Monday 25 November 2019, 7.30pm
speak easy embarks since 2008 on a vocal extreme tour playing tours and Festivals in Germany, Austria and Norway. Minton's sonorous voice is capable of producing disturbing sound collages, whereas Ute Wassermann's extreme vocals resonate with a variety of bird whistles. Coupled with Blume's finely nuanced percussive work and Thomas Lehn's extraordinary analogue synthesizer sounds, a physical immediacy of rare intensity is achieved. speak easy is an organism rather than an ensemble, grown out of high musical competence and full of creative energy.
In 2019 the group expands to s p e a k e a s y xtended playing concerts in Berlin, Bochum/Dortmund, Vienna & London where the 4 members of the groups are living and meeting 2 local guests in each town.
This is the first concert of the group in the UK
Ute Wassermann | voice and whistles | Berlin
Phil Minton | voice | London
Thomas Lehn | analogue synthesizer | Vienna
Martin Blume | drums & percussion | Dortmund
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Marcio Mattos | cello | London
Adam Bohman | prepared violin & objects | London
With support of Musikfonds.
Ute Wassermann is a voice artist, composer performer and improvisor. She grew up in Kiel on the Baltic Sea in an artistic - scientific environment that brought her into contact with environmentally relevant topics.
She studied visual arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Hamburg with artists from Fluxus and Happening like Henning Christiansen and Allan Kaprow, and subsequently visual arts, music and singing at the University of California, San Diego. For many years she has toured the world as an improviser and performer of contemporary music. In the last decade she has been increasingly realising audiovisual voice performances / installations and compositions for soloists and ensembles. At the core of her research is an ongoing and uncompromised exploration of her voice. Ute Wassermann´s singing transcends the human voice resulting in multidimensional sculptural sounds oscillating between electronic, animalistic, inorganic and human qualities. She takes this to the extreme by creating a visceral sound space through the use of different types of microphones.
In her solo album strange songs for voice and birdcalls (TREADER, UK) she embodies a hybrid vocal persona with swirling, trilling, screeching, sighing, breathing and singing tone-colours. Furthermore she extends and alienates the voice including the use of bird whistles, lo-fi electronics, resonators, fieldrecordings and every day objects. With her performances she creates imaginary acoustic habitats in which her chameleon-like voice collaborates with the voices of other-than-humans sounding from raw materials and objects.
She is a member of bands including speak easy (with Phil Minton, Thomas Lehn, Martin Blume), Duo Lanz-Wassermann with turntableist Joke Lanz), electrovoX (with Thomas Lehn and Richard Scott on analogue synths), Asfourieh (with trumpeter Mazen Kerbaj), MUT (Thomas Rohrer, Michael Vorfeld), radio tweets (with trumpeter Birgit Ulher) and performs with musicians and ensembles like Lotte Anker, Jaap Blonk, Marina Cyrino, Isabelle Duthoit, Emilio Gordoa, Aleks Kolkowski, Magda Mayas, Andrea Parkins, Mazen Kerbaj, Liz Kosack, Els Vandeweyer, Charlotte Hug, Fernando Vigueras, Raed Yassin, Michael Zerang, Münchener Kammerorchester, L´ART POUR L´ART, ELISION, ASKO, Distractfold Ensemble, Basel Sinfonietta, Ensemble Mosaik, Quiet Music Ensemble.She has premieres numerous compositions especially written for her voice including works by Richard Barrett, Henning Christiansen, Chaya Czernowin, Hespos, Matthias Kaul, Karen Power, Alejandro Romero Anaya, Sam Salem.
For a long time now Phil Minton has been working as a improvising singer, solo and in groups and situations at various locations all over the place, deserts, quarries, concert halls, pubs, holes, dodgy clubs, containers, up trees, in prisons, on mountains, in churches, under bridges and cafe oto etc.
Phil Minton comes from Torquay. He played trumpet and sang with the Mike Westbrook Band in the early 60s - Then in dance and rock bands in Europe for the later of part of the decade. He returned to England in 1971, rejoining Westbrook and was involved in many of his projects until the mid 1980′s.
For most of the last forty years, Minton has been working as an improvising singer in lots of groups, orchestras, and situations. Numerous composers have written music especially for his extended vocal techniques. He has a quartet with Veryan Weston, Roger Turner and John Butcher, and ongoing duos, trios and quartets with above and many other musicians, including tours with American singer Audrey Chen - with whom he has sang far and wide in the last ten years.
Since the eighties, His Feral Choir, where he voice-conducts workshops and concerts for anyone who wants to sing, has performed in over twenty countries.
Schooled both as a concert pianist playing contemporary repertoire and as a recording technician, Thomas Lehn deploys a huge musicality through his unique chosen outlet, the analogue synthesiser. This instrument allows him extremely close and immediate contact with all aspects of sound modification - a vast gamut of living electronic sound produced with unmatched speed and fluency. Thomas Lehn simply represents a coming-of-age of electronic sound production in the domain of concert performance that sets a standard for the entire medium. He is therefore unsurprisingly an essential member of many of the most active and significant projects in this international and dynamic scene.
Born 1956 in Arnsberg/Westfalen. Has worked since 1983 as a performer and composer with several musicians and in different musical situations, both as a collaborator and in leading his own groups including musicians like Peter Brötzmann, Peter Kowald, Helmut Joe Sachse, Luc Houtkamp, Johannes Bauer, Conny Bauer, Marcio Mattos, Jay Oliver, Phil Minton, Lol Coxhill, John Butcher, Mario Schiano, Georg Graewe, Frank Gratkowski, Dieter Manderscheid, Hans Schneider, Wolfgang Fuchs, John Edwards, Werner Lüdi, John Russell, Chris Burn, Roger Turner, Joëlle Leandré, Axel Doerner, Horst Grabosch, Melvyn Poore, Jim Denley, Phil Wachsmann , Mats Gustafsson, Xu Feng Xia, Thomas Lehn, Fred van Hove, Paul Lovens, Wilbert de Joode, Ken Vandermark, Kent Kessler, Cor Fuhler, Frank Paul Schubert, Alexander von Schlippenbach a.m.o.
Since coming to London in the early 70’s he has performed, recorded and broadcast both in Britain and abroad with most exponents of the Improvised Music world: Evan Parker, John Stevens, John Surman, Roswell Rudd, Dewey Redman, Roscoe Mitchell and Marylin Crispell amongst many others.
Has also worked with dance companies such as Ballet Rambert and The Extemporary Dance Theatre Company, and in electro-acoustic music groups such as the West Square Electronic Music Ensemble, where he developed his own electronic treatment of the double bass and cello both in recording and live performance.
A long-standing member of various Eddie Prevost and Elton Dean formations. International projects working in Europe have included the "Bardo State Orchestra"- a project with Tibetan monks and Jim Dvorak, various projects with Georg Graewe, Tony Oxley's Celebration Orchestra,"AXON" with Phil Minton/ Fred van Hove and Martin Blume, "LINES" with Phil Wachsmann/ Jim Denley/ Martin Blume and Axel Dorner. Current international projects include a duo with shakuhachi player Shiku Yano, the string quartet “Gocce Stellari” with Charlotte Hug, John Edwards and Phil Wachsmann and ‘ABAETETUBA’ with Panda Gianfratti, Thomas Rohrer and Rodrigo Montoya.
Former member of ‘LIO’, the London Improviser’s Orchestra.
His presence can be heard in very many released CD’s and especially in his latest solo recordings, “SOL[os]’ (EMANEM 5035)
“Mattos is a creative genius…his invention is unparalleled, as is his musicianship.” Marc Medwin, review in ‘The Squid’s Ear”
http://marciomattos-music.jimdo.com
https://musiclay.bandcamp.com/music
Adam Bohman has been operating on the outer fringes of underground music for decades. Working with home-built instruments, found objects, tape cut-ups, collages, ink drawings and graphic scores. Favouring acoustic sounds over electronics, he explores the minute tendrils of sounds coaxed from any number of non-musical instruments and objects. He is a member of British experimental groups, Morphogenesis, The Bohman Brothers, Secluded Bronte, and The London Improvisers Orchestra. Adam's music is unique and experimental, incorporating Fluxus japery, musique concrete, sound poetry and free improvisation.
