tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-345603592024-03-08T15:35:44.282-08:00IrtijalSharif Sehnaoui's musical journal with a focus on Lebanese (& arab) free improvisation issues & events.savonarollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02521467582773647044noreply@blogger.comBlogger25125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34560359.post-46603845278576516912010-04-16T10:46:00.000-07:002010-04-16T10:56:29.029-07:00Back to Blog!!!!I'm taking this blog back up :) for the 1 or 2 worldwide readers who might be interested.<br />I stepped back from writing about music for a couple of years but knew it was only momentary. Many things have changed in my life since my last post here, but the most relevant thing is my geographical location, moving back from Paris to my hometown of Beirut, so my focus will be even more about the music scene hereabout. I also have a much better photo camera that I have learned to use decently so the visuals for my posts will be much nicer I hope.<br />I might also write about other things that I find interesting around here in the artistic and social fields of this wonderfully rich country. I'll keep a slight focus on reviewing live events but might diversify my posts a bit, maybe also posting my own work, who knows...<br /><br />Cheers!savonarollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02521467582773647044noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34560359.post-21943191233583618742007-06-26T06:26:00.000-07:002007-06-26T06:35:51.718-07:00IMPORTANT NOTEPlease note the new address of our Lebanese improvisation fetsival: <a href="http://www.irtijal.org/">www.irtijal.org</a>. The old url was literally stolen from us by a scrupulous promoter who is using it to hijack clicks without even knowing what the word "Irtijal" means. It is of great importance that you modify any links you might have to the old url, even encourage others to do so if possible because these links are exactly what this guy was interested in. Needless to say you should not visit the old url because it is a fake site and every click he gets will valorize his theft.<br />Thank you for any help you might bring to us in this neverending fight, but one day hopefully the leach will let go of our name and that would mean a lot to ussavonarollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02521467582773647044noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34560359.post-1163983871030310222006-11-19T15:51:00.000-08:002006-11-19T16:51:11.213-08:00Lantence Manifeste : Informo<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6720/3809/1600/PICT0004.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6720/3809/320/PICT0004.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />"Informo: disformous, informal and information is a space for reflection, meetings and experimentation that organises itself around a central theme through an invitation made to artists and thinkers from various fields of thought to put their work into direct view of each other".<br />On this afternoon of november 19th for 4 straight hours we could witness the fourth edition of Informo, a performance designed as a "live review". The basic frame is a space filled by white banners hanging all the way down from the seiling in a dark room (here in <a href="http://www.instantschavires.com">Instants Chavirés</a>) through which the audience can wander and close in on the various artists spread around the venue. On this day they where Li-Ping Ting, standing way up some stairs with a pocket-light to illuminate her face inside a bird cage, she dances with various feathers, papers and sticks coming out of her mouth (and incidently from the cage's small door), a powerful play on shadows, meanings, unspoken, both dark and revealing. Thierry Madiot with his 10 meter long conic tube producing low frequency beatings, gurglings and shrieks on the full length of the side wall. Massimo Carrozzo with his subtle clarinet flutters. Martine Altenburger coverring the full spectral range of a discreet cello with occasional pizzicato attacks, glissendis and drones. Christophe Cardoen's mastery of light manipulation using the various angles provided by the hanging banners. Stéphane Lempereur would move around his photographical creations that look like miniatures in regard to the size of the banners, breaking the monotony of the banner's grey effect. Olivier Féraud's rotating installations producing both sound and light providing a constant audiovisual bottom line to the performance. Finally Yannick Dauby's diffusions of field recordings in two different places both around him and on the opposite side of the room, where we could here undistinguishable whispering and muttering sounds that we first confuse with the actual whisperings of the audience. Other sounds include the constant movement of the audience, coins when latecomers have to pay their entrance fees, occasional objects that drop, people's closes brushing the banners.<br />We are urged to move around, giving the performance a whole new equilibrium depending on where we are standing. For a very long period of time we are immersed in this alternate opening of time and space, creating a distortion of reality through which the few predetermined events of the review take place: a screening of videos by Chinese artist Song Dong "Picking the Moon in the Water" that adds further layers to our current distortion when a hand tries to pick up a flickering circle in the water in which we can see images of another "distortion of reality", that of adds extroted from Chinese TV. Other events include a very delicate performance By Carrozzo of a solo clarinet piece where a steady minimal "beat" leads to the emergence of breath waves that mutate into tones and back. Finally the the whole performance ends with a collective interpretation of John Cage's "Musical Sculptures".<br />A fascinating afternoon, a total breach of our conventional habits by some of the most "questioning" artists on the French scene.savonarollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02521467582773647044noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34560359.post-1163889389350439612006-11-18T14:34:00.000-08:002006-11-18T17:35:23.846-08:00Lebanese improvisers hit Switzerland<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6720/3809/1600/17.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6720/3809/320/17.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />Follow this link to check out our Al Maslakh Festival in the Reitschule in Bern and concerts in other cities and in Germany: <a href="http://paed.ch/almaslakhfestival">http://paed.ch/almaslakhfestival</a>savonarollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02521467582773647044noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34560359.post-1163337747919020472006-11-12T05:08:00.000-08:002006-11-12T05:50:43.456-08:00Lieux Communs : Schnack + Michel Waiswisz<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6720/3809/1600/PICT0006.0.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6720/3809/320/PICT0006.0.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />A single concert in two sets for my thrid day in a row at <a href="http://www.instantschavires.com">Instants Chavirés</a><br />Schnack is a duo of Paul Hubweber on trombone and Uli Böttcher on laptop. Böttcher picks up the trombone's signal that he processes in realtime, so we get an alternation of acoustic trombone with amplified distorted digitalised trombone. On this date they had Michel Waiswisz with his singular MIDI controlled gloves as a guest.<br />They played numerous short or medium short pieces with sometimes Schnack operating as a duo, some small solo sections, several electronic duos between Waiswisz & Böttcher.<br />There where mainly 2 ways into the music: either Hubweber starts with his trombone and the electronics soon join in, drowning him at points but always allowing him to emerge again. Either the electronics start together and Hubweber sooner or later takes a dive into the music with his powerful sound, sometimes free jazzy, sometimes more into texture and extended techniques (if we agree that mutes are a kind of extended technique for the trombone). One of his mutes is a thick plastic glass that vibrates on the bridge producing a very fast beating that turns into a huge white noise when picked-up by the laptop.<br />The music in general is a maelstrom of digital and midi sounds, pierced by trombone erruptions, moving very fast, shifting from layers to broken rythms, digital explosions and tones, feedbacks, oscilating soundwaves, engine type sounds and doepler effects. Very agitated and on the very limit of chaos. Only at very brief moments did the music soften or lay down into more ambient or horizental soundscapes, the longest one being the very end of the concert with Waiswisz creating a hypnotising multiphonical slow pace drone that the other two could build or modulate on.<br />Some of the pieces where astounding, highly original and full of surprises, an overall very playful atmosphere between the musicians made the concert a big pleasure to watch. Naturally some pieces did not work this well and some inbalance between the volumes of the electronics through the 4 speakers where the weaker points of the performance. In the beginning of each set I am a bit sceptic but it keeps getting better in totally unexpected ways, sometimes the music would almost U-turn on itself. Big pleasure as well to see such lively electronics, Waiswisz using his whole body movement and Böttcher going from laptop to a joystick controller. Equally the cyber version of Hubweber gives us an obvious sound/movement equivalence.savonarollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02521467582773647044noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34560359.post-1163210278157614532006-11-10T17:26:00.000-08:002006-11-10T17:57:58.170-08:00Lieux Communs : John Butcher solo<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6720/3809/1600/PICT0008.1.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6720/3809/200/PICT0008.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />The second solo is by John Butcher. The concert is divided in two parts: tenor then soprano.<br />I have to say my favorite part was by far the first section where Butcher starts with a powerful agitated improvisation on atonal scales often exploding the notes with multiphonics or giving them a granulated texture. Shades of jazz, deconstructed, dislocated, shaky, with a powerful sound enabled by his masterful blowing that draws for his stomach up to his throat and mouth. The movement culminates into a long circular breathing topped with his unique multiphonics that was personally one of my first crazes in improvised music years ago. Brilliant.<br />At this point, and for the first time in my experience Butcher uses amplification on his sax, playing on close-micking effects. The result was severely anecdotal, often the process would turn into accidental feedback and the volume was never ideal, later on Butcher admitted that he has not yet found a way to master this method in a live setting.<br />He then switches to soprano with the same amplification, more effective, but again I don't see the interest in it appart from a few sections with high pitches reaching an almost aquatic quality with a significant enhancement of the sound. The concert ends with a "ballad" type soprano improvisation, kind of a distant homage to Steve Lacy, bits of Evan Parker, and again the destructured scales on which Butcher is totally at ease. The softness of the "ballad" then wares off to some more intense playing, but I hardly find my way back into the music.<br />At least one thing I have to recognise is that every one of his solo performances that I have seen is completely different, which requires a certain amount of risk taking that sometimes pays off, sometimes not.savonarollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02521467582773647044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34560359.post-1163205530059972792006-11-10T16:16:00.000-08:002006-11-10T16:56:56.856-08:00Lieux Communs : Quentin Dubost solo<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6720/3809/1600/PICT0001.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6720/3809/320/PICT0001.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />Second night at <a href="http://www.instantschavires.com">Instants Chavirés</a> features 2 solos of very different nature, the first of which is a solo by parisian guitarist Quentin Dubost.<br />A lesson of what you can do with one electric guitar string (the low E string), a bow, and a few clips that serve as mutes. Almost the whole solo was played in this very restricted region of the instrument. Simple very precise gestures, variations through different string tensions and open/muted positions, modulations of frequencies and textures, occasional white and harsh noise interventions and cracklings inside an overall multiphonic wave created by the bowing that takes place near the guitar's neck. In the very begining Dubost uses a fan, not touching the string but who's rotation is picked up by the lower microphone producing a very subtle flapping that works as a supportive layer for the rest of the music.<br />The result oscillates between sheer beauty and noise, allowing all amateurs of untypical electric guitar to merge into the sound introspectively.<br />Halfway through the sound becomes more sparse and less drony and at some point it seems the amplifier looses it's power (this was confirmed to me by Quentin later on, some kind of connection failure within the amp.), a blurry section ensues and the concert seems to head towards a dead-end. But this is when Dubost plays one of his most beautiful sounds: a very low volume but high velocity beating on the guitar's mike, very discreet but quite unique.savonarollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02521467582773647044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34560359.post-1163181459577176762006-11-10T09:50:00.000-08:002006-11-10T10:40:10.213-08:00Lieux Communs : The Contest of Pleasures<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6720/3809/1600/PICT0012.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6720/3809/320/PICT0012.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />Day 1 concert 2: The Contest of Pleasures is a trio of Dörner with Xavier Charles on clarinet and John Butcher on soprano and tenor saxophones, it is probably the fourth time I see them perform, the first time being their Mulhouse concert that was later released on french label Potlach.<br />They start the concert with a very efficient "system". Silence, then the three of them simultaneously launch an idea independently of what the other is doing, the silence again and so on, leading us to successive combinations of, for example, high frequency with slaps and multiphonics, followed by another combination of a sliding tone with white noise type breath and sharp sigle sound attacks. After a while the system opens up, leading to more acrobatic or togetherness moments with occasional simultaneous tones (maybe the only easy trick they pull out) and high frequencies that play on the eardrum through a phasing phenomenon. Then the system builds up again in an attempt to create some new and powerful music.<br />Obviously three masters of their instruments, in the whole 50 minute set I think they gave us an overview of all the outer limit possibilities of sax, trumpet and clarinet. Towards the very end some kind of boredom can be felt nevertheless, probably because of the repetivity of the blocks proceedure and the relatively equal duration of silence that seperates them.savonarollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02521467582773647044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34560359.post-1163180851448506732006-11-10T09:17:00.000-08:002006-11-10T09:54:06.940-08:00Lieux Communs : Axel Dörner & Robin Hayward<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6720/3809/1600/PICT0008.0.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6720/3809/320/PICT0008.0.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />The first of three days I will attend at <a href="http://www.instantschavires.com/">Instants Chavirés</a> in Montreuil, part of their annual "Lieux Communs" event that lasts a whole month.<br />There was 2 concerts on that day the first of which was a duo of Axel Dörner on trumpet and Robin Hayward on tuba. Extremely low volume breath sounds, a whole catalogue: wind, rifles, whistling, percussive, cyclic, whispering, gurgling, high, low... sometimes barely audible, played with utmost precision with a predominance of silence. I counted exactly two single tones throughout the 40 minute set. At points the music would densinfy, or Hayward would burst into a more typical tuba register but always very briefly, stopping as suddenly as he emerged. Dörner is a true landmark of precision and clarity, every idea he plays is clear as ice, for me surely one of the best players as his vocabulary is absolutely unique and his intentions always find their way through.<br />Sadly I think this music needs some very special conditions to reach its full potential, since the beauty of it lies in the quasi-atomic details of the sound that requires an immediacy of the source/ear relation which did not work in my case. My biggest mistake was to sit in the back of the room. The other factor is inherent to the venue where I believe it is a bad choice to play on stage, specially for the very low volume improvisation, I would highly recommend using the center of the room with the back against the left side wall. Due to the odd shape of the stage section there is a tendency of the sound to stay built-in the immediate surroundings of the musicians with an invisible acoustic wall screening the sound from the nearby audience.<br />On another level I could experience a mixture of the duo with the noise of about 50 people trying to remain silent but occasionally releasing a muted caugh or repositioning themselves on their seats as well as a multitude of assorted sound of micro movements of keys, glasses, digi-cams (including mine)... I have to admit that I specially enjoy this kind of ambient listening.savonarollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02521467582773647044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34560359.post-1163022581536048732006-11-08T13:37:00.000-08:002006-11-08T14:32:05.856-08:00For Malachi<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6720/3809/1600/335.0.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6720/3809/320/335.0.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />On friday november 3 Malachi Ritscher immolated himself near the "Flame of the Millenium" sculpture in Chicago. You can read about it here through the <a href="http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/123692,CST-NWS-bodyfire04.article">distorted mould</a> of daily news, but I would rather suggest going straight to his website <a href="http://www.savagesound.com">www.savagesound.com</a> where he has a letter explaining his act (a "<a href="http://www.savagesound.com/gallery99.htm">mission statement</a>") and his self-written <a href="http://www.savagesound.com/gallery100.htm">obituary</a>. Peter Margasak also wrote a <a href="http://blogs.chicagoreader.com/post-no-bills/#433">piece about him </a>in his blog.<br />I would definitely prefer him to be alive at the moment as he was a unique listener of free and creative music as well as a devoted anti-war/pro-peace activist. He probably had his reasons to commit suicide, they do not concern us or the general public but we have to recgnise that the man was truthful to his passions and ideas even up to his final act. Think about it, he burned himself under the "Flame of the Millenium" with these words written nearby: "Thou Shalt Not Kill". As he puts it he spent most of his life fighting against his fears and at this moment he seemed to no longer fear death: "My position is that I only get one death, I want it to be a good one. Wouldn't it be better to stand for something or make a statement, rather than a fiery collision with some drunk driver?". And a statement he did make, here is the crux of it: "if I am required to pay for your barbaric war, I choose not to live in your world", he is of course refering to the war in Irak financed by his own tax payments. He had a very hard time coping with Bush's election and the ensuing foreign policy of his country as you can read in three of his single page websites: <a href="http://www.unwinnablewar.net">www.unwinnablewar.net</a> <a href="http://www.killthepresident.net">www.killthepresident.net</a> and <a href="http://www.warwhores.us">www.warwhores.us</a><br />He dreamt of being a writer and in his only book that "was under consideration by publishers" he advocated for the possibility of suicide after 50, today he would be 52.<br />He recorded more than 2000 (!!!!) concerts of improvised music, free jazz or alternative rock for no money at all, only because he was "just a big fan". Musicians in Chicago will probably feel something is missing in the upcoming year as they could spot at every concert sitting in the front row under his headphones. This is where I met him one day when I was touring the East Coast (I think it was at the Hungry Brain). He came up to me at one point, presented himself and spontaneously apologized for what his country was doing to my part of the world. I was totally surprised as I was begining to think after 2 weeks accross the atlantic that americans along cared and talked about america. I replied that he had absolutely nothing to apologize about, a passionate discussion about politics followed and slowly drifted into more conversations about free improvisation and life in general. We kept in contact eversince as he was the best person I was given to meet in the US who was not a musician.<br />It is specially painful for me to read these words: "If one death can atone for anything, in any small way, to say to the world: I apologize for what we have done to you, I am ashamed for the mayhem and turmoil caused by my country". It made me jump on my seat and want to go back to that night at the Hungry Brain to push this discussion further. Little did I know at the time that what I thought was an amusing sentence had such strong underlying strength and meaning... so long Malachi.savonarollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02521467582773647044noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34560359.post-1162945094866877842006-11-07T14:45:00.000-08:002006-11-08T04:04:33.200-08:00The world according to Jean Pallandre<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6720/3809/1600/061105-CS%20JLP%20SS.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6720/3809/320/061105-CS%20JLP%20SS.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />In july 2004 Christine & I spent 2 weeks in Lebanon with Jean Pallandre. We played one concert at Rue 24 but mostly we travelled through Lebanon to record various soundscapes, both typical and un-typical, urban, coastal and in the countryside and mountainside. Sometimes actually playing acoustical instruments in these soundscapes at improbable hours (dusk and dawn). We have kept on performing as a trio using these field recordings and sometimes inviting other musicians to perform inside of this specific sound world. The recordings in great part determines the shape of the inmprovisations in an attempt to inscribe the acoustics into the soundfield.<br />This time we decided to finally record the trio's work in the optimal conditions of the GMEA studios in Albi so the music should finally be available on record sometime next year.<br />We performed it live in Bergerac in a theater festival in immigrant areas of the city to an audience mostly composed of kids and people who have never experienced any similar music. Always a very challenging task. But obviously the trio's music is very attractive to them because of the familiarity of sounds, simplicity of movements and mixture of different layers through which the ear can navigate through even without proper training.<br />The next day we where at La Maison Peinte, where Jean decided to surprise us all by not using his phonographies, but, for the first time of his life, only his own voice. A very radical shift for someone who is so used to working with other people's voices as musical material. In front of a very reduced audience (under 10), it seems that we did a very powerful set, precise, dynamic, playful, with Jean's low pitched voice providing sounds and poems that both fit into and bolstered the music.<br /><br />Later on Jean confronted us with his thoughts about phonography: why is it that phonography is not recognised by the major art institutions? The french SACEM rejects it as being mere 'sound effects', while it represents to the ear the same relation as photography (hence the name) to the eye. Photography was quickly instigated as a powerful and promising art form (I can think of Munch and Strindberg's experiments for instance), while phonography is still widely unknown or rejected as an integral art form. Another example of the lower status of our ears in humanity's general appreciation of art?<br /><br />Picture courtesy of Zéhavite Cohen.savonarollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02521467582773647044noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34560359.post-1162938514841951152006-11-07T14:05:00.000-08:002006-11-08T10:13:30.756-08:00Alto Duo @ La Maison Peinte<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6720/3809/1600/061105-CS%20HB.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6720/3809/320/061105-CS%20HB.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />La Maison Peinte is by far the most impressive place I was given to perform or see concerts in in France. It is in no way a venue but in fact the living room of Heddy Boubaker's house, however it is not an ordinary house, it is his wife Zéhavite Cohen's master work of art. She is a painter and visual artist and this room is certainly her most impressive work. There is no point in describing or picturing it. To see it, even experience it, you have no choice but to actually be there.<br />On that night Heddy played a duo with Christine, both of them have worked together extensively, often with Jean-Luc Guionnet in an alto trio setting. You would expect a very mimetic concert from the two similar reeds but in fact since the very first sound they reflexively move in separate parallel directions, creating a distorted atmosphere: aquatic, aerial, creeping... There where some weaker moments when they would both try to create some very distinct breath or percussive sounds that would sound untypical of the alto, in an attempt to avoid the obvious ground on which they could operate on, but they would quickly find a new path towards other strange equilibriums. Wath else to say? They coverred the whole sound spectrum of this instrument and beyond, both with and without the mouthpiece.<br />Three years ago I used to consider Heddy as a good post-aylerian saxophonist, maybe I was wrong, but still I am amazed at how much ground he has coverred in a totally different area of the saxophone since then.<br />A great set in a great place.<br /><br />Picture courtesy of Zéhavite Cohen.savonarollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02521467582773647044noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34560359.post-1162136795976383842006-10-29T07:28:00.000-08:002006-10-29T10:01:52.433-08:00Back from AmsterdamAfter the <a href="http://www.geokra.blogspot.com/">Paris concert at En Marge</a>, we went on to Amsterdam where Mazen had a residency at Steim. Playing in duo with Mazen is always very easy and efficient, and our purpose was to finally get a chance to record it in a good studio, so hopefully we have enough material for a future release.<br />We also had the chance to work extensively with Australian harp and guzheng (chinese string instrument) player Clare Cooper who's sound world is surprisingly highly close to ours. An acoustic (a very rare event for Steim) trio set we did was also very intense. For the second time after Sweden we could also listen and perform at greater length with Michel Waiswisz (someone we knew through his 70s recordings with Steve Lacy among others) amazing use of electronics, a true pioneer in the field and probably the first to have found an efficient way to combine electronic music with physical movement.<br />One of the most important encounter for me was with our compatriot Tarek Atoui, someone I had heard a lot about but had only very briefly listened to. Here I got a chance to discover his very interesting work. He is not clearly an improviser as the rest of us and works a lot with patches and composed electronic music with his laptop (MAX/MSP). A very abstract sound world, very contemporary, an overall experimental approach and a dedication to make new music outside of the mainstream paths of regular Lebanese artists. Even his use of occasional beats are quite special and subject to breaks and asymetrics.<br />It is rare for us to find Lebanese artists who have developped such original work without any prior contact with our MILL events or Irtijal. So a great pleasure, hopefully with time and common work we will find ways to make some unique music together.savonarollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02521467582773647044noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34560359.post-1161388172133621172006-10-20T16:19:00.000-07:002006-10-20T16:52:44.160-07:00Vortex + Bertrand Denzler in "Moments Remuements"<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6720/3809/1600/PICT0007.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6720/3809/320/PICT0007.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />"Moments Remuements" are a series of concerts organised by the Es Muss Sein association quite regularily for about a year now. They take place in a workspace inside organiser Gregory Castera's own appartment. It is quite an ideal space for acoustic concerts, very intimate, allowing the sound to be grasped in its full extent. The audience is limited to about 20 and the general level of listening is optimal.<br />On this night we enjoyed a straight forward 45' set by Vortex, a duo now on tour in France and Switzerland who where about half way in their trajectory, composed of Heddy Boubaker on alto sax and Sébastien Cirotteau on trumpet. Here they had Bertrand Denzler on tenor sax as a guest.<br />Immediatly we feel the complicity of Vortex, a harsh mixture of breath, whistling, gurgling, growling with a few floating overtones or multiphonics from here and there. Denzler fits in quite smoothly, delivering some of his unique low frequency ostinatos, space filling overtones or soundwaves, sometimes taking a very supportative role to the ongoing duo surrounding him. For the first and major part of the concert the three of them manage to move together, sometimes going back to silence to wait for a sound that will trigger the construction of a dense soundscape. In the second shorter part the playing became more sparse and delicate, at one point you would feel that this is the end, while in fact another movement is set in motion, and silence becomes a constitutive part of the music.<br />Some of the best moments actually happened in the end with very precise sounds from low volume to short white noise type breath with occasional single tones or percussive sounds producing some quite improbable combinations.<br />Makes me wonder how much sound we loose in bigger performance spaces, this one is most probably the smallest space I was given to perform or hear concerts in, and everytime I am surprised by the quality of sound that feeds both the playing and the listening.savonarollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02521467582773647044noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34560359.post-1161357037504368602006-10-20T08:01:00.000-07:002006-10-20T08:25:25.613-07:00Mazen Kerbaj : two dates in Europe (Paris & Amsterdam)<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6720/3809/1600/steim.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6720/3809/320/steim.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />Mazen Kerbaj will be in Europe for a very short time and only 2 concerts, he is preparing for a longer residency in <a href="http://www.steim.org/">STEIM</a> in Amsterdam next year. We will also have a chance to finally record our duo in optimal conditions in the STEIM studios.<br /><br />Here is the basic info:<br />Monday October 23rd, 2006 7p.m<br />Librairie en Marge - 92, rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud 75011 Paris FRANCE<br />KERBAJ - SEHNAOUI ACOUSTIC DUO<br /><br />Mazen Kerbaj : trumpet<br />Sharif Sehnaoui : acoustic guitar<br /><br />--<br /><br />Thursday October 26th, 2006 8:30p.m<br />STEIM - Achtergracht 19, 1017 WL Amsterdam THE NETHERLANDS<br />MAZEN KERBAJ plus GUESTS<br /><br />Mazen Kerbaj : trumpet<br />Sharif Sehnaoui : acoustic guitar<br />Michel Waisvisz : crackle box<br />Takuro Mizuta Lippit (dj sniff) : turntables<br />Clare Cooper : guhzeng<br />Tarek Atoui : laptopsavonarollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02521467582773647044noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34560359.post-1161094989114327452006-10-17T07:14:00.000-07:002006-10-17T07:23:09.130-07:00JacknewsFor those of you who worried, or wonderred: Jack arrived at 6a.m (with an overall 16h delay from his initial schedule!!), fortunately we heard him, he slept a few hours, then left at 1p.m to catch another flight to Oslo.<br />One good news: he has released the Beirut "Irtijal" solo gig along with a Barcelona solo on his label <a href="http://www.springgardenmusic.com/">Spring Garden Music </a>under the name "As Is". This is only the second release of an Irtijal performance after the Brotzmann/Zerang "Live in Beirut" CD on <a href="http://www.almaslakh.org/">Al Maslakh</a>.<br />Most of the Irtijal recordings are actually safekeeped for a future boxset release that will include material from more than 5 editions of the festival.savonarollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02521467582773647044noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34560359.post-1161052190305824912006-10-16T19:28:00.000-07:002006-10-16T19:29:50.316-07:00...It's 4:30 a.m and Jack still didn't arrive, I'm falling asleep... don't know how he's gonna get in when he gets here...savonarollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02521467582773647044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34560359.post-1161044975743805872006-10-16T17:07:00.000-07:002006-10-16T17:29:35.756-07:00Waiting for Jack...It's 2 o'clock in the morning and I'm waiting for Jack Wright who was supposed to be here at noon today but his plain got delayed by 14h!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!<br />Apparently there has been some more wasted time otherwise he would already be here. He will only stay overnight and leave tomorrow morning for a five week tour in northern and eastern Europe mostly in solo, then in France with a trio.<br />Being here with nothing to do except wait for him I thought I'd make this post to express how impressed I am with his unlimited energy I rarely see with musicians from his generation. Musically he has moved from free jazz in the eighties (that got him the funny label of "only white man who can blow his horn like a black man") to so-called "reductionist" music in the nineties. Seeing him play today shows that he didn't take his mark in any of these styles, he can lay waste to all his prior knowledge of the saxophone and give the impression of experimenting like a newby, putting himself at total risk. He performed a wonderful solo in last year's "Irtijal" that frightened most of the audience and shocked the other half, it was just raw, unpolished, unthought blowing into the horn producing the most unique squeaks & growls.<br />I try to think at how many times he might have settled down into a clear recognizable style throughout his life, playing his regular tricks and techniques as many musicians do after a while (and I don't condemn that), but no, it seems everytime I see him he is working from scratch again in a gesture that makes him one of the only true improvisers I know.savonarollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02521467582773647044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34560359.post-1160871967331870822006-10-14T17:11:00.000-07:002006-10-15T14:21:07.520-07:00Audiofocus 2.0 : Baltschun/Dubost/Korber/Saladin<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6720/3809/1600/PICT0016.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6720/3809/320/PICT0016.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6720/3809/1600/PICT0010.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6720/3809/320/PICT0010.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />Four musicians engaged in the very difficult exercise of a quartet improv meeting with our friend the neighboring binary rock drummer (did I mention he was also a pretty bad binary rock drummer as well?). Quentin Dubost is someone I know quite well, we have both shared a long term relation of reciprocal influence, and in many ways he is one of the most underrated french musician. Matthieu Saladin I have known better as an amplified/processed bass-clarinet player, but here he was playing laptop. Boris Baltschun is also a musician I've shared beautiful experiences with in the past and highly estimate his work. It was the first time I ever hear Thomas Korber but didn't get much of a chance to focus on his work.<br />The first half of the concert was a head on four way improvisation that worked quite well, producing a dense structure of superimposed layers through which we could appreciate Dubost's unique arco palying on his Les Paul guitar. The second half slowly degraded towards a loose ending. The separation point between these 2 parts was the first time they reached silence and that we had to have our now usual drumming break (sorry to insist), after which things didn't build up again.savonarollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02521467582773647044noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34560359.post-1160871077968343892006-10-14T16:57:00.000-07:002006-10-17T05:21:14.483-07:00Audiofocus 2.0 : Serge Baghdassarian & Hervé Boghossian<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6720/3809/1600/PICT0008.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6720/3809/320/PICT0008.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />Not an armenian duo despite the name :-) Actually this was a first time meeting between frenchman Hervé Boghossian here on laptop & german Serge Baghdassarian playing electronics.<br />Both have their own sound worlds that I find did not totally meet on this occasion. Baghdassarian develops a wide array of low frequency roars, crackles, high pitches, overtones, and oscilating concrete type sounds, in general lacking any tonality. On the other hand Boghossian develops sound waves and combos that also generate clear tones. In general he navigates within several medium or medium-high waves, tones and oscilations that did not mix with his partner's drier universe.<br />Both very intersting artists but somehow the meeting didn't really happen. The neighboring drummer (see previous post) also had a great part to play in this.savonarollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02521467582773647044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34560359.post-1160870228144347882006-10-14T16:33:00.000-07:002006-10-14T16:57:08.160-07:00Audiofocus 2.0 : Thomas Charmetant Solo<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6720/3809/1600/PICT0006.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6720/3809/320/PICT0006.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />Day 2 of the Audiofocus festival was a very controversial experience for me due to the degradation of the local playing conditions compared to day 1.<br />In general there is always the sound of a loud buzzing fridge that the venue refuses to turn down, but on this day you had to add the constant sound of a drummer rehearsing binary rythm in the neighboring room (!!!!). For those of you who know the high level of focused listening to apreciate and grasp the full extent of these kind of sound creations it's no surprise that a constant muted drummer spoils the whole experience of abstraction into sound, breaks all possibilities of a true silence and destroys subtle low volume textures. The Mains d'Oeuvres venue is for me a place to avoid at all cost as I had these kind of events everytime I went there (unless you are inclined to like a Burckhard Beins solo mixed with an electric bassist rehearsing Nirvana lines for example). The manager of the venue has no decency or respect for the artists (some of which travelled a long way to get there), trashes all possibilities to complain, and almost despises them when he himself complains because someone disturbed a dance rehearsal by doing the mistake of taking a wrong turn and going into the wrong door (a disturbance that barely took a few seconds to disappear while we had to endure the binary rythm and the fridge buzz throughout). I felt the musicians where being insulted and equally myself as an audience.<br />However just before the drummer started his lonely next door show, we had the chance to calmly listen to Thomas Charmetant playing a cello solo. I've known Thomas for quite some time now and a trio with Christine and him was one of my first ever bands and gigs in Paris. But for me on this day was his best performance ever (that I saw of course). Very clear start, with simple gestures producing a fantastic acoustic drone. He then moved to a very intuitive approach to improv, moving from one sound to the other, superposing ideas, producing circular gestures that slowly evolve with time, keeping it very simple and clear. Absolutely no cello clichés. An overall very courageous improvisation stance that we rarely see in a solo setting, at least not with such efficiency.savonarollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02521467582773647044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34560359.post-1160784230867773822006-10-13T16:53:00.000-07:002006-10-13T17:03:50.866-07:00Audiofocus 2.0 : Jean-Philippe Gross & Stéphane Rives<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6720/3809/1600/PICT0023.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6720/3809/320/PICT0023.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />Short but great! The second concert I saw featured my old time partner & inspiration Stéphane Rives in a first time duo with Jean-Philippe Gross.<br />Since the very first seconds they are already totally into the music, starting with a high pitched frequency mix with Rives unique soprano work in this range (check out his Potlach album Fibres!!!). The rest is a formality, amazing interraction in an overall high volume, beautiful dynamics, fully masterred art of loops & syncopation, the sound often filling the whole room, spiralling around our heads & creating weird acoustic phenomenons deep inside our ears. The concert ends as it started, way up!savonarollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02521467582773647044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34560359.post-1160348320437399572006-10-08T15:44:00.000-07:002006-10-09T12:38:05.340-07:00The rebirth: october concerts in Beirut<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6720/3809/1600/grendizer-web.0.gif"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6720/3809/320/grendizer-web.0.png" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />Two concerts featuring improvised music will take place in Beirut this october.<br />This is very special news to me since they are the first ones since the "july war". In a way it is the rebirth of the Lebanese improv scene in Lebanon after it was forced to shut down on july 14 when we had to cancel a Moukhtabar Ensemble + Ricardo Arias & Stéphane Rives concert.<br /><br />Here is the basic info:<br /><br />Saturday October 14th, 2006<br />Espace SD - Gemayzeh, Beyrouth (01 563114) <br />HABER / KERBAJ / YASSIN<br /><br />Charbel Haber : guitar<br />Mazen Kerbaj : trumpet <br />Raed Yassin : double-bass <br /><br />--<br /><br />Wednesday October 18th, 2006<br />Théâtre Monnot - Beyrouth (01 202422) <br />GRENDIZER TRIO plays with JULY'S WAR<br /><br />Mazen Kerbaj : trumpet, amplifications, objects, recorded sounds <br />Raed Yassin : double-bass, radio, tapes, laptop<br /><br />Extended thanks to Charbel, Mazen & Raed for making this happen.savonarollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02521467582773647044noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34560359.post-1160000490544515142006-10-04T15:04:00.000-07:002006-10-06T10:34:08.830-07:00Guionnet - Murayama @ En Marge bookstore<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6720/3809/1600/PICT0002.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6720/3809/320/PICT0002.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />First gig I attend in Paris in a long time (more than a month), was actually very happy to be there. I've known Jean-Luc & Seijiro for a long time but it's the first time I see them in duo.<br />They decided to play 60' precisely, the light went out at the end as a sign that time was over. The concert was great as a whole, the long duration almost suspended time. Since the begining they are playing in two different dimensions, each very minimal, each very focused. Only half way through do their sound start to converge, and even then it doesn't last long. Looking at each segment independently you get an undecided feeling of dullness, but following the 60 minutes movement as a whole there was a true feeling of space & freedom, even the freedom not to play, or to play in very different directions. Soon you forget about the details and you are left hanging in some strange dimension where anything goes, even the external sounds of digicams, cars, planes, people chatting or shouting in the nearby street...savonarollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02521467582773647044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34560359.post-1159624452527726122006-09-30T06:45:00.000-07:002006-10-06T10:34:47.376-07:002 Moukhtabar pictures<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6720/3809/1600/Moukhtabar%20082.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6720/3809/320/Moukhtabar%20082.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6720/3809/1600/Moukhtabar%20079.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6720/3809/320/Moukhtabar%20079.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />2 pictures from the great Moukhtabar Ensemble tour of Scandinavia, here @Cosmopolite in Oslo with guests Martin Küchen & David Stackenäs.<br />Moukhtabar is the only ensemble of its kind in the Middle-East composed of most of the Lebanese improv musicians (here Charbel Haber, Jassem Hindi, Mazen Kerbaj, Béchir Saadé, Christine Sehnaoui, Sharif Sehnaoui and Raed Yassin).<br /><br />Pictures courtesy of Yrr Jonasdottir.savonarollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02521467582773647044noreply@blogger.com0