Wednesday 20 September 2023, 7.30pm
Bex Burch / gyil, vocals
Caroline Kraabel / saxophones, vocals
Simon Camatta / percussion
Raissa Mehner / guitars
(London/Moers) Cafe OTO and Moers festival have realised an extensive residence project with multiple workshop phases in both cities. Artists from Northrhine-Westphalia and the UK will collaborate and the results of these encounters will be premiered both in London and at the moers festival 2023 and 2024.
In the second secret alliance, Raissa Mehner and Simon Camatta from NR-W team up with Bex Burch and Caroline Kraabel from UK. The preparation phase for this collaboration took place before the springtime performance at the Moers Festival.
While xylophonist Burch is, as ever, creating new instruments, sounds and worlds hitting things with her hands and creativity, globetrotter Kraabel sees dangerous improvisation as a way of life. She moves through the mundane with her saxophone, switching unexpectedly between language and play, and is a member of the notorious ONe_Orchestra New. Tough guy Simon Camatta has also swirled through numerous adventures in the Metamoersum in recent years and takes the messenger molecule SMS -among all the drum neurons – very seriously. With Raissa Mehner, a young sound pirate who fearlessly confronts every unfamiliar sound sequence, they set sail from Moersbach towards the Thames. Since this daring quartet gathered for the first time in Moers during Whitsun, one must be prepared for anything. (Psst: The city's council is afraid that the LI-BER-ATION of Britain is being prepared on the Rodelberg).
Bex Burch is the band leader of Vula Viel. A trio consisting of Ruth Goller on bass and Jim Hart on drums. She is a percussionist with a classical training at the Guildhall School of Music. Bex focuses her compositional output to the Gyilli Xylophone, an instrument she built herself under the tutelage of Ghanaian instrument makers. First visiting Ghana as an undergraduate, on the recommendation of a Ghanaian friend, she settled in the north, with the Dagaare People to begin an apprenticeship with Thomas Segkura, a professional maker of Dagaare xylophones, or Gyilli. Vula Viel have developed a strong following over the last few years, gigging regularly and releasing a well received LP in 2017 titled Good Is Good. They are currently finishing work on a new record.
''Beautiful... Dance to it, make love to it, consume it, stare at the clouds to it ....that music deserves good reactions'' Iggy Pop, 6 Music
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/
Simon Camatta, born 1976 in Essen, got his first drumkit as a christmas present at the age of 11. He studied Jazz at the Folkwang Hochschule in Essen. For twentyfive years now he is playing music of various styles and in many constellations around half of the world. At present you can listen to him with The Dorf, Handsome Couple feat. DJ Illvibe, EssenerNosieDubEnsemble and as well with diverse projects of Improv Music and in some Theaters and Dance Ensembles. Topping it all he is solo on the way.
Raissa Mehner, electric guitarist and composer from Cologne, uses all kinds of effect pedals and items to look for new variations of sounds and "expand her musical universe in all possible directions".
She studied jazz guitar, classical guitar and compositon at the 'Cologne University of Music' and the 'Folkwang University of Arts' in Essen.
As a bandleader she concentrates on the work with her Quintet 'Raissa Mehner Deviation' and celebrates a communicative and playful kind of Improvisation in her Duos 'wehnermehner' (Guit/Trombone), 'Double Exposure' (Guit/Vibrafone) und 'Bloch/Mehner' (Guit/Church Organ).
Furthermore Mehner is part of the oversized Krautrock-Improv-orchestra 'The Dorf' and the experimental Jazz-Pop-Quintet 'LARIZA', which received the newcomer price of the magazine 'Jazzthing' with their Album 'Weave' in 2022.
Amongst others she played at 'Moers Festival', 'Dortmunder Jazztage', 'Soundtrope Festival' in Athens‚ in the context of 'European Capital of Culture‘ on Cyprus as well as in numerous renowned jazz clubs in Germany.
