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TRACK 1
Ward Weis: A letter by letter reading of Robert Filliou’s WHISPERED ART HISTORY (Museum of Modern Art, Antwerp, 2010)
A letter by letter reading of Robert Filliou’s WHISPERED ART HISTORY. Projected in a sound installation at the Museum for contemporary art of Antwerp (MHKA). An eight minute excerpt from the live performance recorded January 17th, 2010.
Concept: Ward Weis,
Voice: Robert Filliou, Jean-Philippe Renoult,
Software: Floris van Manen, Ronny Pringels,
Engineer: Klaas Janssens,
Production: Luc Gubbels, Marabou
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TRACK 2
Marc Weiser: Wär ich doch in Düsseldorf geblieben (I wish I had stayed in Düsseldorf) (DKultur, Berlin, 2008)
Recorded live at Radialsystem V Berlin, 17.1.2008
excerpt: 3’53
For Art’s Birthday 2008 „Forever young“, Marc Weise aka Rechenzentrum celebrates the golden days of German Punk and New Wave.
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TRACK 3
Norbert Math with Daniel Lercher: The Great Highlander Jubilee
(ORF Kunstradio / ESC im Labor Graz / Kunst im öffentlichen Raum Steiermark, 2010)
Kunstradio’s Art’s Birthday Party, ESC im Labor Graz, 17 January 2010 together with Kunst im öffentlichen Raum Steiermark / Social Sound Systems and with Radio Helsinki, Graz
An exciting moment at each birthday celebration is when the candles on the cake are lit and the guests gather around, ready to applaud and sing. This is how Norbert Math started his performance, a present to Art on its 1,000.047th anniversary on 17th January 2010. The cake was a Gugelhupf, a ring-shaped Austrian specialty, which may not have fit the adequate number of candles but nonetheless served its purpose.
The maximum duration of the performance was determined by the time the candles need to burn down: 15 minutes. Math tried to extinguish the candles with a bagpipe, to be precise Great Highlander Bagpipes, a bargain he had acquired on the internet. Never having played this instrument before, Norbert Math introduced Daniel Lercher to enhance the sounds electronically. The audience at the ESC in Graz observed each blow of air, that Math managed to squeeze out of the bagpipes, excitedly. Eventually, it took him only less than seven minutes to blow out the candles on the Gugelhupf. The performance alluded to the absurd events that Fluxus artists like Robert Filliou used to stage and score.
Concept: Norbert Math
Performance: Norbert Math, Daniel Lercher
Sound: Martin Leitner
http://www.kunstradio.at/PROJECTS/AB2010/
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TRACK 4
Ghedalia Tazartes, Jac Berrocal, David Fenech: Quando
(France Musique / Radio France, Paris, 2010)
Ghedalia Tazartes : voix et objets divers
Jac Berrocal : trompette
David Fenech : Guitare et objets divers
Trois entités des musiques inventives se réunissent pour un projet sonore singulier qui męle avec dextérité la voix envoűtante de Ghédalia Tazartčs, la guitare déstructurée de David Fenech et les soubresauts implosifs de la trompette de Jac Berrocal.
GHEDALIA TAZARTES est un chanteur, počte et auteur d’une musique concrčte… Poésie savante ou populaire, différentes langues minoritaires ou majoritaires, utilisées pour leur place symbolique dans le grand jeu de la domination culturelle ont fait naitre une langue cristallisant ce que toutes les langues oublient de dire. (d’aprčs Pierre Hemptine).
JAC BERROCAL est un trompettiste, chanteur et performeur incontournable, ŕ la croisée du free jazz, du punk et de la poésie sonore. Son style ŕ fleur de peau, ŕ la fois tendre et violent est inimitable et imprévisible. Il a joué avec des musiciens exceptionnels.. la liste est longue. Parmis eux : Pascal Comelade, Jaki Liebezeit (Can), Sunny Murray, Jacques Thollot, James Chance, Nurse With Wound, Daunik Lazro, Chris Cutler, Yvette Horner, Messagero Killer Boy (le groupe du cinéaste F.J Ossang), Aki Onda, Pierre Bastien, Lol Coxhill, Jeanne Moreau…
DAVID FENECH est un musicien parisien , guitariste, chanteur, improvisateur. Il a enregistré et joué avec des musiciens aussi divers que Felix Kubin, Jad Fair, Tom Cora, Andrea Parkins, Steve Arguelles, James Plotkin, Gino Robair, Ramona Cordova, Shugo Tokumaru, Ghedalia Tazartes, Klimperei, Ergo Phizmiz et de nombreux autres musiciens. Récemment, il a sorti l’album Polochon Battle (sur le label inPolysons), travaillé ŕ l’IRCAM, interviewé Robert Wyatt, composé des musiques pour le théatre et pour le cinéma, construit de petits robots musicaux, enregistré un horspiel pour Radio France…
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TRACK 5
Karl-Heinz Blomann, Richard Ortmann: Sometimes Pumpstation (WDR, Dortmund, 2007)
[index 1] excerpt 1
[index 2] excerpt 2
[index 3] excerpt 3
UPGRADE MEETS ART’S BIRTHDAY
“Sometimes Pumpstation” live at the Evinger Bach Pump Station in Dortmund
Sound and dance performance on the theme of “Change in the Emscher Valley” as part of the UPGRADE project
UPGRADE, the first meeting of artists from the three cultural capitals of 2010, is bringing together dancers and musicians from Hungary, Turkey and Germany. The Emscher and its transformation into a clean river are the focus of artistic attention. The sound and dance project will come to its climax and conclusion on 17 January 2007 with three premieres at three different venues along the Emscher.
The Emscher runs through the former coal and steel production region of the Ruhr from Dortmund to Dinslaken, where it flows into the Rhine. The Ruhr area, with around 5 million inhabitants, is one of Europe’s largest post-industrial conurbations.
Like arteries, the Emscher system extends over 341 km through residential areas and industrial estates, and characterizes the urban landscape in many locations. Even if it is firmly anchored in the perception of the residents, the Emscher’s banks and its tributaries are places to avoid at the centre of this urban scene. Laid in concrete sewer inverts, straightened and constrained by dykes, they flow through the region as a relict of industrialization and mining, as Europe’s last open waste water channels.
A new signal is now being issued with the conversion of the Emscher system and the vision of the new Emscher valley. In a construction project lasting over twenty years, the Emscher and its tributary streams are being converted back into almost natural rivers. Drainage pipes have to be driven into the ground so that the region’s waste water will in future be able to flow underground to the treatment plants. The sewer inverts are being removed, and the river and streams widened at some locations and restored to a natural condition. At a number of tributaries, this is already reality. The former places to avoid are becoming high quality areas for leisure and relaxation in the middle of urban structures. The body responsible for these measures is the Emschergenossenschaft in Essen.
Whereas 100 years ago the intentional transformation of the original river landscape into one of the world’s largest waste water systems was taking place, today’s planning is proceeding in the opposite direction. The planned recovery of the river landscape is of enormous economic, social, architectural and aesthetic importance to the Ruhr region as a whole.
The aim of UPGRADE is to focus on and artistically reflect this socio-cultural side of the Emscher conversion.
In the “Sometimes Pumpstation” performance, the unusual venue of the Evinger Bach Pump Station in Dortmund, erected in 1953, becomes an ally and one of the cast. With a maximum delivery of 12,000 litres per second, Dortmund’s Evinger Bach ranks among the Emschergenossenschaft’s largest pumping stations. In the station’s cellar, where a tangle of huge pipes and steel structures normally fulfils its function in secret, sound artists, musicians and a dancer will interact on 17 January and outline their interpretations of the Emscher valley’s past and future. Through international networking with the European Broadcasting Union’s “Art’s Birthday” radio event, “Sometimes Pumpstation” will at the same time make a contribution to the “renaturing” or rediscovery of the ether as an artistic medium. The EBU’s Ars Acustica working group regularly celebrates the (fictitious) birthday of art with an ambitious four-hour satellite broadcast. Performances from different continents flow together there, as a contrasting programme to the shallow trickles of “straightened” format radio.
This year, the Ars Acustica network is also remembering the path-breaking experiments of radio pioneer Reginald Aubrey Fessenden, who was the first person to succeed in broadcasting a human voice a hundred years ago. From the Dortmund pump station, the control centre for the circulation of huge masses of water in the Emscher region, the voice of Almut Kühne, the saxophone of Karl-Heinz Blomann, the guitar playing of Krisztián Kelner and the soundscape montages of Richard Ortmann will then be fed into the international universe of sound.
UPGRADE Organizer open systems e.V., Essen
UPGRADE Artistic Director Karl-Heinz Blomann
SOMETIMES PUMPSTATION
Richard Ortmann Soundscapes
Karl-Heinz Blomann Saxophone
Krisztián Kelner Guitar, live electronics
Almut Kühne Voice
Marcela Ruiz Quintero Dance
Cooperation partner: Emschergenossenschaft, Essen
UPGRADE is sponsored
by the Minister President of the State of Nordrhein-Westfalen,
by the Culture Office of the City of Essen,
by the Culture Department of the City of Herne, and
by the Culture Office of the City of Dortmund.
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TRACK 6
Arsenije Jovanovic: Birthday collage, selected fragments from Arts Birthday contributions
(Radio Belgrade, 2006 – 2008)
”Birthday collage”
Under the title ”Birthday collage”, the following fragments were chosen from my three arts birthday pieces: ”Trans Dada Belgrade Express” (2006), ”Toast to Radio” (2007), and ”Gypsy Party in a Turkish Bathhouse” (2008). As a kind of “coda” , I eventually added one single fragment from one of my earlier work, ”Liturgy of the bird”, which was also part of RB last arts birthday participation.
Some of the performers who participated in these pieces:
A group of Belgrade artists, mostly musicians willing to step out of traditional ways of playing – instrumentalists Ljuba Dimitrijevic and Misa Ristic, Gypsy trumpet player Goran Grbic, Papa Nick ensemble, Radio Belgrade Children Section, unique multimedia artist Rackovic, D. Djuricic percussion, percussionist and sound artist Akash Bhat from India, members of the RTB choir, prominent ethno-musicologist and performer Svetlana Stevic, some jazz soloists and singers – together with many others – were enthusiastic part-takers in these performances.
Except ”Toast to Radio”, which was recorded in a studio, the other two pieces were performed in two wondrous places. One, a 60 meters deep Austro-Hungarian well, built during the time as the Austro-Hungarian empire ruled Belgrade. The well has 212 steps with two spiral hallways which wrap and twist with a series of well cylinder, one descending and the other climbing back towards the exit from the well. Architecturally, this ziggurat resembles a tower of Babel set on its head. Microphones and performers were placed inside of these spiral staircases, depending on the acoustic conditions.
The other piece, was performed in the unique region of an authentic hamam, built during the Turkish ruled Serbia. The interiors of these public bathrooms, an acoustic counterpart to the visible world, were an inspiration and a challenge to both, author and performers, playing frequently at freezing temperatures.
Arsenije Jovanovic
Arsenije Jovanovic theatre, radio and television director, born in Belgrade, Serbia 1932., writer and audio-art author, university profesor – he was teaching acting at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade until the brake of the war in ex-Yugoslavia – Fulbright scholar and visiting professor at State University of New York at Albany, for eleven years theatre director in The National Theatre in Belgrade, later artistic director of The Bitef Theatre (Theatre in the Church), directing plays for theatres both in ex-Yugoslavia and abroad (Sheffield in England, Sofia in Bulgaria, Albany in USA), author of different sound installations – one was in Berlin as a part of SFB participation at Sonambiente event – initiator of a sound workshop at Kunstradio (ÖRF, Wien), initiator of a sound workshop at Media Arts Center at the University of Sydney 1999, participating sound workshops in Finland (Oulu and Helsinki), Denmark (Faeroe Islands), founder of the Adriatic Sound Factory, a moving sound laboratory settled for the time being in Rovinj in Istria, Croatia.
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TRACK 7
Martin Ježek: Sound performance based on Milan Grygar’s graphic scores
(Czech Radio, Prague, 2008)
Sound performance based on Milan Grygar’s graphic scores from around 1968.
performer: Martin Ježek
duration: 7:52
live at Studio B
“The quiet of the studio helped me overcome the silence of the drawing. Suddenly I perceived all sounds from outside, birds’ song, children’s cry. One day, when I was drawing, my attention was attracted to the rhythm of my wooden tool that disturbed the quiet of the studio, I could hear my own rhythm.” (mg)
From the 1960’s, the works of Milan Grygar, a leading Czech graphic artist and a representative of linear abstraction, tended to include acoustic phenomena in graphic art. Grygar thoroughly explored various possibilities for the relation between sound and image, which includes linear scores and drawings designed for musical rendition, drawings across the stave, conceptual scores, and sound table performances that record the sound of manipulation with objects on paper. In his new radiophonic composition, Martin Jezek rediscovers some composition principles used by Grygar as well as traditional themes from his works (use of toys, automotive objects, etc.). Jezek’s improvised sound performance with exact determination gives performers precise and limiting instructions for rendition while providing leeway for improvised gestures.
Martin Jezek, born in 1976 in Prostejov, Martin Jezek is one of the most prominent Czech authors of formal and conceptual film. The vast majority of his works are based on extremely formal positions: scores and concepts that delimit the shape of a movie before it is produced. The movie takes shape uncontrollably within the set boundaries. Besides his own movies, he applied this concept to several remakes (Richard Weiner, Vera Linhartova). He has just recently finished a documentary film-brut called Second League. He works with the Birds Build Nests Underground group, helping them with the visual side of their performances.
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TRACK 8
Olesya Rostovskaya: Shine
(Radio Russia, Moscow, 2010)
“Shine”
This music for the unusual ensemble – organ & Russian bells – was written as the first repertoire piece for new instrument: special mobile set of Russian bells “Sofia”. The title is absolutely equal to sounding. Performer – Olesya Rostovskaya (both organ & bells). This is a live-recording from concert.
Olesya Rostovskaya
(composer, organist, carillonneur and thereminvox performer)
Olesya Rostovskaya was born in 1975. She studied piano at Anna Artobolevskaya class in Central Music School of Tchaikovsky Moscow State Conservatory. Then from 1993 to 2000 she completes her study at Tchaikovsky Moscow State Conservatory as composer (Professor – the head of Conservatory composition department – Albert Leman) and in 2001 she also graduates Moscow Conservatory as organist (Professor – Oleg Yanchenko). In 1998 she began to study playing thereminvox with Lidya Kavina. From 2003 Olesya Rostovskaya became a Russian bell ringer. In 2006 she began to play carillon. In 2008 she has graduated the Saint-Petersburg State University as carillonneur (Professor – Jo Haazen) and in 2009 she has also graduated the Royal Carillon School “Jef Denyn” in Mechelen, Belgium (Professor – Jo Haazen).
Olesya Rostovskaya has huge activity as a composer with her compositions for symphony and chamber orchestras, different ensembles, choir, organ, carillon, thereminvox, vocal, music for theater, radio, electro acoustic music. Among her compositions there are “Markus – Passion”, Concert for thereminvox and orchestra, “Carriage” opera on the book of Nikolay Gogol and many other.
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– ART'S BIRTHDAY – 