Ensemble Phœnix Basel

Once a year, EPhB invites experimental musicians with a rather non-academic background to collaborate. These artists come from fields such as noise, free improvisation, sound art, etc. The young percussionist and improviser Camille Emaille and the Zurich composer, sound artist, theater musician and improviser Thomas Peter will each conceive and curate a concert half. In this case, the ensemble does not “merely” implement a musical text, but participates in the composition in a direct way.

A percussionist from the Alpes de Haute Provence, where she lives, Camille Emaille (*1993) followed a path of classical and then contemporary music that led from a mountain music school to the Basel Music Academy or even to Mills College in Oakland for improvised music. Her practice today is based on a physical relationship to sound, both in the material and volume of the instruments she works with, as if working the earth, and in the physical energy used to play. Whether through improvisation, written or pre-structured music, she searches for that line where energy, concentration and listening are activated on such a level that the awareness of oneself in relation to the rest of the world eventually disappears, like walking for weeks.

Thomas Peter (*1971) is a musician, composer and lecturer. He has been active in the fields of electro-acoustic music composition, improvised music and sound installations for over 25 years and teaches at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). He lives and works in Zurich. His concert activities include performances as a solo artist and as an interpreter of contemporary music in Europe, Asia, North and South America. In his compositions, he deals in various ways with the interaction possibilities of the musicians within the ensemble, be it through improvisational settings or through dynamic or freely set feedback possibilities. Thomas Peter studied audio design and improvisation at the Basel Academy of Music. His composition neugut.rand won first prize in the Electroacoustic Composition Competition at the Musica Viva Festival in Lisbon. In 2013 (together with André Meier) and 2017 he received the work grant from the Kuratorium Aargau.