Sunday 21 January 2018, 7pm, OTO Project Space
Massimo Magee / saxophone
Ken Ikeda / electronics
Joshua Weitzel / shamisen
Joshua Weitzel (*1989 in Kassel) is a musician (Shamisen and Guitar) and curator active mostly in the field of experimental music, contemporary jazz and the grey areas in-between. His music is mainly concerned with exploration of contrast, abstract harmony and dynamics and employs a wide array of extended playing techniques.
Founder of Contemporary Shamisen Duo together with shamisen Master Ryota Saito and Ensemble for Experimental Chamber Music Kassel/Interrogation Quartet together with Chie Nagai, Ulrike Lentz and Massimo Magee, which recently debutet at the “Tage Neuer Musik in Weimar” Festival.
He further works/worked with many musicians from all over the world, among them Yumiko Tanaka, Eddie Prévost, Haco, Matthias Schubert, Liping Ting, Tetuzi Akiyama, Katsura Mouri, Simon Rose and many more. His concert series and organising activity in Kassel have become a driving force in the local improvised and experimental music scene, hosting many international artists and being supported in 2018 by municipal and federal funding.
Massimo Magee is a writer, artist and musician based in London. His work is wide-ranging, including fiction, text art, sound and image audiovisual digital art pieces, digital visual art, experimental music (improvised, composed and everything in between), free jazz, radically extended saxophony, electronics, data manipulation and much more. His new acoustic solo alto saxophone record, Toneflower, will be released in August 2022 on 577 Records from New York, a label he has worked with on numerous releases since 2020, including in Cyclone Trio with Tony Irving and Tim Green and in a quartet with Eddie Prévost, Ken Ikeda and Joshua Weitzel. The following month, his new audiovisual novel will be published by Eleusinian Press.
Ken Ikeda is a composer and performer, born in Tokyo. He creates unique electric improvisation by a delicate combination of sine waves. After studying at Berklee College of Music, he has exhibited sound art and visual installations around the world. He has released five solo albums and collaborated on albums with David Toop, Eddie Prevost, John Russell, Toshimaru Nakamura, Tetuzi Akiyama, Chihei Hatakeyama and many other improvising musicians; Also he has collaborated with, amongst others, visual artist Mariko Mori, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Tadanori Yokoo, Darren Almond; and composed and recorded for film maker David Lynch. He released CD albums from Touch, Spekk, Baskaru, White Paddy Mountain and Home Normal. Ken Ikeda currently lives and works in London, UK.
