TOTAL MUSIC MEETING ´01

International Festival for Improvised Music
November 1 - 3, 2001

FMP FREE MUSIC PRODUCTION Distribution & Communication

Saturday, November 3, 2001

8.30 p.m.

Young European Improvisors / Spain

PIANO SOLO
Agustí Fernández (p)

The Berlin debut of the Catalan piano player who has gained quite a reputation for himself, as innovative instrumentalist, both at home and abroad. He has collaborated with many key European musicians including Evan Parker and Fred van Hove.
Supported by COPEC.


European Master-Series / France

DUO ANGSTER/KUBLER
Armand Angster (clarinet, bass clarinet, contra bass clarinet)
Françoise Kubler (sopran)

Both musicians are experts in transgressing musical conventions. Their activities range from working with contemporary composers to free improvisation, from the unconventional performance to the scenic realization of acoustic events. Their renowned ensemble ´Accroche Note´, founded 1981 in Strasbourg by Angster/Kubler, is but only one outlet of their multifarious undertakings in the field of music. For some years now, this formation has commissioned compositions from, and collaborated with composers the likes of Georges Aperghis, James Dillon, Horatio Radulesco and Gérard Pesson and many others on a larger scale.
Both musicians perform as soloists. Françoise Kubler with the Ensemble InterContemporain, the Philharmonic Orchestra of Radio France and the English Northern Philharmony. Armand Angster gives recitals of Mozart as well as Ferneyhough. He is also member of various improvising groups and is professor for clarinet and chamber music at the Conservatory of Strasbourg.


European Master-Series / France - Germany

KONTRABASSKLARINETTEN-PROJEKT
Wolfgang Fuchs (contrabass cl)
Armand Angster (contrabass cl)
Françoise Kubler (sopran)
Paul Lovens (dr, perc)

The sound of the contrabass clarinet has a strange affinity with the sound of a (female) soprano voice. The percussion moves around between these poles, holding everything together.
W.F.
Wolfgang Fuchs | Paul Lovens


Master-Series / USA - Germany - Portugal

SURPRISE ACT: VOYAGER / GEORGE LEWIS with ENSEMBLE
George Lewis (trombone)
Uli Gumpert (piano)
Wolfgang Fuchs (contrabass clarinet, bass clarinet, sopranino sax)
Axel Dörner (trumpet)
Carlos ´Zingaro` Alves (violin)
Paul Lovens (drums, percussion, singing saw)

Voyager is an interactive computer music composition and a multi-channel work whose metaphor is that of a virtual orchestra with human soloists playing acoustic instruments.
The Voyager interactive computer program was first designed by George Lewis in 1987 for Atari ST series computers based around the Motorola 68000 microprocessor.
The software aspect of the piece currently supports a maximum of sixty-four (64) seperate MIDI-voices. These voices are played by four 16-voice MIDI synthesizers, each of which has two audio output channels (stereo).
In collaboration with the ´Elektronisches Studio der TU Berlin´. Supported by Yamaha Europa GmbH, Rellingen, and Platybus.

George Lewis
trombonist, composer, improvisor and computer/installation artist, studied composition with Muhal Richard Abrams at the AACM School of Music, and trombone with Dean Hey. As a composer, Lewis has explored electronic and computer music, computer-based multimedia installations, text-sound works, and notated forms. A member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) since 1971, Lewis has worked closely with film/video artists Stan Douglas and Don Ritter, as well as with contemporary musicians such as Anthony Braxton, Anthony Davis, Bertram Turetzky, Count Basie, David Behrman, David Murray, Derek Bailey, Douglas Ewart, Evan Parker, Fred Anderson, Frederic Rzewski, Gil Evans, Han Bennink, Irène Schweizer, J.D. Parran, James Newton, Joel Ryan, Joëlle Léandre, Leroy Jenkins, Michel Portal, Misha Mengelberg, Miya Masaoka, Muhal Richard Abrams, Richard Teitelbaum, Roscoe Mitchell, Sam Rivers, Steve Lacy, Wadada Leo Smith and John Zorn.
In the last five years, Lewis´s works have been presented at the IRCAM Summer Academy (France), De Ijsbreker, the Groningen JazzMarathon and the BIM-Huis (Netherlands), P3 Art and Environment (Tokyo), the Centro Multimedia/Centro Nacional de las Artes (Mexico City), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute/iEAR Studios, Metronom (Barcelona), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Bang on a Can Marathon at Alice Tull Hall (New York), Akademie Schloss Solitude (Stuttgart), the Beijing International Jazz Festival, the New England Conservatory Improvisation Festival, the ICA (London), the Western Front (Vancouver), the Center for New Music and Audio Technology (Berkeley) and the Velvet Lounge (Chicago).
Lewis has served as music curator for the Kitchen (New York), and has collaborated in the ´Interarts Inquiry´ and ´Integrative Studies Roundtable´ at the Center for Black Music research (Chicago). His articles on music and cultural studied have appeared in journals such as Black Music Research Journal and Lenox Avenue. His article ´Teaching Improvised Music: An Ethnographic Memoir´ will appear in Arcana: Musicians on Music (Granary Books), and his forthcoming book, ´Power Stronger Than Itself: The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians´ will be published by the University of Chicago Press in 2001.
Lewis has served as Darius Milhaud Professor in Composition at Mills College, as lecturer in computer music at Simon Fraser University´s Contemporary Arts Summer Institute, and as Visiting Artist/Lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Lewis has received numerous fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and is the 1999 recipient of the Cal Arts/Alpert Award in the Arts.
Lewis now serves as Professor of Music in the Critical Studies/Experimental Practices area at the University of California, San Diego. His work as composer, improvisor, performer and interpreter is documented on more than 90 recordings.

Recent Installations and Compositions

• Information Station No. 1 (2000), multi-screen videosonic interactive installation for the Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant (San Diego).


• Ring Shout Ramble (1998), for saxophone quartet. Premiered 1998 by the ROVA Saxophone Quartet (San Diego)


• Signifying Riffs (1998), for string quartet and percussion. Premiered 2000 (AACM)


• North Star Boogaloo (1996), for percussionist and computer. Premiered 1996 UCSD). Steven Schick, percussion


• Collage (1995), for poet and chamber orchestra. Premiered November 1995 (New York City). Quincy Troupe, poet


• Endless Shout (1994), composition for piano, premiered 1994 (Amsterdam). Frederic Rzewski, pianist


• Virtual Discourse (1993), composition for infrared-controlled ´virtual percussion´ and four European-classically-trained percussionists. Premiered October 1993 (Bordeaux)

• ´Too Many Notes: Computers, complexity and culture in Voyager´, Leonardo Music Journal 10, 2000
• ´Stan Douglas : Hors-champs, toujours et pour toujours´, in : Jenny Lion (ed.) : Magnetic North: Experimental Video. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 2000
• ´Interacting with latter-day musical automata´, in: Contemporary Music Review, Vol. 18, Part 3, 1999, pp.99-112
• ´Teaching Improvised Music: An Ethnographic Memoir´, in: John Zorn (ed.): Arcana: Musicians on music, New York: Granary Books
• ´The Old People Speak Of Sound: Personality, Empathy, Community´, in: Sally Yard (ed.): INSITE 97: Private time in public spaces, San Diego 1998
• ´Singing Omar's Song: A (re)construction of Great BlackMusic´, in: Lenox Avenue, vol. 4, 1998
• ´Improvised Music After 1950: Afrological and Eurological Perspectives.´ Black Music Research Journal, vol. 16, No.1, Spring 1996
• ´Singing the alternative interactivity blues.´ Front, Vol. 7, No. 2, November/December 1995, pp. 18-22. Reprinted in: Grantmakers in the Arts, Vol. 8, No, 1, Spring 1997