Janne Eraker / Roger Arntzen – Minimal experimental tap dance double bass duo
Janne Eraker (tap dance) and Roger Arntzen (double bass) played together for the first time at the festival Fyrlyd in the summer of 2011, and have since then met regularly to work together and research a common sound platform and a pallet of tone.
The duo wishes to take tap dance out of it’s original context, which is most often associated with Fred Astaire and Broadway, and try to work with an equal, musical intention and quality with the rhythmic possibilities and sonic colours of the double bass.
They want to de-construct the tap dance and use small fragments to make new tones and sounds, rhythms and soundscapes. With a focus on minimalism the duo researches the musical common denominators and the differences between the double bass and the tap dance. The focus on the characteristic rhythms and time of the tap dance comes in second place as they explore textures and polyrhythmic structures through improvisation.
In November Eraker and Arntzen are traveling to The Netherlands to finalize their work before they have their debut concert in the concert series Ephémère at the Loos Foundation in The Hague on November 12th.
www.janneeraker.com
www.rogerarntzen.com
Ada Rave / Nico Chientaroli / Jasper Stadhouders
Ada Rave is an Argentinean saxophonist, improviser and composer. She developed a personal and physical own approach to her instrument, employing a wide variety of techniques that goes beyond the conventional ways, in search of new sounds to express herself. Ada was born in Chubut in 1974 and since her adolescence resided in Buenos Aires where begins her musical development into the local jazz scene. Interested in jazz, free improvisation and composition has done her own projects and also collaborated with other musician’s projects, performing in several venues from Argentina
and since 2013 in The Netherlands and Europe. She is based in Amsterdam to continue expanding her personal work and passion for the Free Improvisation. Besides playing music she is the initiator and organizer of the Free Improvisation jam session monthly at Mezrab: Impro Jam. She has collaborated in many records and as a composer and leader recorded two albums:
“Los Ritos del Sueño” (2008) with her quintet Proyecto Orgánico Rave / “La Continuidad” (Pai 2012) with Ada Rave Quartet. Also has recorded in co-collaborations: “La Caja” by Andres Elstein Trio /
“Relatos de Terodactilo” by Rave/Espinal/Chientaroli/Vitale / A trial, a texture by Hall/Rave among others.She has participated in several festivals: Free Flow Festival 2015 – Altamura; DOEK #12 International Improvisation Festival 2014 – Amsterdam; II Mar del Plata Jazz Festival 2012 – Argentina, 3rd La Plata Contemporary Music Festival 2011 – Argentina; Buenos Aires Jazz Festival 2008, 2009, 2011 and 2012 – Argentina; VII Rosario Jazz Festival 2003 – Argentina. She was educated with the teachers: Carlos Lastra, Enrique Norris, Rodrigo Domínguez and Ernesto Jodos. Also is graduated from the Jazz’s career at the Manuel de Falla Conservatory of Buenos Aires. Simultaneously she is dedicated to music education since 2000. Currently she teaches saxophone and gives workshops about free improvisation. www.freeimprovisationworkshop.blogspot.nl
Nico Chientaroli pianist, improviser and composer was born in Buenos Aires in 1982, and moved to Amsterdam in 2013. After attending high school, he joined the Technologic Institute of Contemporary Music (ITMC), where after he taught for six years, and went resolutely into jazz and free improvisation once the career was finished. He played with many local exponents from the Argentinian and European Jazz and Free Improvisation scene.
He recorded three albums as a composer and pianist with his trio in Buenos Aires, and collaborated in many other projects and recordings.
He just released his solo album recorded in Asterdam and released by the Portuguese label Creative Sources.
He leads together with Ada Rave the group “The Big Dinner”, inviting different improvisers from all around the world in each performance. He is a member of the free improvisation trio “New Rumours and Other Noises” together with Raoul van der Weide on contrabass and Ada Rave on saxophones.
He is the initiator and programmer of the monthly series for improvised music and dance Instant Music Day in Amsterdam.
More about Nico: www.nicolaschientaroli.com
Jasper Stadhouders (Tilburg, the Netherlands, 1989) plays electric guitar, acoustic guitar and bass guitar. He is an improviser, composer and concert organizer. He comes from a musical family and has performed music publicly since the age of 8. Jasper is an active member of the international improvised music circuit. He is the founder of the Jasper Stadhouders’ International Improv Ensemble, a 10-piece band featuring improvisers from all over Europe, which came into existence during a 6 day residency at the Incubate Festival 2015 in Tilburg. He also founded the Poly Band, a group of musicians and performers in different line-ups and sizes which focuses on poly rhythm, poly tonality and trance-like long forms. He is a co-founder of the bands Cactus Truck (with John Dikeman and Onno Govaert), Trio Stadhouders/Govaert/De Joode + Tobias Delius, Shelter (with Nate Wooley, Steve Heather and Ken Vandermark) and plays in such diverse bands as Made To Break (with Ken Vandermark, Christof Kurzmann and Tim Daisy), Spinifex, and Lily’s Déjà Vu. In October 2014, The Ex invited Jasper to Ethiopia to play a number of concerts in Addis Ababa with saxophone legend Getatchew Mekuria and Azmari group Fendika. Past bands include The Black Napkins, .MAN, the Bureau of Atomic Tourism (BOAT), Michael Moore’s The Persons and the Ingebrigt Håker Flaten Chicago Sextet. He developed a personal and physical “hands-on” approach to his instruments, employing a wide variety of techniques that go beyond the convention. He takes part in countless of ad hoc improvised music settings whenever he can. Jasper is also a composer and occasionally works in the fields of dance, theatre and as a performer of contemporary composed music. He’s played with Han Bennink, Ab Baars, Paal Nilssen-Love, Marshall Allen, Akira Sakata, Noel Redding, Andrew D’Angelo, Roy Campbell, Jeb Bishop, Mars Williams, Michael Vatcher, Priya Purushothaman and many more. Jasper has performed extensively in Europe, the USA and Russia, as well as in Ethiopia, India, Japan. He lives in Amsterdam since 2006.
Thomas Ankersmit
Thomas Ankersmit (1979, Leiden, Netherlands) is a musician and installation artist based in Berlin and Amsterdam. Acoustic phenomena such as sound reflections, infrasonic vibration, otoacoustic emissions, and highly directional projections of sound have been an important part of his work since the early 2000’s. His music is also characterized by a deliberate misuse of the equipment, using feedback and disruptions to the signal, and the extremes of frequency and dynamics, to create visceral but finely detailed swarms of sound. Since 2006 his main instrument, both live and in the studio, has been the Serge analogue modular synthesizer. Ankersmit collaborated with Sicilian composer/performer Valerio Tricoli on Forma II, a series of electroacoustic pieces released on the PAN label, and on music based on the acoustics of abandoned radar domes. Both projects were honoured by Ars Electronica. Other recent collaborations include recording sessions with Kevin Drumm at GRM in Paris, and a new Phill Niblock composition for Serge modular synthesizer (Niblock’s first piece for an electronic instrument).
Ankersmit’s music is released on the Touch, Ash International and PAN labels.
His sound and installation work have been presented at Berghain, Hamburger Bahnhof, and KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Paradiso, Muziekgebouw, and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Kunsthalle, Basel; Henie Onstad Art Centre, Oslo; Arnolfini, Bristol; CCA, Glasgow; Serralves Museum, Porto; MoMA PS1, New York; REDCAT, Los Angeles, and at festivals for experimental and contemporary music all over the world. He has been a guest lecturer at universities such as CalArts, Stanford, The Art Institute of Chicago, Harvard, and the Universität der Künste in Berlin.
“Thomas Ankersmit, seated before an obscenely attractive bank of analogue modular tech, gradually amasses juddery glitches and twitches, subterranean buzz-drone and caustic, luminous washes. His use of hocketing high frequencies over the CCA’s quadraphonic sound system even casts inner-ear illusions reminiscent of Maryanne Amacher’s otoacoustic emissions. Densely striated and mercilessly dominating, Ankersmit’s set is one of the weekend’s highlights.”
Matt Evans, The Wire
“Thomas Ankersmit’s solo concert at Berghain for the MaerzMusik festival immersed the audience in equal parts terrifying and hallucinatory full-body sound. Using the venue’s superb quadraphonic sound system to its full capacity and commanding seemingly infinite dynamics from his Serge synthesizer and computer, the music varied from carefully controlled blizzards of electronic drone-noise to finely tuned high-frequency flickers that seemed to transform whenever I just slightly moved my head to infra-bass waves so deep and powerful that they shook up resonances throughout the building and actually blurred my vision. A stunning, fantastic performance.”
Christian Asmussen, Punktum
“Sound has never felt so granular and tangible and all around you. A hair-raising and overwhelming experience.”
Antoine Richard, Tokafi
“A fantastic performance by Thomas Ankersmit in Berlin’s MaerzMusik festival at the infamous Berghain club. It was fascinating to see Ankersmit play the analog Serge synthesizer like a genuine musical instrument: sensing its possibilities and restrictions, trying to force it into shape, resisting and shaping its unpredictability. The sonic landscapes he created were incredibly rich and subtle: softly crackling and roaringly loud, very high and very low pitched, dense and deafening and wide, almost silent. A genuine feedback loop between the machine and the performer and back, and a fascinating sight and sound.”
Melle Kromhout, Noise Identities
“Ankersmit constructs a musical world that feels alive and capable of going anywhere, and yet also manages to give the music a strong sense of structured purpose, a degree of compositional control unusual in this area of live performance. It is the fine balance between the sense of chaos that threatens to pull everything apart and the controlled formation of the music into clearly defined sections of differing intensities that raises the work above that of so many of Ankersmit’s contemporaries.”