Recordedness
Sean Ali is a double bassist, improviser, and composer working in a variety of projects and contexts. Originally from Dayton, OH, he currently resides in New York City where he is an active participant in the city’s vibrant musical culture both as a performer and occasional curator. His most notable ensembles include Natura Morta (with Frantz Loriot and Carlo Costa), PascAli (with Pascal Niggenkemper), While We Still Have Bodies (with Michael Foster, Ben Gerstein, and Flin van Hemmen), Hag (with Brad Henkel and David Grollman), and a string trio with Joanna Mattrey and Leila Bordreuil. These projects have been released on a diverse array of record labels, including FMR Records, Prom Night Records, Creative Sources Recordings, and Neither/Nor Records. His multidisciplinary projects include Phantom Circuit (with photographer and video artist Wenxin Zhang) and Impulsive Instrument (with Butoh dancer Azumi Oe).
Raphaël Belfiore is born in 1995; based in Zürich; active in instrumental and mixed music, text scores, improvised performances and sound installations; background in musicology, philosophy and art history.
Percussionist and composer Carlo Costa was born in Rome, Italy. Since 2005 he has been living in New York City where he regularly performs as a leader and co-leader of various projects, as well as a sideman. Carlo is primarily involved with experimental improvised music and is an active composer for his ensembles and ad hoc projects. Current projects include: Earth Tongues (with Dan Peck and Joe Moffett), Moritz/Ali/Costa (with Jonathan Moritz and Sean Ali), Natura Morta (with Frantz Loriot and Sean Ali), Diaphane (with Frantz Loriot, Carl Ludwig Hübsch and Raphael Loher), and a duo with contrabass clarinetist John McCowen. Carlo has performed throughout Europe, the US and Japan in a wide variety of contexts. In November 2014 Carlo launched the record label Neither/Nor Records which is dedicated to experimental and improvised music.
The Belgian multi-instrumentalist Jozef Dumoulin redefines the Fender Rhodes (the mythical keyboard of the 70s) through an artistic field that is contemporary, eclectic and very personal. He is the first to present a solo programme with this instrument. He is also known for his open and luminous approach to acoustic piano, keyboards and music in general, always rooted in tradition without being overwhelmed by it. Very demanded as a sideman, Jozef Dumoulin has recorded and toured with the best musicians in the field of jazz, improvised music, rock and traditional music. At the same time he has established himself on the international scene with his numerous bands and personal projects, and has released some twenty CDs as (co-)leader. He currently lives in Paris.
Drummer and composer Flin van Hemmen was born in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Since moving to New York in 2008 he’s been an active presence in the world of improvisation / noise / jazz while experimenting with various percussive set ups. In his compositions Flin focuses on how harmony and melody can simultaneously create space for any variety of improvisation, field recordings and textures- rather than one embellishing the other, they weave one tapestry. Flin has performed at major festivals such as Moers and NorthSeaJazz, and has toured in Europe, Vietnam, Indonesia and the US.
Born 1960 in New York, Jason Kahn is a musician, artist and writer living in Zürich.
As an electronic musician, guitarist, vocalist and percussionist Kahn collaborates with many international musicians in the context of free improvised music. He has also composed numerous electro acoustic pieces and graphical scores written for specific groups and musicians. His work can be heard on over two hundred solo, collaborative and compilation releases. Kahn's written work has appeared in books, magazines and as liner notes to many audio publications.
In 2011 Kahn started the Editions imprint to publish his own recordings and writings.
Yan Jun is a musician and poet based in Beijing (China).
He is practicing in performative music, experimental composition, field recording, improvised music, experimental electronic music and relative presentation of exhibition. His works have often been ranged as “non-music”.
He is member of FEN, Tea Rockers and Impro Committee and founder of the independent label Sub Jam.
“I wish I was a piece of field recording.”
Sam Kulik is a musician in New York CIty, where he plays in a variety of regular and irregular groups. His tendencies are to play jazz music on the trombone, folk music on the tuba, rock music on the guitar, and lit jammers on the bass.
French-Japanese violist Frantz Loriot performs solo and is active in a number of international ensembles, mainly based on improvised and experimental music practices. He has contributed to interdisciplinary projects related to dance, image, theatre and poetry, and various installations.
After having lived in Paris and New York City, Frantz Loriot now resides in Zürich (Switzerland).
Luciano Maggiore is a Palermo-born, London-based musician whose work is characterised by the use of speakers and several analogue/digital devices (samplers, CD players, walkmans, tape recorders) and addresses the performativity of the musical act, the perception of it, and the obscurity that emanates from it.
His main interests include mechanisms of sound diffusion, performance, repetition, endurance, non-human animal languages, dance, folklore.
With Louie Rice, he started NO-PA/PA-ON, a project that deals with performing score-based works, both acoustic and amplified.
Joe Moffett approaches his work with a keen interest in unconventional sounds and forms, collective improvisation, and the intersection of action and stillness. He is a co-founder of several projects, including ambient improv trio Earth Tongues and the avant-art song duo Twins of El Dorado, in addition to performing frequently as a solo artist. He has also appeared with a number of artists and projects including Yoshi Wada, Joe Morris, and Tredici Bacci. His material appears on Neither/Nor, Underwolf, Eh?, NotTwo, Tubapede and Prom Night Records. His most recent solo album, Stress Positions, was released on Neither/Nor Records in April 2021.
Matthew Robidoux is a San Francisco based composer, improviser, and community organizer interested in the convergence of movement and sound, especially with regards to accessibility in improvisation and the communicative capacities of sonic energy. Their primary instrument is the corn synth — (kinetically operated randomness system [k.o.r.n.]) a modular architecture that interprets physical input from two "ears of corn" sculptures cast in aluminum.
In 2017 Matt established the Adaptive Instrument Ensemble (AIE), a community based practice focused on expanding the improvising community across abilities, demographics, and geographies. Beginning with a pilot workshop in 2019, Robidoux founded the Prepared Guitar Ensemble in collaboration with Creativity Explored, a studio-based collective that partners with people with developmental disabilities to celebrate and nurture the creative potential in all of us.
Tom Soloveitzik is a musician and artist based in Tel Aviv, Israel.
He works with the materiality of sound, the practice of listening, and the potentiality of recording [a ‘field’] through performance and writing.
He co-directs the Holon Scratch Orchestra.
Working primarily under the project title TARAB, melbourne, australia based eamon sprod explores re-contextualised collected sounds and tactile gestures formed into dynamic, spatial, psycho-geographical compositions inspired by discarded things, found things, crawling around in the dirt, junk, the ground, rocks, dust, wind, walking aimlessly, scratchy things, decay and most if not all the things he hears and sees.
More than simply documenting a given site, TARAB is interested in a direct engagement with our surrounds, teasing out half narratives, visceral sensation, false leads and heightened awareness: not describing a space, but attempting to shape one.
Recent works have consisted of multi-channel site responsive performances and installations for speakers, transducers, found things (sound and objects), microphones and rooms.
eamon sprod / TARAB has presented performances through out Australia, Europe, Japan, Korea, North and South America; compositional works have been published on labels including Naturestrip, nonlinear, 23five, Unfathomless, Aposiopese,
Swarming, Cronica, Semperflorens, Hemisphäreの空虚 and also his own sonicrubbish imprint formed in 2018.
Italian cellist Deborah Walker is a new music performer and improviser based in Berlin. She is interested in multiple forms of music creation related to the exploration of sound and interaction with other art forms. She has played at many festivals such as I Suoni delle Dolomiti, Italia Wave, ZKM in Karlsruhe, Centre Pompidou, Redcat (Los Angeles), Festival Nomad in MʼHamid (Morocco), Switch ON (Malaysia) and tours regularly in International venues and Festivals. She is a member of ensemble Dedalusand of the improviser orchestra ONCEIM. She has worked with composers like Pascale Criton, Éliane Radigue, Philip Corner and Phill Niblock, both in solo or in ensemble. Since more than a decade Deborah plays regularly with violinist Silvia Tarozzi. Their repertoire includes both contemporary and experimental works, as well as transcriptions of Italian traditional folksongs from their birthplace, the Emilia-Romagna region in Italy. After a Master in Music and sound composition at the University of Paris 8, Deborah completed a PhD at the University of Lorraine on the work of Fluxus artists in Reggio Emilia and Cavriago collaborating with Rosanna Chiessi and her editions Pari&Dispari, with a focus on the work of American cellist Charlotte Moorman.
Kenny Warren is an improvising trumpet player and composer from Denver, CO who has been based in New York City since 2002. He has released over a dozen wide ranging records of his own music. In any given week as a working musician in NYC Kenny finds himself in a number of different musical situations. He strives for some kind of essential continuity across genres, but is his most true self while improvising. His latest work seeks to blur the line between composition and improvisation while always prioritizing spontaneity and the possibility of altered consciousness through performance.
Theresa Wong is a composer, cellist and vocalist active at the intersection of music, experimentation, improvisation and the synergy of multiple disciplines. Her works include As We Breathe, an installed song commissioned by Long Beach Opera, She Dances Naked Under Palm Trees, commissioned by pianist Sarah Cahill and Harbors, co-composed with Long String Instrument inventor Ellen Fullman and included in The Wire's Top 50 Releases of 2020. Her multi-media piece, The Unlearning (Tzadik), twenty-one songs for violin, cello and two voices inspired by Goya's Disasters of War etchings, premiered in 2013 at Roulette in Brooklyn and was also presented at the 2016 New Frequencies Festival at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. She has shared her work across the U.S. and internationally at venues including Fabbrica Europa in Florence Italy, Cafe Oto in London, The Lab in San Francisco and The Stone in New York City. She is currently based in the San Francisco Bay Area.