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(Deutsch) Marc Kilchenmann: Der Vielseitige
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(Deutsch) Andreas Eduardo Frank: Kollaboratives Komponieren und Meta-Komponieren
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(Français) Nora Vetter – Les contextes performatifs
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Tapiwa Svosve grinds saxophone sounds into the sewage system
Young jazz saxophonist Tapiwa Svosve (*1995) was awarded one of this year’s BAK music prizes. Svosve does not commit himself to any particular style, switching agilely between free jazz, ambient, noise and progressive rock. However, his musical practice is firmly rooted in the jazz tradition.
Jaronas Scheurer
Tapiwa Svosve already achieved a lot, considering his young career: shortly after graduating from Zurich Jazz School, he won the ZKB Jazz Prize with the band District Five, followed by a performance with jazz legends Hamid Drake and William Parker and a year of work for the City of Zurich, where he organised and curated the Zurich Taktlos Festival and co-founded transdisciplinary art collective Gamut. He has performed in productions by the celebrated artist and filmmaker Wu Tsang, made music for the Louis Vuitton fashion show, released numerous albums – solo, with his various bands or, for example, the album The Sport of Love in 2023 with American electronic producer Asma Maroof and English cellist Patrick Belaga, whom he met during his collaboration with Wu Tsang. In 2024, this remarkable career was crowned with a tour of Southeast Asia and one of the coveted BAK Music Prizes.
Tapiwa Svosve sounds in G Major Kinda Love from the album The Sport of Love very tender. However, that is just one side of his diverse oeuvre.
Financial scarcity and artistic consistency
Nevertheless, Svosve is just barely getting by financially: “I mainly live off my music. Sometimes it goes alright and sometimes less,” he says during the interview, “Maybe you get to play a lot, but then there’s another dry spell and you limit yourself: you don’t go out anymore, maybe you only eat rice with soy sauce. I can accept that if it then goes up again.” The BAK prize and prize money came at just the right time: “I was really worried about how I was going to make ends meet over the next few months. The prize took me from one reality to a completely different one: One day I had minus twenty francs in my account and the next day I suddenly had this huge prize money.”
The financial scarcity is probably also due to Svosve’s artistic consistency, who hardly, if at all, submits to sales arguments or marketing strategies. “An improvisational approach is fundamental as far as I’m concerned – be it in a jazz trio, in a noise band or when I make ambient music: being open to the potential of collaborations and seeing where this constellation of people takes you.” Svosve sees himself as a jazz musician: “I was musically socialised through jazz, in what other Western musical tradition is this extreme openness at to be found?”
Jazz and community
For Svosve, the openness and improvisational approach of jazz go beyond the actual music making . His work as an organiser and curator has also been influenced by these values: “The fact that I not only make music, but also proactively create spaces for music that the mainstream may not yet be ready for, is an essential part of being a musician for me and looking back at jazz history, this has always been an important part.”
A jazz musician in very different echo chambers
Svosve is essentially a jazz musician. He studied jazz history intensively and also teaches jazz history at the Winterthur Institute for Contemporary Music (WIAM), allthough this is hard to hear in some of his projects.
It characterises his way of being and working rather than the actual musical results. A good example is the album “A Lung in a Horn in a Horn”, released in 2022. In a nocturnal action, he and artist, label operator and sound designer Rafal Skoczek climbed into a large, open pipe that was laid under the Sihl and Limmat rivers. The album was then created there – just him, the saxophone and the psychedelically reverberating Zurich sewerage system, recorded by Skoczek. There was no major clarification of what was possible or legal. There were no rehearsals, no sound check: “The aim of the action was more the way to get there than the actual result. But I still like the record today. It’s so purist. It’s not so much about my playing, but more about how this tunnel actually sounds when I grind saxophone sounds into it.”
Jaronas Scheurer
Tapiwa Svosve and his saxophone, here in A Lung in a Horn in a Horn, recorded in the sewage of Zürich.
Broadcasts SRF Kultur:
Musikmagazin, SRF 2 Kultur, 28.9.2024: Preisgekrönt: Der Saxophonist Tapiwa Svosve: Tapiwa Svosve in an interview with Jaronas Scheurer.
Neo profiles:
Tapiwa Svosve, Swiss Music Prizes
Sol Gabetta awarded the Grand Prix Suisse de musique 2024
A portrait of cellist Sol Gabetta by Florian Hauser
Sol Gabetta, cellist, cosmopolitan and Swiss by choice, was awarded the Grand Prix suisse de musique 2024
Florian Hauser
What does it take for a global career in classical music? Talent, luck, a strong personality and last but not least, the willingness to get involved in teamwork, i.e. working with an artist agency, press agency and record label. Sol Gabetta does it all.
When her career began, thirty years ago, she would never have dreamed of it. ‘I was a romantic musician, a young woman with high hopes of getting to know everything about art and music – everything was open.’ After the happiness of a sheltered childhood in Argentina, where Sol Gabetta was encouraged to the best of her ability, developped her passion and became a strong, self-confident person in a protected space, she took off. In 1998, at age 17, she won the 3rd prize at the prestigious ARD Music Competition. In 2004, something like a turbo ignited: the Credit Suisse Young Artist Award brought her maximum attention. She founded her own festival, won one prize after another and soon the big orchestras – like Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra and many others – were lining up. Festivals invited her, and from 2010 she was also featured in the magazine KlickKlack on Bavarian television, since then Sol Gabetta has been omnipresent in the media.
Teamwork is everything
One thing leads to another. A CD label, an assistant, an agency, Sol Gabetta begins to build a team around her and has a knack for it: “You develop fine and sensitive antennas to sense what you really are, what you really want.” She trained in Basel with cellist Ivan Monighetti, who is still a coach for her today when she needs him. She met Christoph Müller, who increasingly mutated from cellist to music manager, was her partner for a time and now looks after her Swiss management, including her Solsberg Festival. She met her current partner, the violin maker and restorer Balthazar Soulier, who can take care of all the minor and major issues of her almost 300-year-old Goffriller cello or the Stradivarius cello from 1717.
Largely thanks to a large network in the background, Sol Gabetta is as free and uncompromising in the organisation of her tours as she is in her choice of repertoire: ranging from all eras to the comtemporary works such as the Concerto en Sol, which grandmaster Wolfgang Rihm wrote for her four years ago.
Wolfgang Rihm, Concerto en Sol, Cellokonzert für Sol Gabetta (2018-19), Kammerorchester Basel, conductor Sylvain Cambreling, concert recording world creation: Victoria Hall Genève 2020.
The volcano
“I’m a bit like a volcano, but a calm one. I really do have this clarity about what I’m looking for and which path I want to take. Of course, there are also uncertainties and that’s why I just try to have important people around me.” Discipline and routine are also important. “As soon as I wake up, I actually do the most important thing: practise. The learning process in my brain needs to be fresh, and the few hours I have left in the morning are golden.”
Sol Gabetta is a happy example of how a soloist floats through the market. She knows how to act on and off the stage with the right instinct, positive charisma and an engaging personality, with the necessary drive and enthusiasm to inspire the audience.
Florian Hauser
ARD Musikwettbewerb, Credit Suisse Young Artist Award, Wiener Philharmoniker, London Philharmonic Orchestra , KlickKlack, Ivan Monighetti, Solsberg Festival, Gautier Capucon, Jean-Guihen Qeyras, Nicolas Altstaedt, Truls Mörk, Daniel Müller-Schott, Bruno Philippe, Johannes Moser, YoYo Ma, Giovanni Antonini, Simon Rattle, Christian Thielemann, Jacqueline du Pré, Alisa Weilerstein, Julia Hagen, Wolfgang Rihm
broadcasts SRF Kultur
Passage, SRF Kultur, 13.9.2024: Teamwork ist alles. Cellistin Sol Gabetta und das Musikbusiness, author Florian Hauser.
Musikmagazin, Grand Prix suisse de musique für Sol Gabetta, SRF Kultur, 25.5.24 (ab Min 06:00): Talk: Sol Gabetta im Gespräch mit Florian Hauser.
neoblog, 10.1.2020: Melancholische Eleganz – Wolfgang Rihm schreibt für Sol Gabetta, author Gabrielle Weber.
neo-profiles
Sol Gabetta, Wolfgang Rihm
Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri and the independence of objects
Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri’s works are fascinating for seeing and hearing. Her pieces, which consists of a variety of objects, sound installations and performances, surprise visitors and listeners with the simplicity and elegance of their functioning. During my meeting with the artist, we discussed the intimate relationship between objects and sound.
Alexandre Babel
By entering the exhibition, a sound composition consisting of a multitude of short pulses fills the room. The sounds are so close together that one perceives a single, constantly moving structure. By approaching the object constituting Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandris Modular n.3, the source of the sound moves closer to the visitors’ ear and he or her begins to distinguish the individual impulses from one another. The closer one gets to it, the more this installation object reveals its identity and sound. It is a continuous rotating movement that generates sound impulses through friction with a nylon thread, amplified by loudspeakers.
Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri, modular n.3, en collaboration avec Pe Lang, 2019.
The produced music, the third in a series of the same name created in close collaboration with artist Pe Lang, is therefore practically inseparable from its physical appearance. While the collection of loudspeakers creates a sound universe in its own right, understanding the production mechanism unfolds a narrative that reveals a concrete and poetic dimension. “I like to draw the audience’s attention to the way in which an instrument is built. In my opinion, the structure of my works is also based on the understanding of how they work”, explains Papalexandri-Alexandri.
Modular n.3’s principle is also reflected in other works by the artist, such as Untitled n.V or Speaking of Membranes and raises the question of the expectations associated with an object’s function. A loudspeaker is normally used to spread sound by amplifying electric energy. In this case, however, the loudspeakers are not connected, as the sound is acoustic.
“You recognise that it’s a loudspeaker, but I want to give it a privileged space, I want to hear its own voice.” If Papalexandri-Alexandri draws the audience’s attention to the essence of the object by making it vibrate through the movement device, what does it look like when the installation is not switched on or the object is exhibited as inanimate matter? The artist continues: “Sometimes I wonder what happens when a sound or musical object does not produce sound, is it a dead object? I think that every musical object is functional. When you set it in motion, you are exploring a certain kind of functionality. But maybe there are different functionalities to be explored on the same object.”
In Solo for generators, motors and wind resonators, a piece that was composed for recorder player Susanne Fröhlich, with whom Marianthi Papalexandri Alexandri has a long-term relationship, the connection to the instrument bypasses once again conventional expectations. A recorder, dismantled into its individual parts, is presented spread out on a table. On the same table a motorised device sets wires in rotation. These are connected to membranes stretched over the open parts of the recorder. The result is reminiscent of long waves of sound. “As we have dismantled the instrument, you can only see fragments of it”, explains the composer. Once more, the use of a musical object that is normally associated with a specific use, in this case the production of sound by blowing into the mouthpiece, is transformed into a sound manifestation produced by the instrument itself. Papalexandri-Alexandri continues: “When you place this instrument on a stage or as part of an installation, it becomes a resonant object. You see it as a body and no longer as a musical instrument that you recognise. This kind of process gives me the feeling of offering the audience a new approach to the instrument, a kind of tribute.”
Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri, salon de musique du 31, Susanne Fröhlich, Festival Archipel Genève, march 2019.
Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri’s world reveals an attention to manufacturing precision. The immaculate set-up of the equipment suggests that the artist seeks a certain control over the sequence of events. During the performance, however, the programmed control does give the work a rigid quality, on the contrary, it reveals a dimension of fragility emanating from the possible imperfections associated with the passage of time. In relation to the Solo for generators, motors and wind resonators, the composer tells us that control is never absolute. “When I play with this device myself, I can feel it and create beautiful sounds, and the same goes for Susanne (Fröhlich). But I’ve also experienced situations where the device did not work during the performance. This is due to the tension between the performer and the machine, which is necessary for the piece to take shape.”
This duality between control and fragility contributes to the poetic aura of Papalexandri-Alexandri’s works, as she explains: ‘Ultimately, it’s not really about control. My attitude is more about accepting events as they unfold.’ When asked how she would like to develop these events further, she replies: “What’s my personal contribution? I simply want to engage with the existing objects, they already have a lot to tell.”
Alexandre Babel
neo-profiles :
Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri, Pe Lang, Festival Archipel
Linked to the future – Lucerne Academy’s 20th anniversary
Just beautiful concerts? No. At the Lucerne Festival, an academy looks after young musicians and theis interests, be it instrumentalists, composers and/or conductors. The Lucerne Festival Academy brings them all together. Festival director Michael Haefliger and composer and conductor Pierre Boulez came up with the idea for this academy 20 years ago.
Benjamin Herzog
It’s a hot saturday afternoon by the Lake Lucerne and the Lucerne Festival has been running at full speed for a good week now. This applies not only to the dense sequence of concerts, debut recitals and free formats for visitors in front of and next to Jean Nouvel’s emblematic Culture and Convention Centre KKL. The first three weeks of the festival are very intense for the participants of the Lucerne Festival Academy as well. 110 in number, from 30 different countries: Instrumentalists, composers and conductors. Some of them will be presenting the fruits of their first phase of work in a concert this Saturday afternoon at the KKL. Pierre Boulez’ enormously difficult Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna for eight instrumental groups, Wolfgang Rihm’s In-Schrift and a piece by Lisa Streich called Ishjärta, which translates “iron heart” in English and in which the composer attempts to express two different emotional states simultaneously.
The interaction between performers, lecturers and learners makes sense. British composer Eden Lonsdale, a participant in the Composer’s Programme, says: ‘Working with an orchestra shows you what you have concretely written on your score.’ Chinese composer Yixuan Hu is also happy regarding the artistic-pedagogical triangle built by academy orchestra, conductor and teacher. ‘This collaboration here is unique,’ she says. ’You can get very far very quickly.’ In seminars this year, twelve composers of orchestral music and smaller ensemble pieces discuss new pieces with composers Dieter Ammann and Unsuk Chin, who stood in for Wolfgang Rihm this year, as he passed away in July. The tone is friendly but direct with the clear intention of bringing theory and practice together.
Young composer Wolfgang Rihm shocked the audience with his orchestral work ‘Sub-Kontur’ at the Donaueschinger Musiktage in 1976, Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra, conducted by Sylvain Cambreling, SRG/SSR in-house production.
With its own orchestra, the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO), the Composers Programme, an initiative for conductors who want to deepen their knowledge of new music, and workshops where Academy members can discuss practical performance issues with invited experts from ensembles such as the Ensemble Intercontemporain, Frankfurt’s Ensemble Modern and Klangforum Wien, the Lucerne Festival Academy is broadly based. A management workshop and two prizes, the Fritz Gerber Award for instrumentalists and the Roche Young Commissions for composers, round off the programme.
Three weeks of campus atmosphere
Three weeks of campus atmosphere, full of encounters. Former academy students say that the network built up in Lucerne has helped them in their artistic careers, be it for specific questions about a notation, a playing or conducting problem, or simply in a friendly way. The Lucerne Festival itself also actively cultivates bonds between former and current academy members: an alumni programme actively involving former participants in the ongoing academies was founded in 2016.
The LFCO performed this year’s composer in residence ‘Reigen’ as a spontaneous pre-programme to the festival opening concert in KKL’s main hall, LFCO, SRG/SSR in-house-production.
Composer and conductor Pierre Boulez, who died in 2016 and founded the academy 20 years ago together with Lucerne Festival’s artistic director, Michael Haefliger, explained in an 2016 (the founding year) interview that 20th and 21st centuries’ culture was ‘neglected in educational institutions’, which is why such an academy was urgently needed. It would otherwise be ‘hardly possible’ to concentrate on this repertoire for three weeks over the course of the year. The sceptical attitude of universities towards modern music has certainly changed since then. But concentrated work, as students can tell you, is often made impossible during the semester due to the many other commitments.
Wolfgang Rihm, whose role at the Lucerne Festival Academy became leading after Boulez’s death, saw the academy as a necessary and logical addition to the Festival rather than as a special organisation for avant-garde music. According to Rihm, the Academy’s musicians should ‘understand modernism from its roots. These roots reach far and wide and at some point go back to the Romantic repertoire.’ In other words, to Brahms or Schönberg, who play a key role. It is symptomatic that Schoenberg’s monumental Gurrelieder – characterised by both the apotheosis of Romanticism and the emergence of modernism and thus perfectly combining the two festival ideas of ‘concert’ and ‘academy’ – will be performed this year.
Arnold Schönberg accompanies the LFCO throughout the festivals. In 2019, the orchestra performed his five orchestral pieces op 1, LFCO, conductor Riccardo Chailly, concert 8.9.2019, KKL Lucerne, in-house production SRG/SSR.
During this hot Saturday afternoon’s concert with the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra, the high standard at which modern and contemporary music is performed here becomes plain to hear. The orchestra, although most of the musicians met for the first time a week ago, easily mastered the sometimes adventurous difficulties with astonishing precision. With its diverse and large academy, the festival takes on work, it actually wouldn’t be supposed to. After all, music schools and academies should be responsible for the next generation and yet, for a classical music festival, the link with the future generations is of course also one with its own future.
Benjamin Herzog
Pierre Boulez, Eden Lonsdale, Yixuan Hu, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Ensemble Modern, Klangforum Wien, Fritz Gerber-Award, Roche Young Comissions, Unsuk Chin
broadcasts SRF Kultur:
Musik unserer Zeit, 4.9.2024, SRF 2 Kultur, 20 Jahre Lucerne Festival Academy, Autor Benjamin Herzog.
Musikmagazin, 24.8.2024, SRF 2 Kultur, Komponieren an einem Epochenübergang – Lisa Streich, Autor Benjamin Herzog
neo-profiles:
Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO), Lisa Streich, Dieter Ammann
The Swiss Museum and Centre for Electronic Music Instruments – a living archive
At only seven years of age the Swiss Museum and Centre of Electronic Musical Instruments (SMEM) already won one of the Swiss Music Awards’ three special prizes. The museum is located in Fribourg and allows to experience technology, history and practice of electronic music-making.
Friedemann Dupelius
‘The award was a total surprise,’ says Victorien Genna, project coordinator at SMEM, ’we wouldn’t have imagined something like this for at least another few years. It’s wonderful to be a recognised Swiss institution.’ Which is not only recognised in Switzerland. In addition to guests from France and Germany, numerous fans from England, the USA, Japan, Australia and New Zealand travel to Fribourg to marvel at its impressive collection. SMEM exhibits some 5000 electronic musical instruments, including almost every conceivable type of device: samplers, drum machines, synthesisers, mixing consoles, effects units, amplifiers, recording devices, microphones – even software such as the first version of the now widely used programme Ableton Live from 2001 and the corresponding old computers on which it used to run.
The shelves rise high to the ceiling of a former brewery – now converted into an area for start-ups and cultural initiatives. But anyone who fears thick layers of dust on the keyboards can be reassured, SMEM sees itself as a ‘living archive’. All of these devices are not only professionally maintained, but can also be played. In the museum’s ‘playroom ’, a wide selection of different instruments is on display, including classics such as the Roland TR-808 and TR-909 drum machines. Visitors can book a session for little money and even record their own jams to take home.
A museum for kids and nerds alike
When asked whether SMEM actually makes a distinction between academic, ‘serious’ electronic music and its pop-cultural varieties, Victorien Genna asks what I actually mean by that – and thus gives an indirect, but clear answer. He is not a musicologist or composer, but joined SMEM as a philosophy student who enjoys playing with synths in his private life. ‘FM synthesis is a good example: it made its way from university laboratories to the consumer market and became world-famous with the Yamaha DX7 in the 80s. Here, the nerds get their money’s worth, you can really go into detail. But even five-year-old children or someone who turned 100 should be able to have fun.’
The first circuit ends on a train journey
The fact that SMEM exists at all is a lucky coincidence, as most of the collection comes from Klemens Niklaus Trenkle – an actor who has been collecting electronic instruments since the 1970s. So many, in fact, that at some point his landlord got fed up and told him to get rid of the stuff. On a train journey, he struck up a conversation with architecture professor Christoph Allenspach from Fribourg. Allenspach had had the idea of opening a music-related museum for years and so the first wiring was unexpectedly successful. The instruments soon moved from Basel to Fribourg, an association was founded and a team of volunteers put together. The museum opened in 2017 and not much has changed since then: The number of instruments is large, the budget small.
Victorien Genna of SMEM has produced a documentary series about instruments from the SMEM collection.
In addition to public funding and private donations, SMEM thrives on volunteers and their commitment, such as Victorien Genna, volunteered until he was recently given one of the museum’s three permanent positions. The volunteers repair instruments, mix concerts or take on bar shifts. The newly received prize is therefore worth more than gold, as the museum’s collection is constantly growing. But how are you supposed to filter out which delay module or wavetable synth will be historically relevant from a flood of new technical releases? ‘Sometimes you can quickly recognise technical revolutions,’ says Victorien Genna, referring to the Elektron Digitakt, released in 2017, ’it was instantly clear upon release, that it would become an important sampler for the 21st century. But often one can only speculate and gets to know after a few years.’ Klemens Niklaus Trenkle still buys new instruments for the museum himself. ‘He has a pretty good feel for what is or will be relevant.’
SMEM organises concerts, workshops and lectures – at least once a month. Several times a year, artists in residence are hosted in Fribourg for one to four weeks to experiment with instruments of their choice. There is no obligation to produce results, but something always comes out of it, which is then usually released on Fribourg’s label oos. In October, the label plans a release by Viennese musician Oliver Thomas Johnson, alias Dorian Concept, who worked with the Yamaha CS01 synthesiser at SMEM. The polyrhythmic meshes of percussive synthesisers begin to groove more and more with each new layer and the 200 beats per minute speed is not noticeable in this agile music. It is a living archive in which history is not only documented, but also actively shaped.
Friedemann Dupelius
Swiss Museum and Centre for Electronic Music Instruments (SMEM)
SMEM on Instagram
The online magazine of SMEM
Dorian Concept on Bandcamp
Klemens Niklaus Trenkle
The album Unconditional Contours by Legowelt, partly composed at SMEM
Lauren Newton’s vocal artistry
A pioneer of vocal artistry – US-American vocalist Lauren Newton.
Her passion for exploring the full potential of the voice drives her work in free improvisation, jazz and contemporary music. Closely associated with the Swiss experimental music scene, she taught jazz vocal performance and free improvisation at the Lucerne University of Music (HSLU) between 1993 and 2019.
Luca Koch
While her career encompasses a broad range of ensembles, from large jazz orchestras to vocal ensembles and long-standing duos, her concerts are notable for their captivating depth and immediacy. This year Lauren Newton is celebrating her 50th anniversary on stage. For the SRF Culture programme Living Past, I visited her in Tübingen, Germany, where she is currently based and had the chance to listen to groundbreaking live recordings with her.
A twist of fate
Lauren Newton actually wanted to study art in Oregon in the USA, but she didn’t get in and, as a twist of fate, she tried her luck in the music department. Both classical music and jazz were already present at home. Her father played double bass and sang in nightclubs. Lauren also had a good voice and began studying classical singing. In her third bachelor year, she was allowed to take part in an exchange year in Stuttgart. This was unusual for Bachelor students, but her teacher vouched for her and Germany became her new home.
Lauren Newton, Sound Songs, Solo–Improviation 2006.
Classical music student by day, jazz-rock singer by night
In Stuttgart, Lauren began her Masters in the singing class of opera singer Sylvia Geszty and at the same time immersed herself in the city’s young jazz scene. At a jam session, she met trumpeter Frederic Rabold, who was impressed by her voice. A short time later, Newton was singing in his jazz-rock band, the Frederic Rabold Crew. The mix of simply composed themes and free improvisation was ideal for her and allowed her to refine and use previously acquired skills in the more liberated setting of improvisation. Both activities merged seamlessly, it never felt like a double life, she told me in the interview.
Vienna Art Orchestra
The Frederic Rabold Crew was invited to Vienna in 1979 for the television programme Bourbon Street, which did not go unnoticed by Swiss jazz musician Mathias Rüegg, who had founded the Vienna Art Orchestra with Wolfgang Puschnig two years earlier. After the TV appearance, he immediately asked Lauren Newton if she wanted to join. For ten years, Lauren Newton was an irreplaceable part of the Vienna Art Orchestra, which became an authority in experimental jazz with dozens of album productions and major tours. Her voice stands out from the jazz orchestra with razor-sharp precision and playful virtuosity. A time that Lauren Newton would not have missed for the world, even if the constant travelling on the tour bus as the only woman was challenging.
Vocal Summit
I got to know Lauren Newton personally when she was teaching at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. To me, she was not only an important figure as a vocalist with a wide vocal range, but also as a musician with a great interest in other voices. She not only helped her students to discover their own voices, but also collaborated with other singers on stage time and again. Together with Bobby McFerrin, Urszula Dudziak, Jeanne Lee and Jay Clayton, she formed the vocal all-star band: the Vocal Summit. Together, five completely different voices create soundscapes that breathe. Lauren Newton also continued her work with voices in larger formations with vocal ensemble Timbre.
Vom Vom Zum Zum
Lauren Newton has made a name for herself as an experimental vocalist who expresses herself particularly through sounds. But working with text also plays an important role in her music, which is plain to see and hear in her particularly influential collaboration with Austrian poet Ernst Jandl. His poems were deconstructed and reassembled, words were twisted, stretched and spoken backwards. The album Vom Vom Zum Zum, on which Ernst Jandl speaks while Lauren Newton plays around his words, was a special discovery for me.
Pi from Vom Vom Zum Zum, Lauren Newton with Wolfgang Puschnig, Mathias Rüegg, and Uli Scherer, 1988.
Duos in dialogue
Free improvisation is like a musical conversation. The players respond to each other, they comment, agree or argue. This works best in a duo, Lauren Newton tells me in the SWR studio in Tübingen and duo recordings form a large part of her oeuvre, featuring collaborations with Anthony Braxton, Phil Minton, Aki Takase and Joëlle Léandre, for example.
O How We, Lauren Newton and Phil Minton performed together on stage for the first time at the A Voix Haute Festival in Bagnères de Bigorre, France, on August 13, 2010.
The double bassist Joëlle Léandre in particular has accompanied her to this day. Their deep musical friendship is reflected in their interplay. The rich, concise sound of Léandre’s double bass playing perfectly complements Newton’s crystal-clear voice. The duo recently released a new album: Great Star Theatre, San Francisco.
Luca Koch
Frederic Rabold, Frederic Rabold Crew, Mathias Rüegg, Bobby McFerrin, Urszula Dudziak, Jeanne Lee, Jay Clayton, Wolfgang Puschnig, Vienna Art Orchestra, Ernst Jandl, Anthony Braxton, Phil Minton, Aki Takase, Joëlle Léandre.
neoprofile:
Lauren Newton
broadcast SRF Kultur:
Living Past – Lauren Newton, Pionierin der Stimmkunst, 13.02.2024, made by Luca Koch.