STEIM Year-Ending Concert '07

Selected performer by Mazen Kerbaj, Atau Tanaka & dj sniff

19 Dec 2007

We have asked the three artistic advisors of 2007 to each select a performer to close this year's concert series. What we got is a fantastic program that will most likely show us what musicianship and instrumentalism means beyond the tools that are being used.

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Year-Ending Concert - Selected performers by STEIM's Artistic Advisors 2007
Stephane Rives (FR) - Saxophone - Mazen Kerbaj's selection
Julien Ottavi (FR) - Voice, computer, meta-percussion - Atau Tanaka's selection
Arnaud Rivière (FR) - Turntable, objects, electronics - Takuro Mizuta Lippit's selection
Tom Tlalim (NL/IS) - Computer, electronics - STEIM's selection

Time: 20.30 hrs.
Entrance: 5 euros
Reservations and more information: knock@steim.nl or 020-6228690

Stéphane Rives by Mazen Kerbaj
What is the relationship between electronic, electro-acoustic and purely acoustic music? This question has been - and still is - asked by every contemporary musician. Between all the answers and the theories brought up since the 50's, the solo work of Stéphane Rives seems to be one of the most concrete and convincing ones. Besides its evident relationship with electronic sounds, Stéphane's vocabulary on the soprano saxophone is also one the most innovative in the world today. In my (humble) point of view, he made one of the rare true revolutions on the instrument after Evan Parker and Michel Doneda.

Julien Ottavi by Atau Tanaka
Julien Ottavi is part of a generation of audio artists to emerge in the 90's that indicated some of the directions that music and soundart is taking. While at art school, he organized a series of concerts, bringing international artists from the experimental scene to Nantes, drawing touring musicians to movements happening outside of Paris. This became not just a destination but a nexus for collaborations. This resulted for example in the group Formanex to perform graphical scores of electro-acoustic music, and in Apo33, an artists collective to facilitate, nurture, and disseminate creative audio practice. In this way, Julien represents the energy and initiative of a present day artist – activist through practice, organizing as performance, publishing as networking, open source and open aesthetic. This fluidity of working across boundaries of style and role are seen in his music, physical with computer, performative and reflective. It is interesting that more than one artist on this evening’s program draw upon Dutch artist Jaap Blonk as an influence. The electronic aesthetic that influences performance on physical interventions, be it the voice or space in Ottavi’s case, or the saxophone in Rive’s case, show to what extent the electro-acoustic histories, noise movements, and DIY technology have been fully integrated by these artists. www.noiser.org/

Arnaud Rivière by Takuro Mizuta Lippit
Arnaud's performance is far from subtle. He will attack you with raw sounds of objects rotating on the turntable and dangerous wires stuck directly into his mixer. His sonic intervention is ecstatic but he is also detached enough to hint sarcasm at moments before he moves on to destroy another object for auditory pleasure. For me, Arnaud is an important turntablist that extends the practices of Yoshihide Otomo and Martin Tetreault, where the raw sound of the material overwhelms any sort of reference or functionality that the medium was originally intended to have. http.http.http.http.free.fr/

Tom Tlalim by STEIM
Tom Tlalim has worked on several projects at STEIM including his audio-visual installation Quantasonic and recent collaboration with photographer Shira Klasmer and recorder player Karolina Bäter. He is also a frequent collaborator of Robert van Heumen and joined the STEIM showcase at the Jauna Muzika Festival in Vilnius this year. However, what impressed us most was his performance at the DEAF07 Festival. Before the show his theremin controller had stopped working, so instead he introduced a Wii controller into his setup. We were not only impressed by his savviness to hook up a new controller on the fly, but also the intensity and energy he was able to bring in such a situation. Tlalim is definitely one of the most expressive computer-based musician that we have seen in the recent years. www.tomtlalim.tk/