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.
We conclude our season with the series “Blanko”. The main focus lies in this ongoing project on discussing the language of today’s music in a free form. Ensemble Phoenix Basel invites two experimental musicians from the fields of noise, free improvisation, sound art, etc. to collaborate. This year we are invited to play this program in the “Antifestival 2K+” in Novi Sad.
Svetlana Maraš will open the evening. The Serbian composer and sound artist works in fields between experimental music and sound art. Since 2021, she is co-director of the Electronic Studio Basel and professor of creative music technology at the Hochschule für Musik FHNW.
Lucas Niggli takes over in the second half of the concert. The Swiss drummer and sound innovator, who, throughout his career, has been an experimentalist and pioneer in the search for new musical worlds, created and performed his piece “PLAY!” together with EPhB in the “Blanko 2022” program.
We conclude our season with the series “Blanko”. The main focus lies in this ongoing project on discussing the language of today’s music in a free form. Ensemble Phoenix Basel invites two experimental musicians from the fields of noise, free improvisation, sound art, etc. to collaborate.
Svetlana Maraš will open the evening. The Serbian composer and sound artist works in fields between experimental music and sound art. Since 2021, she is co-director of the Electronic Studio Basel and professor of creative music technology at the Hochschule für Musik FHNW.
Fred Frith takes over in the second half of the concert. The English multi-instrumentalist is best known for his guitar playing and likes to use all kinds of everyday objects to make his instruments sound. From 2011 to 2020 he taught improvisation at the Hochschule für Musik Basel.
Our “Blanko” projects are already legendary. On the one hand, we have been performing in this self-invented format for well over ten years, and on the other hand, the unusually intensive nature of the collaboration and engagement with two artists per season unites us in a particularly intense bond. Consciously not coming from the usual curriculum of a composer’s training, we bring together lateral entrants, “sonic artists” in the broadest sense, visual artists with a clear musical affinity, etc., with our expert ensemble members for electronic or amplified music.
This year we are planning our sound experiments with the Swiss drummer and sound innovator Lucas Niggli, who, throughout his career, has been an experimentalist and pioneer in the search for new musical worlds.
With the Swedish saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist Mats Gustafsson we were able to win a heavyweight of musical expressiveness. Gustafsson moves virtuously between the genres of free jazz, experimental rock, noise, electronica and dance theater.
Our “Blanko” projects are already legendary. On the one hand, we have been performing in this self-invented format for well over ten years, and on the other hand, the unusually intensive nature of the collaboration and engagement with two artists per season unites us in a particularly intense bond. Consciously not coming from the usual curriculum of a composer’s training, we bring together lateral entrants, “sonic artists” in the broadest sense, visual artists with a clear musical affinity, etc., with our expert ensemble members for electronic or amplified music.
Marco Papiro – “Vamos a la playa” (WP 2021)
Marco Papiro is a Swiss-Italian graphic artist, multi-instrumentalist and electronic music producer. Active as a solo artist since the 90s, he was part in the band “Mir” in company of Daniel Buess, whose posthumous last LP has just been released. Papiro’s music is imbued with a personal language, picturesque, mystical and at times humorous. “Vamos a la playa” is his first composition for ensemble.
Dragos Tara – “Escape Room #2” (WP 2021)
The musical work of the French-Swiss composer and double bassist Dragos Tara moves fluidly between composition and improvisation. His work is strongly influenced by the exploration of “game theory”, the questioning of traditional social rituals, and the possibilities of instrumental and physical extensions. The series “Escape Room”, for ensemble and video, plays with multiple forms of narration, such as those found in “gaming culture”. It takes ensemble and audience on an imaginary journey into a shared virtual world.
In our blanko project this year we give the “word” to two artists who have taken different paths in terms of their musical careers, but who seem to us extremely suitable as partners for this renewed adventure in the mixed zone of different genres because of their common interest in interdisciplinarity.
In our deliberately open blank program, we hope once again to make the boundaries of the genres perceptible and tangible, to transcend them and to interweave different genres of contemporary artistic creation more closely.
With Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje we have invited an immensely versatile artist: The composer and vocal artist with an unmistakably unique voice moves in a wide variety of fields between composition and improvisation, from music theater to installation works. In collaboration with us, she will appear as both composer and performer.
The Basel based composer Lukas Huber has been familiar with new media for years and is well versed in various contemporary styles. With this commission, he ventures into an area beyond conventional “academic” composing. In order to succeed, Huber has decided not to approach the ensemble as an individual – because adding a composer would already serve a setting typical of New Music – but to work with his band UFO: Through the confrontation of a “free improv” band and an ensemble for contemporary music, automatisms should be made visible and broken up more quickly.