This is a live recording from the 2020 SoundOut festival in Canberra, during one of the worst fire periods in the history of South Eastern Australia and just before Covid19 hit.
We were extremely lucky to be able to have the festival and have these wonderful musicians come together in this quartet to perform, in their first ever live concert together. Annette Krebs, Laura Altman, Nick Ashwood and Rhys Butler develop and weave this delicate and rich sonic landscape from disperate sonic parts to create a wholistic intersubjective living piece.
Annette Krebs: Konstruktion #4; objects; computer.
Laura Altman: clarinet, feedback and objects.
Nick Ashwood: prepared guitar, objects.
Rhys Butler: alto saxophone, and preparations.
Annette Krebs:
Since 2013, Annette Krebs has developed and recorded instrumental assemblages of highly amplified metals, strings, objects and microphones. These assemblages "Construction # 1" to "Construction # 4" were originally born out of the need to realize sound visions that could not be played with traditional instruments and setups. Like microscopes, microphones make the finest, otherwise inaudible sound shades and colors of the sound objects audible. The construction series combines analogue and digital techniques and playing styles. The signals of the manually played sound objects are controlled via tablets, transformed and similar to different colors that flow into each other, mix together or stand side by side, musically collaged. The course of time, of stagnant, flowing, frozen time, is explored within the series and sculpturally processed. Annette Krebs was born in Saarland and lives since 1993 in Berlin. Since childhood she plays numerous instruments and is engaged in visual arts. She completed her music studies at the HfMDK in Frankfurt am Main. Before she began developing the series Construction, she gradually deconstructed her original instrument guitar. She was portrayed in 2002 in the magazine "The Wire- Adventures in modern music" (UK) with her first solo CD "guitar solo" ("Fringes Recordings", IT). Their last guitar composition "rush", an acoustic collage that reduces the sounds of the guitar to a final cockroach and cracking, appeared in 2014 on the label "Another Timbre - The Berlin Series no.2" (UK). Annette Krebs performs as a soloist and in various ensembles worldwide at concerts and festivals (including "100 Years of Bauhaus-The Opening Festival", "Donaueschinger Musiktage", "Heroines Of Sound Festival", "Contacts - Biennale for Electroacoustic Music and Sound Art"). Her music has received numerous grants (including "Senate Department for Culture and Europe", Berlin, "Goethe-Institut", "Cité Internationale des Arts Paris", "Academy of Arts", Berlin, "EMS Elektronmusik Studion", Stockholm) and presented on the radio and in the press (eg "Positions-Texte zur aktuelle Musik", "Deutschlandradio Kultur", "WDR-3", "BR Klassik"). In addition to her artistic work, she teaches her techniques and helps others to develop their musical expression.
www.annettekrebs.eu
Laura Altman:
Laura is a clarinetist, improviser and composer, born and based in Sydney, Australia. She has been an important voice on the Sydney improvised music scene since 2007, playing with groups such as The Splinter Orchestra and Prophets, and collaborating with many other Australian and international musicians. Laura has toured Australia and Europe with a range of projects including the internationally renowned trio ‘Great Waitress’, featuring Monica Brooks on accordion and Berlin-based pianist Magda Mayas, who also have several acclaimed CD and LP releases to their name. As a composer, Laura writes both instrumental and electro-acoustic music. She has had works commissioned and performed by various ensembles in including Sydney Antiphony and Ensemble Offspring and has developed exploratory pieces for primary school students. She has more recently been exploring sound installations. Laura also plays clarinet in and composes for folk/balkan/jazz ensemble Chaika. Laura has and continues to organise exploratory music events in Sydney, including the NOW now Series and Festival of Exploratory Music from 2010 until 2013, and the current Nights at Tempe series. She has co-founded the Sydney exploratory music calendar www.emus.space.
youtu.be/-oFRznISths
Nick Ashwood:
Nick works in the field of experimental, improvised and composed music. His main focuses over the past three years have been exploring and utilizing the acoustic possibilities of the steel string acoustic guitar. Developing a set of techniques that draw on the history of the prepared guitar. Nick is expanding on this language by bring his own individualized approaches using methods of just intonation, preparations, bows and percussion. Currently Nick is working with number of groups and composers that include; Laura Altman, Jim Denley, Catherine Lamb, Clara de Asis, Robbie Avenaim, Dale Gorfinkel, Amanda Stewart, Splinter orchestra and Fredrik Rasten. From 2017 Nick has been running his own programming in Hobart with a focus on improvisation /experimental the program has now had over ten successful shows and four workshop and a two-day festival. The programming has had artist come from both Australia and around the world including, Isabelle Duthoit, Franz Hautzinger, Robbie Avenaim, Laura Altman, Jason Kahn, Jim Denly and Cor Fuhler, Amanda Stewart and Greg Kingston. 2019 will see Nick release his first CD on the Sydney label Splitrec followed by a solo acoustic guitar cd – Strings and a composed work by Catherine Lamb to come out on Edition Wanderlweiser records (Berlin) And a piece written for him by Clara de Asis.
splitrec.bandcamp.com/album/submental
Rhys Butler:
Rhys has come to know the cities he has lived in through improvised music. The trio Dinner Sock (Stephen Roach (drums), David Keyton (feedback), and Rhys Butler (saxophones)) formed from the weekly Fugue State Sessions in Guangzhou. The group performed with local experimenters such as Yan Jun, Feng Hao and Li Zenghui and collaborated with musicians transiting China such as Uwe Bastiansen (Faust) and Lucas Abela. In Santiago, Chile, Rhys participated in events run by Productura Mutante and played in the free-for-all Collective Improvisation NO. Now residing in Canberra, Rhys is a member of the reeds trio Psithurism with John Porter and Richard Johnson and the Otiose Trio with Reuben Ingall and Paul Heslin on pure data manipulation. He has performed with a number of musicians visiting Canberra for the SoundOut Festival including Jon Rose, Guylaine Cosseron, Xavier Charles, Hans Koch, Monica Brooks, Nick Ashwood, Laura Altman and Annette Krebs.
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