Night of the Unexpected

In the frame of LOW Festival.
Programme:
7.00pm - 7.15pm Xavier van Wersch & Tigrics
7.15pm - 7.20pm Voces Aequales Vocal Ensemble
7.20pm - 7.45pm Terrie Ex & Han Bennink
7.45pm - 7.05pm Intermission
8.05pm - 8.40pm Tomoko Mukaiyama
8.40pm - 9.10pm Edwin van der Heide lézervetítése (LSP)
9.10pm - 9.30pm Intermission
9.30pm - 9.35pm Voces Aequales Vocal Ensemble
9.35pm - 10.20pm Evan Parker & Joel Ryan
10.20pm - Xavier van Wersch & Tigrics

The Night of the Unexpected is a one-night festival, an experience, an evening full of surprises right through styles and genres, from experimental techno to composed music. The Night of the Unexpected counteracts our expectations and playfully questions existing habits; surrounding the audience with concerts, performances and sound installations from today's most innovative composers and musicians. The performance is a statement about current developments in new music and showcases, cutting edge techniques and international approaches to sound that have developed in the most unusual places; from indie-pop culture to sound art and improvised music.

Edwin van der Heide's Laser Sound Performance (LSP)
Laser beams slit through space in a light and sound performance by the new Dutch media artist Edwin van der Heide. LSP explores the relationship between sound and three-dimensional images by means of laser projection. With lasers, it is possible to create three-dimensional changing environments that surround the audience. Here, the image is generated by projecting a laser on a thin layer of smoke or fog. Image and sound originate from the same real-time generated source in the computer. This results in a performance where image and sound play equally important roles. The environment challenges the audience to change their perspective continuously.
LSP gives you the idea to be in a continuously changing virtual world. Around you colored lines curl in the air, planes of laser light shift in space. Deep bass tones and sound-patterns and rhythms, stemming from the same code as the laser projections, leave a physical impact. Edwin van der Heide is rapidly becoming an internationally renowned and highly prolific media artist.

Tomoko Mukaiyama


Tomoko Mukaiyama’s unique approach to the piano (in which she employs her voice and body as well) has inspired many composers, including Frederic Rzewski, Louis Andriessen and Alxander Raskatov. As a result, many pieces have been composed and dedicated to her. Her original style of expression using video and sculptural installations has opened new musical frontiers. Her performances often have the form of a collage in which she integrates a variety of pieces in a virtuosic performance. Tomoko Mukaiyama has performed with well known ensembles and orchestras such as Ensemble Modern and Ensemble Intercontemporain. She has collaborated with cinematographers, designers, architects, dancers and photographers, such as Ian Kerkhof, Marina Abramovic, Merzbow, and Kim Ito.

Evan Parker & Joel Ryan
-That there might be more than air flowing through his instrument
Evan Parker is legendary in the free jazz and electronic music scene. He is maybe the best known as Derek Bailey’s partner.
His lengthy discography can be read here!

Joel Ryan, who is modifying Parker’s saxophone with her laptop, said this about their duo: “The difficulty of trying to explain to someone what it is that Evan and I are doing before they've heard anything, became very clear a few years ago at a meeting with some well read music journalists at the Hara Museum in Japan. After quite a few minutes of getting nowhere, I felt like I had to make a radical statement, such as that in this music we were experimenting with an alternative medium for sound, that the instrument was not anymore a soprano saxophone and it might not just be air that is blowing through Evan's lips and Evan's horn.
The simplest picture is of giving a player a new instrument by transmuting the sound of his acoustic instrument numerically with a computer and hearing the result so quickly that he feels he is playing something new. The twist is that this new horn is simulated; it exists only for a few seconds or milliseconds in the digital realm. But this simulated instrument is made real because it is attached to Evan's and my hands as we coax sounds out of the air. (The fact that the whole room is coupled to this process through the microphone and speakers makes a particularly vivid kind of spatialised sound.) No matter how far this new source diverges from expectation in the sound in produces, it still allows players to call upon all their tricks of fingering, of breathing, of embouchure. And then all this mutates in time. The instrument is fluid: skeins of predictable actions gather on waves of attention; we think we have it and a few moments later it skitters away in a direction that didn't seem to exist a moment ago.
Though stately at time, this is an exploratory voyage, the possibilites still seem endless.”

Terrie Ex & Han Bennink


Guitar player Terrie Ex and percussionist Han Bennink produce exciting, funny, overwhelming and noisy music. Bennink is one of Holland’s most prominent and most inventive improvisers. He has performed with many great jazz artists, ranging from Eric Dolphy through Dave Douglas and Mike Patton to Peter Brötzmann, and is amongst others part of the ICP Orchestra. His percussion performances are always unexpected and intense. In his performances he often sees the whole stage as his instrument. Starting out as a punk band, the Ex (led by Terrie Ex) have brought down the boundaries between such different styles as improvised music, non-western music and punk. Their recent music with the legendary Ethiopian saxophonist Getatchew Mekuria showed the Ex with various guests. Terrie’s guitar playing is intuitive and far from traditional.

Xavier van Wersch & Tigrics
Xavier van Wersch obtained a degree in Sonology at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague after having studied art and philosophy. His work reflects an organical approach to the field of electronic music. Besides composing electro-acoustic works, performing and building installations, van Wersch is also involved in producing experimental dance music and creating soundscapes for theatre and film.
Tigrics (Robert Bereznyei) was born in 1975 as a planned second child. He now lives and works in budapest. tigrics has been making music since the mid-nineties. He has released on keplar and neon music, and played in several european countries including germany for the club transmediale. His new album has just been been released at Highpoint Lowlife.

VOCES ÆQUALES Vocal Ensemble
Voces Æquales are an all-male vocal ensemble, who came together in 1993, to perform sacred music of the Renaissance period and works of contemporary Hungarian composers. They have since given concerts all over Europe and have been praised by audience and critics above all for their vigorous per formance style. Voces Æquales are not, however, only interested in performance and presentation, but are also concerned to create carefully thought-out homogeneous programs. The ensemble has produced six CDs:
"Officium de cruce" , 1996, (music for the Triduum Sacrum by Rore and Compère)
"Triptychon – Apocalypsis, Genesis, Tempora" 1998-2000, (three thematic programs based upon diverse renaissance motets and newly composed works of three Hungarian composers)
"Ecce Maria genuit" 2001 (Christmas in Milan – ambrosian plainchant and motets by Josquin)
"Thomas Stoltzer: Missa Kyrie summum and Marian motets" 2002
"Valentin Bakfark and his contemporaries: Renaissance chansons and their lute-intabulations" 2007

Article on the Festival in the Telegraph!

Curators: Roland Spekle, Halmos András

Supported by:
NL Embassy, Flemish Repr/Belgian Embassy, BZ, OCW, SICA, Hungarofest