Roberta Štěpánková & Amund J. Røe – The Crossroads
Roberta Štěpánková (Slovakia) and Amund Røe (Norway) common work began in autumn 2014. In their collaboration till now, they have been focusing on their experience of space in the process of music and dance composition and in the act of performance. The common question has been ´how do we experience the (inner/outer) space in composition and how does considering this informs the work process´.
Amund J. Røe was born into a Norwegian-Dutch family in 1985, and grew up in a small rural village in the Norwegian mountains. He finished a bachelor in piano at the University of Agder in Kristiansand, before further studies in composition, church organ and pedagogy at the Academy of Music in Oslo. Since 2012 Amund has been a studying composition at Codarts University for Arts in Rotterdam, under the guidance of Jan-Bas Bollen, René Uijlenhoet and Peter-Jan Wagemans. Besides being a composer he is a performing musician and improviser.
Eric Zinman / Onno Govaerts / John Dikeman – Free improv
Eric’s statement: Music is empathy in action. We learn together. From the city I grew up in, music made life more livable, more beautiful and less violent. The ensemble is the lifeblood of our choices. “Hey baby your band is so cool, they play so far oooooouuuutt, no in no in all very out. What got you into the music scene when it was clean, you dig and now you’re all dirty and jive?” “ It was all because of that flying saucer, they picked us up and got us a gig on Mars, called us head generals and booked us in the stars. The moons were dripping down like sliced melons, what a little moonlight can do’’” “that’s strange speech you make on that thing.” “My five year old daughter can play better than that. Where are you guys from?” They say we will never play here so we go there like children. “Why don’t you just stay in church and sing gospel?” Cuz all I ask of living is to feel a little life in you baby. Romeo pouncing on Juliet (and they both come from good families) those hot wet teenage seals, their bodies crashing like the sea, in the rapture of wind, trees, forests and animals surviving by their wit. with their vision looking out like spirit guides, playing in the sand along the shore..”
Born Eric Green Zinman, 1963. Began the study of piano and voice as a small child. Interest in classic music, Broadway, R&B and Rock and Roll. As an adolescent discovered Black Music :jazz, blues, gospel , the music of the strip clubs and hotels and modified his approach. This followed with composition studies with Bill Dixon, George Russell and Jimmy Giuffre. Since 1987 he produced a number of ensembles with Laurence Cook, Syd Smart, and Glynis Lomon. In the mid 2000’s he began to tour Europe with Mario Rechtern and met and played with many musicians. His activity and collaboration extends to theater, dance, film and poetry. Music is empathy in action, two souls rubbing together, the significant human story. Since 2000 he has recorded 18 albums and has been reviewed in 9 languages.
Onno Govaert, drums, born 1987 in Kaatsheuvel (Efteling), lives in Amsterdam and is a member of different jazz, free jazz and improvised music groups such as Cactus Truck, Govaert/deJoode/Stadhouders trio, RIO, Trialectics, duo Vatcher/Govaert among others. He has played with musicians Arthur Doyle, Joe McPhee, Terrie Ex, Ab Baars, Chris Corsano, Roy Campbell, Jeb Bishop, Wolter Wierbos, Han Bennink, Michael Moore, Ken Vandermark, Peter Evans, Matts Gustafsson and many more.
John Dikeman is an American saxophonist currently residing in Amsterdam. Drawing inspiration from a wide range of sources, John’s playing runs the gamut of improvised music and technique, ranging from reductionist extended technique based improvisation to full throttle free jazz. The underlying characteristic of his music is an unnerving commitment, a total abandonment to sound. John was born in Nebraska in 1983 and grew up in Kemmerer, Wyoming. Thanks to the extreme isolation of his hometown, he spent most of his free time practicing and studying music. He quickly discovered the music of John Coltrane, Cecil Taylor, John Zorn, and Albert Ayler and instantly connected to the unmatched expressive power of free jazz. He moved to Amsterdam in December of 2007, after a brief stay in Budapest, Hungary. Since arriving in Amsterdam, John has jumped at the chance to re-enter the world of improvised music.
Graham Flett & Nicole De Brabandere – ‘Hearing on the verge: cuing and aligning with the movement of the audible’
In ‘Hearing on the verge: cuing and aligning with the movement of the audible’, we engage the sonic landscape by recording and listening in movement. This is a cueing and aligning with the audible in our respective urban ecologies, in a counterpoint of moving and listening. We relay and exchange these recorded sounds, write and compose with them while expanding modes of listening across space-time and across situated milieu of hearing. As hearing in movement intensifies the verge of the audible, it multiplies, stretches and concentrates the otherwise indistinct noise of urban ecologies into new intensities, contours and articulations. In the process of moving with hearing, listening becomes a technique of gathering audible rhythms, refrains and qualities within and with an inhabited body. What’s more, the pathways of roads and corridors that habitually map and prescribe trajectories through space lose their force of extensive continuity, or the authority with which they delineate space and script, direction or position, within it — places become viscous in the attunement with their sonic consistency, in the dynamics with which it is stirred, swallowed and waded through.
Nicole De Brabandere is a PhD candidate in artistic research at Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) under the supervision of Giaco Schiesser and Erin Manning. De Brabandere develops techniques to generate affective attunements across media and material milieu, including clay modelling, drawing, video, audio, choreography and discursive practice.
Graham Flett is presently a PhD candidate in Music Composition at Brunel University (U.K), under direction of Christopher Fox and Michael Finnissy, Flett’s artistic research aims at articulating how composed music and organized sound as an act of culturally mimetic behavior, can reveal new ways of creative expression.