Cervantes Institute and the Fundación Autor. www.wadematthews.info
