20 Years Freunde Guter Musik Berlin

26.09. – 04.10.2003 St. Elisabeth-Kirche, Villa Elisabeth 1983 – 2003  Adventures in Hearing Concerts / Performances / Events / Sound Art / Lectures / Parties The activities of Freunde Guter Musik are a Berlin tradition. Since 1983, the non-profit association “Friends of Good Music” has been dedicated to presenting and promoting new music and music in new forms. Freunde has invited artists from Berlin, from Germany, and from all over the world to show their work in venues throughout the city, giving many their first opportunity to be seen and heard in Berlin. Most of the artists elude classification in traditional musical categories – they operate at the experimental edges of their genres and in…

Record Player aka Laura Kikauka

04.10.2003 / 22:00 h Villa Elisabeth 20 Years Freunde Guter Musik Berlin RECORD PLAYER Lounge

Rodney Graham & Band

04.10.2003 / 21:00 h Villa Elisabeth 20 Years Freunde Guter Musik Berlin e.V. BANDS ‘N’ ARTS Rodney Graham (singer, guitar) David Carswell (guitar, singer) Mike Ledwidge (keyboards, guitar, singer) Damon Henry (bass) Pete Bourne (percussion) Rodney Graham (Vancouver) has worked for many years on larger complexes of work about selected historical and cultural contexts, using various media such as printing, installation, photography, music, film and video. Since the early ’90s, classical and pop music have also become part of his reference systems. Graham’s encounter with pop music is based on his fascination with popular phenomena: the star, the perfect cover song, the direct form of communication. He brought out his first CD, “I’m A Noise…

Martin Creed & Band

04.10.2003 / 20:00 h Villa Elisabeth 20 Years Freunde Guter Musik Berlin BANDS ‘N’ ARTS Martin Creed (singer, guitar) Keiko Owada (bass) Christopher Bell (drums) Siani Owen (singer) The artistic work of Martin Creed (London), the 2001 Turner Prizewinner, is distinguished by a conceptual and minimalist approach in which he questions, often with subtle humor, the presentational and representational systems of art. From the beginning, music and sound have played a central role in his works, which frequently are based merely on instructions for minimal interventions. The music pieces that he writes for the band “owada”, which he co-founded in 1994, are also reduced to elementary song structures. “Situated somewhere between Steve Reich and the…

The Beige Oscillator & DJ Attaché

03.10.2003 / 23:00 h Villa Elisabeth 20 Years Freunde Guter Musik Berlin RECORD PLAYER Lounge

Hudson Riv

03.10.2003 / 22:00 h Villa Elisabeth 20 Years Freunde Guter Musik Berlin BANDS ‘N’ BOYS Autumn in N.Y. – Glittering crowds and shimmering clouds in canyons of steel – Sven-Åke Johansson (singer) Alexander v. Schlippenbach (piano) Joe Williamson (bass) Autumn in N.Y.: How has the shadow of 9/11 tinged the sound of the famous songs of the swing era, which sing so emblematically about that New York feeling?An important piece is missing now, no more “Hudson River Suite”. Hudson Riv (Berlin), taking its cue from the legendary swing band “Night & Day”, listens for the echoes of songs and events – simple, short and sweet – with drummer and action artist Sven-Åke Johansson as a…

The No Ensemble

03.10.2003 / 21:00 h Zionskirche 20 Years Freunde Guter Musik Berlin BANDS ‘N’ BOYS Alex Hacke (guitar, singer) Rudi Moser (percussion) zeitblom (bass) The impetus to form The No Ensemble (Berlin) came while planning the themes for Freunde’s anniversary program. The musicians seized the opportunity and the trio was born. Berlin’s resident electronics artist zeitblom reconnects to his avant-rock roots and temporarily exchanges his laptop for a bass guitar. Alex Hacke, whose career began with the founding of Einstürzende Neubauten, discovered his love for American folk and country music while the Neubauten were becoming an international hit, and developed a reputation as an outstanding singer. Percussionist Rudi Moser also bumped into the Neubauten at some point….

R.U.B.

03.10.2003 / 20:00 h Zionskirche 20 Years Freunde Guter Musik Berlin BANDS ‘N’ BOYS Ned Rothenberg (saxophone, clarinets) Uchihashi Kazuhisa (guitar, bass, daxophoen) Samm Bennett (electronics, percussion) Ned Rothenberg and Samm Bennett, who have been collaborators since the late ’80s in New York’s downtown scene, recently resumed their successful band work after Bennett’s move to Tokyo. With the Japanese guitarist Uchihashi Kazuhisa, Bennett and Rothenberg, a frequent guest on Japanese stages, have formed the trio R.U.B. The three outstanding instrumentalists and improvisers form a stylistically wide-ranging group, in which each player’s individuality remains unmistakable without, however, weakening their concentration on what they do together.

Natascha Sadr Haghighian

01.10.2003 / 22:00 h Villa Elisabeth 20 Years Freunde Guter Musik Berlin RECORD PLAYER Lounge

Maryanne Amacher

01.10.2003 / 21:00 h Villa Elisabeth 20 Years Freunde Guter Musik Berlin FEMMES ELECTRONIQUES Excerpts: RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT, (Sound Characters Series 1998 – ) Multi-Channel Installation/Performance Maryanne Amacher (New York) became intensively involved with electronic music in the early ’60s, while studying with Karlheinz Stockhausen. She worked with John Cage and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, among others, realized numerous sound installations and, in recent years, has increasingly been incorporating multimedia elements into her work. In many pieces, she experiments with especially high tones, which elicit in listeners an effect that she describes as “Third Ear Music”. In her installations, Amacher reaches for new forms of spatial and sound architecture, developing, for the most part,…

Eliane Radigue

01.10.2003 / 20:00 h Villa Elisabeth 20 Years Freunde Guter Musik Berlin FEMMES ELECTRONIQUES L’Ile Re-Sonante – 8-track / 3-part piece (2000) Eliane Radigue (Paris) studied with Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry in the ’50s, and for many years was Henry’s assistant. She did not, however, follow her mentor into the pastures of “musique concrète”, but turned rather to synthesizers as sound sources and went her own way. Her electronic sounds, usually generated on Arp or Moog synthesizers and recorded on tape, have a hypnotic power and are uncompromisingly minimalistic, even ascetic. They change almost imperceptibly and create a continuous flow in which the music seems to be moving around the listener. It could be…