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May 22, 2008

At STEIM's Local Stop: Audrey Chen on voice & cello live sampled by Robert van Heumen139



This Local Stop edition features 4 musicians from the Baltimore Improv scene, a German reedplayer and one local laptop musician. They will fill the night with 2 duo and 2 solo performances, presenting various sides of the electro acoustic music pallet. From the conceptual, via analog and circuit bending to the acoustic and the purely digital. Alessandro Bosetti presenting his Mask Mirror, Bonnie Jones & Andy Hayleck performing live electronics as a combination of broken delay pedals and digital processing, Hans Koch presenting an acoustic set with the bassclarinet, and Audrey Chen on voice & cello live sampled by Robert van Heumen.

Date: Thursday May 22 2008
Venue: STEIM, Utrechtsedwarsstraat 134, Amsterdam
Time: 20.30 hrs.
Entrance: 5 euros
Reservations and more information: knock@steim.nl or 020-6228690

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Audrey Chen is a Chinese-American musician and performance artist born outside of Chicago in 1976. Using the cello, voice and analog electronics, Chen’s work focuses on the combination and layering of traditional and extended techniques. a large component of her music is improvised and her approach to this is often extremely personal and visceral. Her performance work incorporates sound, movement and visual/sculptural concepts. Chen performs solo and in collaboration with a wide number of musicians and dancers. Among musicians, she has worked with many great improvisers, including Phil Minton, Elliott Sharp, Aki Onda, Phill Niblock, Alessandro Bosetti, Mike Cooper, Mats Gustafsson, Sten Sandell, Mazen Kerbaj, Michael Zerang, Tatsuya Nakatani, Assif Tsahar, Scott Rosenberg, Le Quan Ninh, Joe McPhee, Susan Alcorn, Michele Doneda, Paolo Angeli and Gianni Gebbia. Some current projects include duos with Gianni Gebbia, Alessandro Bosetti and Nate Wooley, the SILO trio with Nate Wooley and Leonel Kaplan and Trockeneis with Andy Hayleck, Dan Breen, Catherine Pancake and Paul Neidhardt. Chen has performed in Europe, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan, Taiwan and the USA. She is currently based in Baltimore, MD USA where she is member of the Red Room and High Zero collective, an on-going series and international festival devoted to experimental improvised music.
http://www.myspace.com/audreychen

Robert van Heumen is working with electronic, experimental, improvised and composed music, music-theater and sound art. Recent works include 5.1 surround compositions ’12 Bullets’ and ’Fury (after anger)’, music for the choreography Drink Me by Anouk van Dijk, and the audio-visual sound art piece Solitude (with multi-media artist Arnoud Noordegraaf) based on a book by Paul Auster. As a musician he uses STEIM’s live sampling software LiSa and real-time audio-synthesis and algorithmic composition software SuperCollider. He is active as a member of the electro-acoustic sextet OfficeR (with Koen Nutters cs.), electronic audio-visual trio SKIF++ (with Jeff Carey & Bas van Koolwijk), noiseband TNR (with Nicolas Field & Tom Tlalim), Shackle (working with Anne LaBerge on restriction), founding member of the N Collective, and has shared the stage with dj sniff (Takuro Mizuta Lippit), Michel Waisvisz, Richard Barrett, Sakata Akira, Nicolas Collins, Oguz Buyukberber, Luc Houtkamp, Guy Harries, Morten J. Olsen, Daniel Schorno, Roddy Schrock, Audrey Chen and Nate Wooley. His soundworld is a mixture of digital crackles, environmental sounds, voices, sounds from kitchen appliances, half of the time smashed beyond repair. Next to all of this he is Managing Director of the STEIM foundation in Amsterdam, curator of the Local Stop concert series and member of STEIM’s Artistic Committee. In a previous life a mathematician, trumpet player and software programmer. He still reads L.E.J. Brouwer.
http://west28.nl

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Alessandro Bosetti / Mask Mirror
A few months ago I wrote a note to myself: ’Try to create a mask that that doesn’t have anything to do with anything’ and kept wondering what that could mean until I started to imagine Mask Mirror. Mask Mirror a sampler to process recordings of spoken language in real time. The sampler follows both sound and meaning criteria in sorting, organizing and processing samples and in formulating utterances. It is a software tool based on max/msp and a speech recognition software interacting with my own voice during performances. It’s also a state of mind enabling expanded spoken and vocal improvisation, expanded communication and ecstasy. It has been developed in collaboration with Harvestworks Digital Arts Center in New York and STEIM in Amsterdam. Mask Mirror has to do with virtually everything but at the same time it does not have anything special to do with anything special. As well as being a blank mask I can put on my face - and my voice - it’s also a mirror that let me browse and talk to my memory while I am watching into it. All mirrors are masks and vice versa. Both are tools enabling identity.
’It is difficult not to treat Mask Mirror, with its randomized garble of words, as a willfully cryptic Oracle of Delphi reincarnated as an Apple laptop. While Bosetti had described the project as ’about the aboutness of being about’ what Noise got out all of this is that it’s devilishly hard not to seek meaning even where it’s clear none is forthcoming. Not until the program, in a moment of absurd hilarity, spit forth the word ’hamburgers’ did it all click: Mask Mirror is a tool for shearing all meaning from language. It’s a liberation, of sorts, like the sound version of Rorschach tests: The mind is encouraged to wander freely and delight in words purely for their sound. In the information overload of contemporary times, Mask Mirror’s playful rupturing of sense--its nonsense, in other words--is a welcome respite.’ Raven Baker - Noise/Citypaper
http://www.melgun.net
http://www.myspace.com/alessandrobosetti

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Bonnie Jones works with sound, text and performance. Born in 1977 in South Korea she was raised by dairy farmers in New Jersey, and currently resides in Baltimore, MD. In sound performances Bonnie plays the circuit boards of digital delay pedals. Her primary sound collaborators are Joe Foster in Korea (as the duet ’English’) and Andy Hayleck. She is also a member of the Performance Thanatology Research Society, a inter-disciplinary performance group dedicated to the advancement of a higher histrionics brought on by imminent finalities. Bonnie has performed at the Kim Dae Hwan Museum, the Ontological-Hysteric Theater, the ErstQuake Festival, and the 14 Karat Cabaret. http://www.bonniejones.wordpress.com

Andy Hayleck is a sound artist who has lived in Baltimore, MD for the past ten years. Things used to make sound include amplified gong/wire, bowed metal (scrap metal, cymbals and saw), and computer feedback. His work often deals with passing sounds through different objects. Recordings include: ’Two Gong/Wire Pieces’ (Ehse), ’Gong/Wire’ (earlids), ’Various Recordings Involving Ice’ (HereSee), and ’The Disappearing Floor’ (Recorded).

The duet project between Andy Hayleck and Bonnie Jones is an exploration of electroacoustic improvisation, using chance, tension and intention as tools for improvisatory methods. Both musicians use electronic instruments with a high degree of tactile control, where physical touch is integral to the production of the sound. Because the instruments are physical in nature, they are more than capable of producing unexpected sounds. The players rely on trust and listening to work with this unpredictability. At STEIM Andy and Bonnie plan to explore sound collaboration using field recordings from Amsterdam, text/language and electronics.

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Since the nineties Hans Koch has been working with electronics as an extension of the saxes & clarinets as well as with sampling and sequencing on the computer. As a reed-player he has his very own vocabulary and sound, which makes him a very unique voice on the actual scene.
’...he sounds for the most part very much like himself, a particular achievement on bass clarinet, which can easily submerge any musician`s individuality...’
Stuart Kremsky, ’Option’

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