Tuesday 11 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.
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.
For a long time now Phil Minton has been working as a improvising singer, solo and in groups and situations at various locations all over the place, deserts, quarries, concert halls, pubs, holes, dodgy clubs, containers, up trees, in prisons, on mountains, in churches, under bridges and cafe oto etc.
Phil Minton comes from Torquay. He played trumpet and sang with the Mike Westbrook Band in the early 60s - Then in dance and rock bands in Europe for the later of part of the decade. He returned to England in 1971, rejoining Westbrook and was involved in many of his projects until the mid 1980′s.
For most of the last forty years, Minton has been working as an improvising singer in lots of groups, orchestras, and situations. Numerous composers have written music especially for his extended vocal techniques. He has a quartet with Veryan Weston, Roger Turner and John Butcher, and ongoing duos, trios and quartets with above and many other musicians, including tours with American singer Audrey Chen - with whom he has sang far and wide in the last ten years.
Since the eighties, His Feral Choir, where he voice-conducts workshops and concerts for anyone who wants to sing, has performed in over twenty countries.
Pat Thomas studied classical piano from aged 8 and started playing Jazz from the age of 16. He has since gone on to develop an utterly unique style - embracing improvisation, jazz and new music. He has played with Derek Bailey in Company Week (1990/91) and in the trio AND (with Noble) – with Tony Oxley’s Quartet and Celebration Orchestra and in Duo with Lol Coxhill.
"Sartorially shabby as Thomas may be, and on first impression even rather stolid, he has a somewhat imperious charisma that’s immediately amplified when he starts to play. Unlike other pianists whose virtuosity seems to be racing ahead of their thought processes Thomas always seems supremely in command of his gift, and his playing, no matter how free and ready to tangle with abstraction, always carries a charge of authoritative exactitude." - The Jazzmann
Born 1946, ROGER TURNER grew up amongst the Canterbury musical life of the 1960s with a strong foundation in jazz. Since 1974 his work has been focused on exploring a more personal percussion language through the processes of improvisation. Solo performances, connections with experimental rock music & open-form song, extensive collaborations with dance, film and visual art, and involvements in numerous jazz-based ensembles and workshop residencies have all formed part of that development.
