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JEAN-CHARLES FRANÇOIS (FR) - percussion

A composer and percussionist, Jean-Charles François studied at the CNSMD in Paris. He was a freelance percussionist in Paris during the 1960’s. He was involved with the Domaine musical and Musique vivante from 1962 to 1969;
Between 1965 and 1969, he was the co-director of the Centre de Musique, at the American Center in Paris, together with Keith Humble and Giuseppe Englert.
François went on to teach in the Music Department of the University of California at San Diego, where he became Chairman. In 1975, he founded the experimental music group, Kiva.
From 1990 to 2007, he was the director of the Cefedem Rhône-Alpes (a center devoted to the training of future music school teachers) in Lyon.
In 1994, he joined the Aleph Ensemble as a percussionist. In 2007, he founded the improvisation ensemble PFL Traject with musicians from Lyon. The author of numerous articles on music theory, he published Percussion and Contemporary Music in 1991 (Klincksieck, Paris). His doctoral thesis (Paris VIII University, 1993) is on “The creative performer”.
He is a member of the contemporary music ensemble Aleph, Paris, of PFL Traject, Lyon, and PaaLabRes collective.

www.ensemblealeph.com
www.paalabres.org

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GYÖRGY KURTÁG JR. (FR/HU) - electronics

Composer, sound designer and improviser, he is since 2014, Arts/Sciences coordinator at the SCRIME computer music laboratory (University of Bordeaux - Science and Technology Department). This position enables him to link collaborative compositions and evolving scientific projects. In the past decades he has worked and performed in the most prestigious studios and concert halls around the world. (Ircam-Paris, Zkm - Karlsruhe; Guggenheim, New York; Carnegie Hall.
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After completing his composition studies at the Frantz Liszt Academy in Budapest (Hungary), György Kurtàg joined the I.R.C.A.M team as a RIM, and composer-researcher (pedagogy dept and Instrumental Research Group). He has collaborated with some of most influential researchers in computer music field as Tod Machover (MIT Medialab, Futur Group), David Wessel (CNMAT Berkeley), George Lewis (The Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University) as well as famous composers like Mauricio Kagel, Pierre Boulez, Sylvano Busotti, Péter Eötvös.
Deeply attracted to the visual arts, he has received musical commissions from the Centre Georges Pompidou, Musée du Louvre and Musée de Grenoble, as well as from visual artists, video artists and choreographers.
His research encompasses both collaborative compositions, evolving projects as well as the analysis and capture of the gestures of the instrumentalist, as well as the creation of new instruments. He is Artistic Director of SCRIME and President of the European Center FOR Improvisation.

« As a composer I am interested in collaborative work with composers, but also in evolving projects with performers. As a researcher, I am interested in the creation integrating both collective instruments and the pedagogy of expressive interactivity. As an improviser I experience a form of complexity that develops essential skills for the fluidity of a three-dimensional communication: Sensory intelligence (listening mobility, haptic perception, etc.) shared intelligence (human-machine communication), collective intelligence (free collective improvisation) » .

Records :
Face to face : Barre Phillips / Gyorgy Kurtag. (2022) ECM Records N°2735
Kurtagonals : (2008) ECM Records N°2097
Creation : moment’s Notice trio BMC Records CD 285
Zwiegespräch - Kurtag 80 : BMC Records CD 129
S(M)S : Lux Nox BMC Records CD 081
« The Well - Tempered Universe » SC.Art Fonogram-Hungary award)

https://youtu.be/rrKnFr8lxBc?si=sUbkqScq7Bx5wWxq
https://youtu.be/MJ8Z5skovLw?si=Bp_mQ7sJ9hhrt5Cd
https://youtu.be/FaUABVWc2pk?si=irSK8Qc9mGSoC6fb
https://youtu.be/M3Tr8mSDYl8?si=3xizzBPTGQ-FCU3L

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KATRIN BETHGE (DE) - light artist

Katrin Bethge begann nach dem Studium der Illustration an der HAW Hamburg 1999 mit der Arbeit mit Licht. Ihre Overheadprojektionen begleiten Projekte aus den Bereichen Tanz, Theater, Musik und Installation. Im Duo mit dem Bassisten John Eckhardt ist sie bei internationalen Festivals eingeladen, und gemeinsam realisieren sie Licht- und Klanginstallationen. Beim Hauptsache Frei Festival Hamburg erhielt das Tanzprojekt restructuring mit Veronique Langlott und Alexandra Griess den Jurypreis. Für die Installation „Lichtreise“ im Schleswiger Dom, bekam Katrin Bethge den Kulturpreis der Stadt Schleswig verliehen. Das Ensemble Resonanz begleitete sie beim Funkelkonzert in der Elbphilharmonie Hamburg und das Ensemble Modern in Frankfurt bei einem On Air Konzert. Im Herbst 2021 leuchtet sie zum 200. Jubiläum die Uraufführung „Schattengold“ Konzerthaus Berlin. Ihre Lichtinstallationen waren bei der Luminale in Frankfurt, den EVI Lichtungen, Hildesheim, der Hafensafari Hamburg sowie dem Tag des offenen Denkmals in Hamburg zu sehen.

Die Projektionen von Katrin Bethge verwandeln als vergängliche Malerei die Oberflächen des Raumes, in den sie fallen. Lichtbrechende Objekte, Flüssigkeiten und alltägliche Materialien werden direkt auf der Arbeitsfläche des Projektors bewegt, wodurch kosmische wie mikroskopische Räume aus Licht entstehen.

http://katrinbethge.com

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SUSANNE MARTIN (DE) - dance

is a Berlin-based choreographer, performer, researcher, and teacher in the field of contemporary dance and theatre. She presents her work internationally in solo performances and collaborative stage works. Her artistic practice and research focus on improvisation as choreographic practice, critical practices and narrations of age(ing), contact improvisation, artistic research methods, and improvisation-based approaches to learning, knowledge production and knowledge dissemination. Festivals that presented her performances include: International Dance and Theatre Festival (Gothenburg), Aerowaves (London), Nottdance (Nottingham), Opera Estate (Bassano del Grappa), Tanec Praha (Prague). Her PhD dissertation Dancing Age(ing): Rethinking Age(ing) in and through Improvisation Practice and Performance was published 2017 by transcript. In her postdoctoral research at EPFL, Switzerland (2018-2021) she examined dance improvisation in its potential to rethink and advance processes of learning, teaching and researching in a technical university.
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https://www.susannemartin.de

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KATARZYNA BRZEZINSKA (PL) - dance

was studying at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Wroclaw (PL); Contemporary Dance, Improvisation & Performance in Silkeborg (DK) and Freiburg (DE). She is a freelance artist/choreographer/movement researcher in the field of choreography, dance and performance as well as sculpture and installation. She creates her own projects, participates in cooperation with artists in an international context and offers workshops and classes in the field of Movement, CI, Experiential Anatomy, Somatic Performance & Embodied Choreography as well as Instant Composition Research. In years 2017-2020, she was involved in the "DAS TANZNETZ Freiburg"; in the organisation, realisation and artistic conception of event formats, such as workshops, residencies and research laboratories in the field of dance and performance. Since 2019 she works also as an Ilan Lev Method Practitioner and ILM Movement Teacher mainly with dancers, performers and choreographers. Since 2022 she collaborates as an ILM Practitioner with Sasha Waltz & Guests Company in Berlin. Since 2023 she works within a frame of “Smart Cities Inkubator” under Victoria Hochschule in Berlin on establishing the company “BACK to BODY”, working between choreography, science of movement & preventive medicine.

Her current artistic interests include the following themes:
• The science of spaces within embodied and site specific practices
• Magic of dreams; poetry and imagination in relation to tangible facts of reality, physical and anatomical structures, body flesh, objects, senses, perception, colours, spaces, shapes, etc.
• Layers of female identity in relation to the system, culture, nature, inner and outer experience and other people
• "perfect imperfection"; in the context of research on strength, power, will, challenge, weakness, trust, vulnerability
• Frame of reference "many in one"; and "one in many"; as well as artistic presence

https://www.brzezinska.space

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NICOLA L. HEIN (DE) - guitar

is a sound artist, guitarist, composer and scholar, working in the field of music aesthetics and cybernetics.
He is a professor of Digital Creation at the Music University of Lübeck, Germany.
His work is driven by the interaction of sound and space, light, movement, thought and the becoming of embodied and intermedial intelligence in aesthetic systems, community and technology.
In his artistic work he uses physical and electronic extension of the electric guitar, sound installations, cybernetic human-machine interaction with A.I. interactive music systems, Augmented Reality, telematic real-time art, ambisonic sound projection, instrument building, conceptual compositions, inter-media works (w/video art, light, dance, literature) and much more.
In his work as a sound artist he builds installations, sculptures, instruments, researches the interaction of sound, material and space, works with field recordings, programs (intelligent) software systems, creates a multitude of intermedial works, engages in network technologies and artistically develops dances of agency between the human, nature and technology.
He explores the possibilities of the electric guitar as a modular becoming of technology and sound. In this process the guitar is played with objects, extended techniques, stratified by the use of analog and digital effects as well software programming and is understood and developed as a creator of space and interaction. The use of Artificial Intelligence/machine learning, ambisonic spatialization and the interaction with autonomous interactive music systems play a central role in his practice.
His research revolves around questions of philosophy of music, epistemology, aesthetics, media theory, critical improvisation studies and cybernetics. It follows questions of the creation of identity and sense in interactions between humans and technology, investigates the philosophical implications of musical and intermedial practices.
He studied Jazzguitar, Soundart/Composition, Philosophy and German philology at the Friedrich-Wilhelms Universität Bonn and the Gutenberg-Universität Mainz. He was invited twice as a visiting scholar at Columbia University, New York City (2017-2018, 2019-2020), working with Prof. George E. Lewis. Currently he is pursuing his Ph.D. in Music at Columbia University in New York.
His work has been shown internationally at institutions and festivals such as the Museo Arte Moderno (Medellín), Ludwig Museum (Budapest), Acht Brücken (Cologne), Moers festival, MaerzMusik (Berlin), Harvestworks (New York City), Ars Electronica (Linz), Mapping Festival (Geneva), Mirage Festival (Lyon), Experimental Intermedia (New York), Experimental Sound Studio (Chicago), Walcheturm (Zürich), Dark Circuits Festival (New York), Super Deluxe (Tokyo), Sonica (Glasgow), Klex Festival (Kuala Lumpur), Hong Kong New Music Ensemble (Hong Kong), NIME (Birmingham and Shanghai), Festival International de Cine (Mexico City).

https://nicolahein.com

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JOHN ECKHARDT (DE) - double bass

Whether performing today’s most challenging double bass repertoire, developing his own music, or working sound systems with his bass guitar or a set of turntables - John Eckhardt is testing the limits of being a bassist on planet earth in the 21st century, working towards a broader vision of what bass always was and can become in the future.
Seeking to combine scope with depth, John Eckhardt is constantly involved in the creation of new music and has both collaborated with a wide spectrum of artists and created his personal brand of solo projects. He worked with many composers including Helmut Lachenmann and Pierre Boulez, top new music groups such as Ensemble Modern, Klangforum Wien and musikfabrik, improvisors from Evan Parker, Elliott Sharp, Peter Brötzmann and Peter Evans, to today’s new blood in a wide field of today’s music.
John Eckhardt has performed on over 40 recordings, among them Iannis Xenakis’ masterpiece “Theraps” (Mode Rec.) and six internationally acclaimed solo releases. These share an interest in low frequency and spectral immersion, spatial depth, and themes of repetition and evolutional process.
The Evan Parker produced “Xylobiont” (Psi Rec. 2008) turned into a work in progress with 40 solo double bass recitals all over the world up to today. “Forests” (Depth of Field Music, 2014) expanded these themes into a set of branching, overdubbed bass string quartets. Along with high resolution audio and 200 photographs, they were released on a wooden USB memory stick in a transparent box containing actual forest material - nearly selling out an edition of 250 within one year.
As Forresta, John Eckhardt performs on bass guitar and live electronics, and released “Bass, Space & Time” (Depth of Field Music, 2016) in a special edition of 100 moss-green, marbled double-vinyl records in a hand made, embroidered carton box. Each contains a foto print as front cover chosen by the listener from 100 images of John Eckhardt’s corresponding photographic project. This music is also the musical foundation of visual bassic, his long standing collaboration with analog light projection artist Katrin Bethge.
Driven by curiosity and passion for different styles, cultures and artistic means, John Eckhardt keeps drawing new connections and expands a bass cosmos of unusual dimensions. The latest addition is his Basswald DJ project that presents a diverse spectrum of bass music with a special ear for sound system culture. It is accompanied by a steady flow of downloadable podcasts.

https://www.johneckhardt.de

photo: Fabian Hammerl

VLATKO KUČAN (DE) - reeds

Vlatko Kučan (b. 1963 Sarajevo, Ex-Yugoslavia) studied popular music, jazz and music therapy at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg.
He works as a musician (instruments: saxophones and clarinets), composer, producer, music therapist and educator.
His various works focus and explore the possibilities of artistic expression through the art of improvisation. They cross and extend traditional boundaries of contemporary music, jazz, improvised music, theatre and film music. Another focus of Kucan’s work is the combination of literature, philosophy and music. He also works as a director for radio plays and audio books.
He performed and collaborated with leading protagonists of contemporary jazz (i.e. Carla Bley, Lester Bowie, Anthony Braxton, Marion Brown, Bill Elgart, Dieter Glawischnig, Howard Johnson, Jay Oliver, Barre Philips, Tomasz Stanko, Steve Swallow, Kenny Wollesen) and improvised music (i.e. Derek Bailey, Malcolm Goldstein, Barry Guy, Aleksander Kolkowski, Jim Menesses, Rajesh Mehta, Lauren Newton, Maggie Nichols, Mia Zabelka).
His theatre collaborations include directors Karin Beier, Michael Bogdanov, Herbert Fritsch, Brian Michaels, Robert Wilson and musicians Tom Waits, Lester Bowie and Giora Feidman.
His works on literature and music include productions based on texts by Friedrich Nietzsche, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Charles Baudelaire, Anne Sexton and Mascha Kaleko and collaborations with various actors (i.e. Christian Brückner, Hannelore Elsner, Corinna Harfouch, Susanne Lothar, Dietmar Mues, Barbara Nüsse, Christian Redl, Lars Rudolph, Hanna Schygulla, Otto Sander, Ulrich Tukur, Ulrich Wildgruber) and authors (i.e. Peter Handke, Siri Hustvedt, Hellmuth Karasek, Siegfried Lenz, Benjamin Lebert, Helmut Schmidt).
Vlatko Kučan is teaching Improvisation at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater (HfMT) in Hamburg, Germany at the Jazz department BA and MA programs and the Contemporary Performance and Composition (CoPeCo) MA program. Since 2018 he is the head of the Social Performance, Interdisciplinary Improvisation and Creativity (SPIIC+) project, that is now part of the artistic research lab of the new ligeti center in Hamburg. He has been a visiting artist and lecturer and has held workshops on Improvisation at international academic institutions.

https://www.vlatkokucan.de/

photo: Ryan Wijayratne

HANIA MARIAM LUTHUFI (LK) - voice

is a vocalist, composer and music educator from Colombo, Sri Lanka. Her interest in using the voice began with quirath (also spelled qirat) in her childhood, choral music in school; later, she moved to exploring and receiving informal training in jazz vocals. Hania is also a graduate of Calcutta University obtaining a Master's degree in Hindustani classical music and a Bachelor's degree at Viswa Bharati University in Santiniketan and stayed on in Bengal for five more years to study under the apprenticeship of her former teacher Shantanu Bhattacharyya. Luthufi's recent work comprises of abstract, cinematic compositions exploring the vast possibilities of drone music.
Her last album invited a gathering of musicians from disparate coastal regions to come together and musically interpret various temperaments of the sea. At present she is working on an EP of Raga music as digital and visual interpretations. This body of work is being done as her current research as a resident of Cité internationale des arts in Paris, where she is based at the moment.
Hania is also researching dialects of Arabic and Tamil through archiving lost devotional songs from fishing communities in the coastal regions of Sri Lanka. More recently, Hania’s works were a part of ‘Sea Change’, Colomboscope 2019, curated by Natasha Ginwala. She has also contributed to ‘Held Apart Together’, a digital program for Colomboscope 2021, Chobi Mela Festival in Bangladesh in 2021 and Colomboscope "Language is Migrant" 2022.

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TAM THI PHAM (VN) - dan bau

is a Vietnamese multimedia composer, improviser and performer living in Hamburg. She completed her Bachelor of Musicology at the Vietnam National Academy of Music, a program in New Compositional Techniques at the University of Music and Theater Hamburg with Prof. Helmut Erdmann and is currently enrolled in Master in Multimedia Composition with Prof. Dr. Georg Hajdu, Prof. Dr. Gordon Kampe and Prof. Dr. Alexander Schubert.
Her works are a journey of exploring individuality in an attempt to connect with the surrounding social environment. She is trying to build a way of expression in which music and performance are two indivisible parts.
Tam Thi Pham plays electronic music, objects and Dan Bau (traditional Vietnamese instrument). One of her main interests is working with choreographers and dancers both as an improviser and as a composer. One aspect of this made networked music performance a focus of her current works (2020-), with the “2×2 WindowS” project (a collaboration with Japanese dancer Minori Sumiyoshiyama) garnering a lot of attention in Asia (Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia) and her “here&there” project being awarded funding and support from Goethe Institute in Hanoi. Another big interest of Tam Thi Pham lies in microtonal music, which she sees as both an expressive element and a research tool, helping her immerse herself into the rich culture of traditional Vietnamese music and transform it into a new, contemporary language and forms.
Besides her activities as a composer and a performer, she was also very active as an organizer of various discussions on contemporary music and art and concerts in Hanoi and Hamburg. She has also been participating at festivals in Vietnam, Germany, Japan, Indonesia and Serbia. such as: “Hanoi Sound Stuff Festival”, Hanoi, 2014; “Hanoi New Music Festival”, Hanoi, 2013 and 2018; “Beyond Sound” – a series of concerts of experimental music, Heritage space, Hanoi; 2016, 2017 and 2018; “Dance and music camp” with composer Heine Goebbels, Hanoi 2018; “New Music Festival”, Lüneburg, 2016, 2018 – 2021; “Blurred edges” festival, Hamburg, 2019, 2021; “41. International study week for contemporary music”, Hamburg, 2019 ; “next_generation 8.0 and 8.5” festival, Karlsruhe, 2019 and 2021; “Dance fest” Hanoi, 2019; “46.New Music Festival-Portrait Concert: Tam Thi Pham” at HfMT, Hamburg, 2020; Misch Masch festival, NPO Dance Box, Japan 2021; Exhibition “Zemljišta: situacije i dokumenta” (EN: “Grounds: situations and documents) at Gallery ”Jovan Popović” in Opovo, Serbia, 2021; “here&there” in reconnect – program of Goethe Institute in Hanoi, 2021; TAOI/ II, 2019 and TAOI (The Art of Improvisation) 2021..., Indonesian Dance festival (2021)

https://tamthipham.com

photo: Leonie Sens

MATHEUS SOUZA (BR) - electronics

is a composer, improviser and performer from Rio (Brazil). His musical practice is focused on the field of electroacoustic music by carrying out live electronics, acousmatic, and mixed music pieces. In his artistic process he aims to develop dynamic and powerful yet elegant works. As an electronic musician, he performs on a set made up of a Buchla Easel Command and a laptop (Max or VCV Rack), searching for a balance between analogue and digital interfaces.
Holding a Bachelors degree in Music from Instituto Villa-Lobos - UNIRIO, he currently pursues a Masters degree in Contemporary Performance and Composition at the CNSMD de Lyon, under supervision of Michele Tadini and Jean Geoffroy. During the same Masters studies, as an Erasmus+ student at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre, he was guided in Contemporary Composition by Helena Tulve and he was an active student in a masterclass taught by Chaya Czernowin.
In the role of an artistic researcher, he focus his studies on both fields of Theory and Analysis of Electroacoustic Music and on Composition and Performance on Modular Electronic Instruments. In his Master Thesis he carries out an investigation on an interdisciplinary relationship between the theory and analysis of electroacoustic music and philosophy via three concepts: the Praxis according to Paulo Freire, the Semiotic Tripartite Theory by Jean Molino and Jean-Jacques Nattiez, and the Combination of Aural and Mimetic discourses by Simon Emmerson. The studies presented in this dissertation are implemented in his live electronic music work "Tekoha".
In March 2024, Matheus Souza was in an Artistic in Residency in Erica Synths HQ, in Riga, Latvia. In the residency he worked on some of their modular systems such as their Erica Synths system and their DIY Buchla 200. He investigated relationships between the Buchla and Erica Synths, that resulted in a new live electronics piece and several recordings of free-improvisations. On March 28th, 2024, Matheus Souza performed "Plasma" at Erica Synths Garage, as a restitution of the residency.
His debut album titled "Terra" was released on Bandcamp on November 2023. It is made up of a a 34-minute solo work in two parts, recorded and performed by himself in one take, each part. The work was composed by Matheus Souza for the Buchla 200/200e system from the Royal College of Music in Stockholm.
He contributed as a composer-performer to the Buchlaïsms series, produced by the electronic music platform "Modulisme" by Philippe Petit. For that he composed a 15' acousmatic work having as sound source his Buchla 208c processed via a Max/MSP patch he programmed. In this series, more then 100 electronic musicians pay tribute to the anniversaries of the Buchla 100 and Buchla Music Easel, released in 1963 and 1973, respectively.


https://garage.ericasynths.lv/articles/matheus-souza-bridging-classical-and-electronic/