Monday 10 July 2023, 8pm
"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.
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.
John Coxon, perhaps uniquely for an improvising guitarist, is inspired as much by the plangencies of Reggie Young as by the astringencies of Derek Bailey. As irascible and as spiky as it gets, his playing is always haunted by the ghosts of popular song and fragments of the blues.
"If you've ever been tempted by free improvisation, Parker is your gateway drug." - Stewart Lee
Evan Parker has been a consistently innovative presence in British free music since the 1960s. Parker played with John Stevens in the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, experimenting with new kinds of group improvisation and held a long-standing partnership with guitarist Derek Bailey. The two formed the Music Improvisation Company and later Incus Records. He also has tight associations with European free improvisations - playing on Peter Brötzmann's legendary 'Machine Gun' session (1968), with Alexander Von Schlippenbach and Paul Lovens (A trio that continues to this day), Globe Unity Orchestra, Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath, and Barry Guy's London Jazz Composers Orchestra (LJCO).
Though he has worked extensively in both large and small ensembles, Parker is perhaps best known for his solo soprano saxophone music, a singular body of work that in recent years has centred around his continuing exploration of techniques such as circular breathing, split tonguing, overblowing, multiphonics and cross-pattern fingering. These are technical devices, yet Parker's use of them is, he says, less analytical than intuitive; he has likened performing his solo work to entering a kind of trance-state. The resulting music is certainly hypnotic, an uninterrupted flow of snaky, densely-textured sound that Parker has described as "the illusion of polyphony". Many listeners have indeed found it hard to credit that one man can create such intricate, complex music in real time.
Mark has worked with a host of renowned musicians including Derek Bailey, Henry Grimes, Mathew Shipp, Evan Parker, Roswell Rudd, in duo and quartets with Wadada Leo Smith and trios with Charles Gayle with Sirone and William Parker.
In situations using composition Mark works in a number of projects including Christian Marclay’s Everyday for film and live music and John Butcher’s Tarab Cuts - both projects have performed major festivals throughout Europe and Brazil. He has performed works by guitarist John Coxon in Glasgow and Sydney playing with the Scottish and Sydney Symphony Orchestras. With New York’s ICE Ensemble he has performed John Zorn’s The Tempest in London and at Huddersfield New Music Festival.
Mark also works in the groups of Paul Dunmall including Deep Whole Trio with Paul Rogers, and the ensembles of Sarah Gail Brand, including a long-standing duo. He has a lengthy discography including a solo album, has performed internationally and played at major festivals including, Nickelsdorf, Ulrichsburg, Womad and notably at Glastonbury with legendary saxophonist John Tchicai.
"ubiquitous, diverse and constantly creative, drummer Mark Sanders always outdoes himself, whether playing with restraint or erupting like a dynamo." Bruce L Gallenter, Downtown Music Gallery. NY
Ashley Wales is a British composer and record producer, one half of Spring Heel Jack with John Coxon and an integral part of Bruise with Tony Bevan. He put on and hosted the monthly ‘back in your town’ concerts at the Red Rose in North London which saw the likes of John Tchicai, Other Dimensions in Music, Matthew Shipp, Han Bennink and many others playing with local improvising musicians. Ashley uses a wide range of sources to make music with including live sampling, electronics and acoustic instruments .
