Our October 8th concert features Japanese instrument builder and sound artist FUJI||||||||||TA, as well as the duo of Greek composer Yannis Kyriakides and guitarist Andy Moor, who continue their exploration of Greek rebetika. For their performance of Orbital, Moor and Kyriakides are joined by Theresa Thordarson (piano); Ben Reimer (vibraphone); Gage Salnikowski (violin); Nathan Krahn (cello); and Jennifer Thiessen (viola).
Presented in collaboration with GroundSwell.
FUJI||||||||||TA is a Sound Artist living in Japan. His unique practice utilizes various natural phenomena that respond to his interest in wanting to hear unheard sounds and noises. In 2009 Fujita hand fabricated a Pipe Organ that has only 11 pipes and no keyboard. Fujita conceived and built it using his imagination, without any prior or specialized knowledge. Designed to create a landscape rather than function as a musical instrument, he took the idea from the Japanese “gagaku”. The air pump (called “FUIGO”) which is kept moving by the left hand when playing, and is based on associations with an ancient blacksmith. This is a unique instrument that Fujita had to learn to play. Recently, he has added a water element, with sound synthesized water tanks, to his performance repertoire. The music consists of water sounds from multiple aquariums alongside his pipe organ and his voice.
Since 2006 he has had many solo performances and collaborative works with musicians, including ∈Ｙ∋ (Boredoms), Akio Suzuki, Keiji Haino, and Koichi Makigami. He has presented his sound installation works in many contexts: the work “CELL”, which made audible the sounds of black soldier fly maggots buried in dirt, was exhibited in Sapporo International Art Festival 2017 and attracted a great deal of interest in Fujita’s artistic practice. A performance with an organ and 4 water tanks were performed in MODE (London) in 2019. In 2020, he released the albums “iki” [Hallow Ground] and “KŌMORI” [Boomkat Editions]
Andy Moor has a background in the British post punk of the 1980s and he’s a member of Dutch band The Ex since 1990. His energetic, rhythmically oriented playing is characterized by physical manipulation of the strings and parts of the electric guitar. As an improviser he collaborates with artists from different disciplines, such as poet Anne-James Chaton, filmmaker Jem Cohen and DJ/Rupture. He also runs the Unsounds label together with composer Yannis Kyriakides and designer Isabelle Vigier.
Yannis Kyriakides is a composer and sound artist focused on creating new forms, notations and hybrids of media that highlight the multi-sensory experience of listening. The question as to what music actually communicates is a recurring theme in his work and he is often drawn to the relations between music, text, and image. He co-founded and runs a label for electronic music, Unsounds, is active as an electronics improviser with musicians like Andy Moor and Maze Ensemble and teaches composition and multimedia at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague.
In Rebetika Andy Moor & Yannis Kyriakides (electric guitar and live electronics) explore and mine the rich and mysterious terrain of Greek rebetika music from the early 20th century. Developed from their first release in 2006 through ‘A life is A Billion Heartbeats’ released in 2015, and ‘Pavilion’ in 2019, they continue to expand their particular interpretation of this repertoire. The music travels from more composed and arranged renditions of the old tunes, to completely improvised pieces that capture a sense of the gesture and tonalities of the source music, albeit with a very contemporary edge.
Orbital is an audio visual score for ensemble of any size. It is a journey around the Amsterdam ring road – the A10 – made during the first period of lockdown during the Covid-19 pandemic April to September 2020. The score is comprised of 74 images in which various musical parameters can be interpreted. Sound input from a microphone is used to generate shapes on the video which are interpreted by the musicians. The video score is accompanied with a set of instructions and optional melodic material.