10–11 July 2023
"Ute Wassermann's vocal practice is so unique and specialized that it seems to challenge our ability to understand it's sounds as vocal." – Aaron Cassidy, Noise in and as Music
Special two-day residency with voice artist, composer performer and improvisor, Ute Wassermann, featuring solo performances plus unmissable new collaborations with John Coxon, Evan Parker, Mark Sanders, Ashley Wales, Phil Minton, Pat Thomas, and Roger Turner.
Day One of the residency also marks the vinyl release of Strange Songs on Treader; an album of multiphonic trills and yodels, loops of ululations, sudden percussive outbursts, warbling glissandi… sculptural, oscillating, swirling tone-colours… the human voice dissolving into the sounds of birds, machines, electronics, scraps of otherworldly language.
"Wassermann sings as a bird, rather than like one. And as philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari point out in A Thousand Plateaus, “Becoming is never imitating.” Wassermann doesn’t copy song that’s already documented on early sound recordist Ludwig Koch’s shellac discs or Chris Watson’s ornithological audio files she effectively projects herself into avian mode. Further, she doesn’t use birdsong to mark out territory, but in order to depart from the beaten track of human vocal music, even from those less well worn pathways of extended technique. According to Deleuze and Guattari, “The same thing that leads a musician to discover the birds also leads her to discover the elementary and the cosmic.” – Julian Cowley THE WIRE
Ute Wassermann is a voice artist, composer performer and improvisor. She grew up in Kiel on the Baltic Sea in an artistic - scientific environment that brought her into contact with environmentally relevant topics.
She studied visual arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Hamburg with artists from Fluxus and Happening like Henning Christiansen and Allan Kaprow, and subsequently visual arts, music and singing at the University of California, San Diego. For many years she has toured the world as an improviser and performer of contemporary music. In the last decade she has been increasingly realising audiovisual voice performances / installations and compositions for soloists and ensembles. At the core of her research is an ongoing and uncompromised exploration of her voice. Ute Wassermann´s singing transcends the human voice resulting in multidimensional sculptural sounds oscillating between electronic, animalistic, inorganic and human qualities. She takes this to the extreme by creating a visceral sound space through the use of different types of microphones.
In her solo album strange songs for voice and birdcalls (TREADER, UK) she embodies a hybrid vocal persona with swirling, trilling, screeching, sighing, breathing and singing tone-colours. Furthermore she extends and alienates the voice including the use of bird whistles, lo-fi electronics, resonators, fieldrecordings and every day objects. With her performances she creates imaginary acoustic habitats in which her chameleon-like voice collaborates with the voices of other-than-humans sounding from raw materials and objects.
She is a member of bands including speak easy (with Phil Minton, Thomas Lehn, Martin Blume), Duo Lanz-Wassermann with turntableist Joke Lanz), electrovoX (with Thomas Lehn and Richard Scott on analogue synths), Asfourieh (with trumpeter Mazen Kerbaj), MUT (Thomas Rohrer, Michael Vorfeld), radio tweets (with trumpeter Birgit Ulher) and performs with musicians and ensembles like Lotte Anker, Jaap Blonk, Marina Cyrino, Isabelle Duthoit, Emilio Gordoa, Aleks Kolkowski, Magda Mayas, Andrea Parkins, Mazen Kerbaj, Liz Kosack, Els Vandeweyer, Charlotte Hug, Fernando Vigueras, Raed Yassin, Michael Zerang, Münchener Kammerorchester, L´ART POUR L´ART, ELISION, ASKO, Distractfold Ensemble, Basel Sinfonietta, Ensemble Mosaik, Quiet Music Ensemble.She has premieres numerous compositions especially written for her voice including works by Richard Barrett, Henning Christiansen, Chaya Czernowin, Hespos, Matthias Kaul, Karen Power, Alejandro Romero Anaya, Sam Salem.
