081208 kreuzberg/wien, mit uli soyka-dr, georg gräwe-p, jan roder-b. wurde kurzfristig eingeladen. gibt auch eine aufnahme davon. noch nicht gehoert. ausserdem hatte uli die CD collections vorgestellt, auf der auch ein paar stuecke aus unserer duo-arbeit sind. |
|
080930 simon-soyka at blue tomato, vienna. with uli soyka (drums, perc, voice). energetic workout on a narrow stage. makes it a close interaction. many intuitive coincidences become the cornerstones of this tour. excellent freestyle parcour. highspeed and lyrical passages. great fun when it happens to work out so nicely... 080917 simon-soyka september sesssion both occations resulted in a remarkable CD. see... |
|
|
8.7.08 NMI08, concert at the "akademie der wissenschaften berlin/brandenburg" with dancer ingo reulecke and realtime-computergrafics by enkidu. first set: free improvisations. second set j.s.bach: several movements from the cellosuites and the partita in e for solsovioline. |
|
|
080517 at "schloss wiepersdorf" (Achim / Bettina von Arnim), playing 12 movements from the cellosuites. sound in the main Saal is not particularly good. pretty dry. in the middle part i do several multi-instrumental impros. in the third part i play the partita in e-maj for violin. for the first time in public. |
|
|
080507 concert with jacek kochan (drums, poland) and adam simmons (reeds and flutes, australia) in the Center for Contemporary Art, Warszawa. sympatical concert space. nearly square. we do quite a bit of soundchecking. the saxes and flutes of adam sound a bit artificial, though. later andrjzej bauer said that there was not enough seperation between the instruments and suggests left right-separation. which is not really possible since i need stereo for my sound. but on stage sound is clear. interaction works perfectly. nice developments, beginnings and endings. solos, duos, tutti develop quite naturally and logically. good consistency and transparency. and fun. well, not too much audience, but great feedback. |
|
080506 warsaw. rehearsal with polish drummer jacek kochan and australian sax/flutes/clarinetist adam simmons at polish cellist andrzej bauer's place. there is some immediate understanding and no basic problems at all. later i suggest to introduce more transparency and to care for beginnings and endings a bit more. will be fun playing the gigs to come...
later i play a movement of the cellosuites together with andrzej bauer. yes, this could work as a special bach-project. actually that is what he suggests. we exchange CDs: he gives me his cellosuites recordings, he is getting my polimerisation/plastikmucke. we discuss cellosuite-interpretations, particularly phrasing, etc. he also finds wispelwey most interresting, as i do.
even later in the night i meet cellist anna markievicz in the austrian culture institute. where i have the key since i am their guest for the two days. she brought her cello and we played a few notes, talked about instruments.
|
080422 concert in the "cube" at iem/graz. 40min bach cello suites. took me some time to get into it. also since people came late. but then i projected them into the threedimensional audiospace. some minor glitches, though. fun to play my new cello-voice. singing on the dominant frequences of the complex auditory system. finally i repeated the 1007prelude for the ones that showed up late. rythmic shifting worked out perfectly. well, then i should have made a break. ten min at least. the suites are physiclly demanding. and found it hard to switch from bach to my impros. but people seem to like it. lots of positive responses. e.g. from norbert schnell, ircam/paris. and deniz peters. or that sms: "bach war schoen wie immer, aber danach: genial!!! ...als ob ich ein stueck weit in deine seele geblickt haette. oder in meine? alles liebe, d." |
|
|
later dinner with david and peter, discussing bach interpretation. peter commends my phrasing as "fetzig". i comment, that the breaks i introduce between phrases first of all came from the necessity to breath, but also from my approach to break the pieces to phrases and use the breaks to define and emphasize the phrases more explicitely. also i use the breaks to compensate the hi-speed. brings back a bit of serenity for the listener as well as for my playing. i suspect that this phrasing-approach would not be acceptable in traditional bach interpretation. well... but at least i like to be aware of the fact. the impros remind them to zappa. yes. but even faster. successiv modification of patterns. particularly rythmic shifting. and then again the hard breaks. david particularly liked the pieces where i had the impression that i was a bit out of control. trying to manually adjust volume-balance between the voices. mmh. have to listen to the recordings. thnx guys, like to get detailed feedback. few days later i met norbert schnell/IRCAM. found some nice words for my playing. mentionned that he was amazed that the performance was not at all kitchy/romantic. suggested that i try to find a more artifical-sounding voice for the cello suites which does not remind to a cello. well i tried that before, but probably i should give it another shot. he promises to provide me with some instrument-developments from IRCAM-projects for testing purposes. |
|
080417 testing session iem/cube. my spatialization
patch - with break-detection implemented - works nicely. sound
wanders about space like a dancer. seems that spatiaization distances >70,
particularly around 100 achieve best balance betweeen instrument-
and room-presence. have to use a second PPC-laptop for the spat-patch
since performance of G4 is fully engaged with my synth-control
(ombos_161iem). did some voice-programming. improvments particularly
with the violin. well, more difficult to play, though. |
|
080415 stockwerk/graz. great concert. close
interaction with acoustic drummer franz schmuck (former member
of my ent-art-ensemble around 1984). also nice ambience at stockwerk.
not too crowded though. sound-conditions on stage rather good
(due to my monitors). someone in the audience made a recording.
wilfried commented that we could improve on session-dramaturgy.
granted. later with heimo puschnig. discussing the directness
(might mean presence) of the virtual instruments i use. thats
definitely a keyissue in my programming. while he finds them
not direct enough, others find them too direct and wish way more
space. probably heimo (as a pianist) is referring to the piano-like
voices, for which i do not use physical modelling, but samples.
mostly and intentionally low-qual, trashy patches. to create
a prepared piano feel. but for the cello-voice i guess the presence-factor
should be noticable good |
 |
|
080413: upcoming gig at "jazz im stockwerk"/graz/AUT. rehearsal with franz schmuck drum/percussion. find my equipment in a un-useable state. my max-msp program (ombos161) shows strange behaviors. reloading patches and setting parameters arbitraily. whats going on? second part of the rehearsal sounds promising. working closely on repetitive and successively changing structures. shifting rhythms. variable tempos. lots of breaks. i'll call the session on thursday: GIMME A BREAK |
|
|
using new gear (8040genelecs, fireface400) renders my defaults obsolete. have to reorganize my entire setup. will be a lot of work. back into programming. will spend hours of patching voices. singing with the dominant frequences of the roland ds90a monitors is past. the genelecs really sound straight. try to find parameters that let voices sing on these dry boxes. also i opened breath-threshold to improve the attack with percusssiv sounds, esp. piano. on vl1 reducing breath-attack and gain helps, also fiddling with reed narrowness and flexibility. found a bug in the fireface-driver at sending large sysex-chunks. rme admits it, but does not seem to find a remidy anytime soon. i remember having hinted them to a similar bug in the multiface-driver around 2004. then they fixed it immediatly. fireface is also problematic preformance-wise as it uses firewire instead of pcmcia. so for now i had to build back to mulitace-setup. what a drag. |
|
080410: second rehearsal
for the IEM/cube concert. routing my spat-data to the 3d-sound-environment
takes a lot of time. johannes zmoelnig is helping out. he wrote
a new kernel for the spatialisation. latency is really small
now. would estimate 12ms. feel them in fast and complex rythmic
passages only. think i could adapt to it. but still want my genelecs
for monitoring. |
..
|
5.3.08
solo/bach cello suites, campagnan/france. this is the
good-bye concert for diana harris a former britisch dancer,
ready to leave france to meet the man of her life. he lives
in a hut with tinroof in the middle of nowhere in argentina.
just today he has been arrested, so she was not able to transmit
part of the concert via mobile. her relationship started exactly
when mine ended so badly. so we felt kind of linked and talked
a lot. these weeks i spent my spare energy to program a new
cello-voice and practice two new pieces. the preludes of the
fourth and sixth suite. which i performed for the first time
today. pretty challenging, not only for their length |
|
20.2.08 in the last months here in south france i started studying the e-maj partita for violin, which is even more difficult than most movements from the suites. also for the poliphony, esp. in loure. developing a technique which is interresting, as it transforms poliphonic to rhythmic complexity. over the years my playing became fast, dense, complex, intensive. too intensive for many listeners. overcharged. too much for the average music consumer. initially it was my reaction to trends i recognize in several fields. popular electronic is crowded with non-musicians who dont care about musical technique. sophistication. triviality rules. trend in free improvised music is often also an abnegation of musical sophistication. the trend in instrumentalism in classic, jazz , pop, ethno everywhere is imitation. complexity is immunized by the reference to the original... that was my initial motivation. but meanwhile speed and complexity started to interrest me for their own sake. |
 |
|
18.1.08 "schlagzeugfestival" borgy&bess
vienna/AUT. our long-planned trio (simon/sayer/soyka) with karl
sayer on bass and uli soyka on drums came to live. actually we
had a second drummer: lukas koenig. borgy is a nice place to
play. i enjoyed the atmosphere. the session was short and dense.
liked soyka's interactive playing particularly. have no idea
how it sounded for the audience. since it was a festival there
was practically no time for a decent soundcheck. had to setup
my stuff in front of audience, some even asking questions. after
the gig i met french drummer patrice heral. plan to meet in montpellier.
also polish drummer jacek kochan showed interrest for coop. back
to my place at 4AM. at 7 i hat to pick anna from the station... |
|
18.1.08 nach dem
konzert im borgy bat mich eine journalistin des orf um ein interview.
auf einige expliziten aussagen hin sagte sie, das koenne sie dem
orf nicht anbieten. daher hier einige passagen so wie ich sie in
erinnerung habe:
zunaechst sagte sie, sie faende meine spielweise interessant. ich entgegente, dass dieses attribut meiner erfahrung nach dafuer stuende, dass derjenige nicht sagen koenne oder wolle was ihn tatsaechlich irritiert hatte. sie gab es zu und sagte sie empfand es als zu anstrengend. ja ich weiss dass mein ansatz die meisten ueberanstrengt. sie sagt mir den neunmalklugen satz, den ich schon so oft aus dem mund der ueberanstregten gehoert habe: weniger ist mehr. ich antworte: nein, weniger ist weniger. und mehr ist mehr. gerade den leicht ueberanstrengten wie ihr stuende es es eigentlich nicht zu, mit der paradoxie des satzes zu argumentieren. ich verstuende sehr gut, dass es ihr zuviel war. aber den rat - eigentlich das gegenwaertige leitmotiv der kommerziellen musikbrache - zum "weniger", den koenne sie sich sparen. ich provoziere: als man in graz die 30kmh-beschraenkung eingefuehrt hatte, sagte ich auch dass die grazer jetzt so langsam fahren wie sie denken. und bin ins ausland gezogen. jetzt kommen die orf-heinis daher und wollen mir auch noch in der musik eine 30kmh-bschraenkung aufdruecken. sie sieht mich an als zweifle sie an meinem verstand... ich sage, seit ich wieder in oesterreich bin hoere ich ja keinen orf (einschliesslich orf1), da nur so oesterreich einigermassen ertraeglich sei. ausserdem spiele der orf ja meine musik auch nicht. sie sagt: ja sie haette von einem der beiden orf1-redakteure, die fuer solche musik ueberhaupt in frage kommen, gehoert, dass er etwas in der art gesagt haette: nur ueber meine leiche. ich sage, das erklaert warum ich auf mehrere anfragen einfach keinerlei antwort bekam. das sei nicht nur respektlos und unverschaemt sondern vor allem auch unqualifiziert und unprofessionell. ich sage, ich sei fuer klare verhaeltnisse. wenn ich in oesterreich praktisch berufsverbot haette, wuerde ich eben meinerseits ein generelles verbot erwaegen, meine musik im orf zu spielen. immerhin besitzen die ja einiges an musik von mir seit den fruehen 80ern. muesste mal bei einem anwalt checken wie man das macht. zumindest solange solche typen den orf vergiften. und das geht ja weiter als orf. ich sei ja auch dafuer, dass man zb. das musikprotokoll aus den klauen dieser -wie mir scheint- mafia befreie. ueberhaupt sei das gesamte veranstaltergewerbe durchzogen von fragwuerdigen figuren und deren machenschaften. vor allem sollte man die foerdermassnahmen ueberpruefen. denn die ausuebenden seien ohnehin die letzten in diesem geschaeft... daraufhin schaltete sie ihr mikro aus. |
|
20.11.07 solo cello suites & light-performance, pouzols/france. big room, had many white transparent curtains hung from the ceiling. hundreds of candlelights on the floor so that the audience could walk only slowly. initially has been thought of as a concert for anna, my girlfriend at that time. but as always, it was "too much" for her. must have been quite touching, since most others have been very emotional when it ended, so I had to escape soon... dont think i played them too romantical. have spent a lot of time getting used to avoid too much vibrato. probably it was the environment which created a sacral feel. anyway. should find an interpretation that keeps the crowd from weeping... |
|
