Amir Elsaffar | El – Sha’ab (the People)
Trumpeter, santur player, vocalist, and composer Amir ElSaffar has distinguished himself with a mastery of diverse musical traditions and a singular approach to combining Middle Eastern musical languages with jazz and other styles of contemporary music. A recipient of the 2013 Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, ElSaffar has been described as “uniquely poised to reconcile jazz and Arabic music without doing either harm,” (the Wire) and “one of the most promising figures in jazz today” (Chicago Tribune).
ElSaffar is an expert trumpeter with a classical background, conversant not only in the language of contemporary jazz, but has created techniques to play microtones and ornaments idiomatic to Arabic music that are not typically heard on the trumpet. Additionally, he is a purveyor of the centuries old, now endangered, Iraqi maqam tradition, which he performs actively as a vocalist and santur player. As a composer, ElSaffar has used the microtones found in Iraqi maqam music to create an innovative approach to harmony and melody. Described as “an imaginative bandleader, expanding the vocabulary of the trumpet and at the same time the modern jazz ensemble,” (All About Jazz), ElSaffar is an important voice in an age of cross-cultural music making.
Gyorgy Ligeti | Atmospheres
György Ligeti was born on 28 May, 1923, in Dicsöszentmárton (today named Tîrnaveni) in Romania. His parents belonged to the Hungarian-Jewish minority in Transylvania, and they soon moved with him to Cluj (Klausenburg), where he began to receive instruction in composition with Ferenc Farkas in 1941. The Nazi regime tore his family apart – his brother and father died in concentration camps, György Ligeti himself was set to forced labour, his mother survived Auschwitz.
After the war ended, Ligeti continued his studies in composing with Ferenc Farkas and Sándor Veress at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music in Budapest. In addition to his focus on folk music, during this period he also began to develop the concept of a micropolyphonic compositional style. Although his folksong arrangements and his compositions based on Romanian and Hungarian folk melodies were published in Hungary, his new musical ideas could first come to full fruition upon his move to Vienna. This move had become necessary for him for political as well as artistic reasons after the Hungarian revolution of 1956.
In Cologne, he became acquainted with representatives of the avant-garde such as Michael Koenigge and Herbert Eimert, who invited him to the studio for electronic music at the West German Radio (WDR). He worked there from 1957 to 1958. He was now able to study intensely the music of Mauricio Kagel, Pierre Boulez, and Karlheinz Stockhausen; he himself, however, with compositions such as Artikulation, continued to follow his own compositional path, one which had little to do with serial, structural thinking. His orchestral piece Apparitions, premiered at the festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music in Cologne, helped him to reach a wider audience. His 1961 orchestral work Atmosphères, a seemingly static structure of single voices in constant flux through minute rhythmic, intervallic, and dynamic adjustments, secured his position on the international scene. As this piece, along with his Requiem (1963-65) and the choral piece Lux aeterna (1966), was chosen by Stanley Kubrick to be included in the soundtrack for his film 2001 – A Space Odyssey, Ligeti’s music was introduced to a broader public.
Micropolyphony remained an important point in his works, and was enriched in the coming years through various other components: in his short musical dramas Aventures (1962) and Nouvelles Aventures (1962-62), György Ligeti used an invented language made up of phonetically notated words. He explored the use of micro-intervals in Ramifications (1968-69). In the seventies, he often took an ironic approach to historical models of composition. One main work of this period is the opera Le Grand Macabre, based on a theatrical work by Michel de Ghelderode. It was premiered in Stockholm in 1978. Complex polyrhythms influence the works of the 80s and 90s, including his Piano Concerto (1985) and Violin Concerto (1990-92).
György Ligeti, who lived starting in the mid-1950s partially in Germany and partially in Austria, and in 1967 became an Austrian citizen, was also active as an educator. From 1961 to 1971, he was guest professor for composition in Stockholm, in 1972 he was composer-in-residence at Stanford University, and from 1973 until 1989 he taught at the Hochschule für Musik in Hamburg.
The prizes Ligeti has won for his compositional achievements are so numerous that only some of them can be named here. In 1991 he won the Praemium Imperiale, and in 1993 the Ernst-von-Siemens-Musikpreis. In 2004 he was honoured with the Polar Music Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Music.
György Ligeti died in Vienna on 12 June 2006 at the age of 83.
Herbert | Leave Me Now (AKA : Matthew Herbert)
Matthew Herbert is a musician and producer working predominantly in the field of electronic music. Known for ignoring the boundaries and mangling the conventions traditionally associated with the genre, he is one of the few independently-minded artists to have made a considerable impact on both media and public while striving to be innovative and experimental.
Ian Medina | Still
Desde Berlín, una de las capitales de la electrónica, el compositor mexicano con formación como ingeniero en audio, lanzó 65 55 41 NE: cinco cortes de sonidos sintetizados y texturas que con frecuencia se superponen. En esa compleja tensión rítmica aún puede encontrarse un eco de la experiencia que tuvo Medina en el jazz. Su carrera inicia con una obra consistente. Ref. [La tempestad No. 106]
Gravenhurst – I Turn my Face To The Forest Floor // From Harbour Boat Trips: 01 Copenhagen by Trentemøller
Gravenhurst was a project by singer-songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist Nick Talbot, from Bristol, England, signed to Warp Records.
Talbot began playing solo, but from 1999 Gravenhurst toured extensively as a band. Gravenhurst’s first full-band line up featured Dave Collingwood on drums, who also plays with Azalea City Penis Club, and bassist Paul Nash. Nash soon left to concentrate on his own musical project North Sea Navigator, and was replaced by Huw Cooksley. Later, Robin Allender, and Alex Wilkins joined on bass and guitar respectively.
Talbot initially played all of the instruments on the recordings; Dave Collingwood took on the increasingly complex drum parts on ‘Fires in Distant Buildings’, and again on ‘The Western Lands’ (2007). Collingwood played in the live band from 2000, and left in 2008.
His death was announced on the 4th of December 2014 // Live performance by Nick Talbot (aka Gravenhurst) – May 12, 2003. WFMU radio, Jersey City, NJ.
Hanno Leichtmann | Study Three
Hanno Leichtmann is a producer of electronic music, soundartist and curator of electronic music series and conceptual festivals like „letra / tone“ ,“grand jeté“ or „my favourite thing“.
Hanno Leichtmann is a also member of the bands Groupshow (with Jan Jelinek and Andrew Pekler) and Denseland (with David Moss and Hannes Strobl).
CAMEL | Slow Yourself Down
Camel is an English progressive rock group from London, England, United Kingdom. They formed circa 1964 when brothers Andrew and Ian Latimer got together with their respective friends Alan Butcher and Richard Over to form The Phantom Four. The band played extensively around their home town of Guildford, Surrey before changing their name to Strange Bew.
Françoise Hardy | Ma jeunesse fout l’camp
Françoise Hardy signed her first contract with the record label Vogue in November 1961. In April 1962, shortly after finishing school, her first album, “Oh oh Chéri”, appeared, with the title song written by Johnny Hallyday’s writing duo. The flip side of the record, “Tous les garçons et les filles” became a huge success, which sold 2 million copies. She had long hair and usually wore jeans with a leather jacket, while accompanying her songs on the guitar.
Stereolab | Miss Modular
Stereolab are a UK-based band whose style, mixing 1950s-1960s pop and lounge music with the “motorik” beat of krautrock, was one of the first to which the term “post-rock” was applied. They are noted for the use of vintage keyboard instruments like Moog synthesizers and Vox and Farfisa organs. Stereolab is also notable for founding their own record label, Duophonic Records, with a grant from UK charity The Prince’s Trust. The band is often referred to as “The Groop” by their fans (and in the title of their song “The Groop Play Chord X” on the album Space Age Batchelor Pad Music).
They were founded in 1990 by songwriters Tim Gane (guitar, keyboards), formerly of the bandMcCarthy, and Laetitia Sadier (sometimes credited as Seaya Sadier; vocals, keyboards, trombone, guitar), who is from france and sings in both English and French.
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