Le Rêve is an album that sprouted from the imagination of the French multi-instrumentalist Arnaud Lechat one Monday afternoon, late 2022. The inspiration was the painting Le Rêve and other work by Henri Rousseau, the fascinating naïve painter in fin-de-siècle / early 1900s Paris. In one inspired flow, Arnaud heard the parts for his own instruments and those I would play or sing. He recorded his own parts that afternoon, one by one as multi-track pieces. Then he invited me to add my own parts, specifying the instruments, moods and such. In a short while, everything fell together wonderfully well. Arnaud arranged the first performance with dancer Zhan Yachun, and several more followed. After those, we created a music-only version of Le Rêve.
When I announced this upcoming album earlier this year, I was in very good spirits about the collaboration with Arnaud. There was the musical click we had had during previous projects, and an intensified click from the music he created for the two of us. We had had frequent contact for over a year about this production, and decided about many issues for the release together. We got close to the stage of pressing the album and needed one final meeting for the last issues regarding the design. And then, all of a sudden, Arnaud was no more.
A big shock.
Our dreams to play this album live vanished. Our dreams for more projects could only remain dreams. The title of the album (which translates as ‘the dream’) haunted me in strange ways. I realised afterwards that the last café where we had met was called Dreamers Coffee. Two days after he left us (and also the day after the gig we had to play without him in Kaohsiung), fate steered me to a café to meet someone, the only option left over. The name? Rêve.
Most of all, it was hard to grasp the reality of someone about my age living a healthy life, dying so sudden.
It became clear how Arnaud had touched many people with this generosity and curiosity. He had set up many collaborations, getting the best out of a great variety of people. Some of them did not even consider themselves an artist. Arnaud recognised a talent and created nourishing conditions and used his organising skills so that the talent could emerge, and then merge with his own.
What a privilege it was to know Arnaud, albeit for a few years. And to experience the genesis of a new way to combine improvisation with compositional sketches. Arnaud’s passing is a tremendous loss for the many artists and music lovers, here in the greater Taipei area, and further afield.
Click on the image below to go to Bandcamp to listen,
to buy the physical album
and/or to buy the downloadable audiofiles.
Please note: If you buy / bought Le Rêve through Bandcamp, you use the Bandcamp download function to get your files. Outside Bandcamp (for example when you bought the physical CD), you can use the QR code to go to the Proton-cloud to get your files. If you encounter any problems, let us know and we’ll help you out.
The 1910 painting by Henri Rousseau which inspired Arnaud to write his new work
即興! 將經過考驗的即興演奏技巧與「即時作曲」相結合，這種方法讓一群荷蘭即興演奏家聞名全球。你的帶領者Mark van Tongeren是一位自學成才的即興表演者，對探索自我、自我表達和團體動態充滿著極具感染力的熱情。像任何優秀的小丑一樣，他並不幼稚或天真，而是讓成年人改變他們看待世界和自我的方式，創造出全新的聲音語言、新的溝通方式，乃至新的自我表達方式……直到你開始思索：那個「自我」究竟是什麼？
2003年，Mark與Phil Dadson (NZ)、Makigami Koichi (JP)組成「人聲雜耍」（Vocal Acrobats）三人組到紐西蘭巡迴演出後，來到台灣。台北藝術大學的鍾明德教授給予Mark表演和工作坊的自由，並從Mark的想法中挑選了一句話來告訴他在台灣該做什麼： 「抓住當下的精神」（Catch the Spirit of the Moment）。這句話至今仍像當年一樣清晰。
Impro! blends tried and tested techniques of improvisation with instant composing, a method that lent a group of Dutch improvisers worldwide fame. Your guide Mark van Tongeren is a self-taught improviser with a contagious passion for charting new territories of self-, self-expression and group dynamics. Like any good clown, he is not childish or naïve; he lets adults change the way they see the world and themselves, by creating new languages of sound, new ways of communicating, new ways of being yourself … until you wonder: what is that self?
feel
Leave your comfort zone
DATES AND TIMES
Wednesday + Thursday November 27 + 28
10:00-17:15
11/27（週三）- 11/28（週四）
10:00-17:15
LOCATION
TREASURE HILL VILLAGE
台北寶藏巖國際藝術村
Treasure Hill village is conveniently located in the Gongguan area in walking distance from the MRT Gongguan.
TIME SCHEDULE AND CONTENT
November 27
10:00-12:30
Dive! First improv sessions
Reflect! Explorations into improv as a mode of being and well-being
12:30-13:30 – – – break
13:30-16:00
Methods we use. Games, communications, skills.
Applying and testing methods.
16:00-16:15 – – – break
16:15-17:15
The Jam #1.
November 28
10:00-12:30
Dive! New improv sessions
Reflect! Some answers. Many more questions.
Dive again….
12:30-13:30 – – – break
13:30-16:00
Sharpening Methods. How to lose and find yourself again?
New games and skills.
About modes of existence, being, well-being.
16:00-16:15 – – – break
16:15-17:15
Jam # ∞
Final reflections.
We keep the right to make changes to the time schedule.
FULL DESCRIPTION
Mark arrived on Taiwan’s shores in 2003, coming back from a tour in New Zealand as the Vocal Acrobats – a trio with Phil Dadson (NZ) and Makigami Koichi (JP). TNUA’s professor Chung Mingder gave Mark carte blanche for performances and workshops, and picked one phrase out of Mark’s ideas about what to do in Taiwan: “Catch the Spirit of the Moment”. That phrase still stands as clearly as it did back then. How to live, act, create while being completely in the present? How to do nothing, and yet everything? How to learn to trust that a certain flow will come to you, will move through you? What if there is no flow at all and everything you planned goes wrong? Because you started out wrong? Or because someone else messes up your imagination of where this improvisation needs to go?
Training certain skills is one thing, and a big one at that. We will alternate true improvisation with building musical and other skills. Understanding what improvising is and can be is another. The scope is virtually endless.
We will work with fascinating pieces and structures, ranging from fun and entertaining to challenging and complex. No matter what level of experience and trust you have / you lack, you will be able to go home with plenty of new ideas and discoveries of who else you can be when you indulge yourself completely in playing. Serious playing!
FOR WHOM? Anyone who is curious and confident enough to sing or to play or to make noise or to move-dance-write-draw with others.
(Minimum: 8, maximum:16 people)
LANGUAGES English + Chinese
YOUR TEACHER In 1992 and throughout the 1990s, Mark van Tongeren began performing as a musical improviser and bricoleur in object-theatre. In the 2000s he switched to all kinds of musical improv, playing with the likes of Fred Frith, Koichi Makigami, Yo-Yo Ma and Oorbeek. The 2010s saw more dance collaborations and also a greater role for the performing body in his own work. In the 2020s, his polystylistic approach transcends musical, cultural and disciplinary borders ever more. In Taiwan, he is part of trio ALLSYMT, performs with indigenous, Chinese and foreign artists and leads his vocal experimental group IUooUI. His weekly Voice Yoga class in Taipei is a guided, intuitive improv-session of sorts.
SUPPORTING TEAM & CONTACT This workshop is also brought to you by interpreter and co-organiser Chi Chen Lee, who interprets for sound workshops and is inspired by sound to continue the exploration; by administrative assistant Hsi-Yin Chang, who is also a sound and wellness practitioner, with an interest in singing and creating music.
▲ For any questions about the contents and registration, please contact Hsi Yin (speaks Chinese and English):
Make a transfer within 3 days and contact Hsi-Yin via email (hsiyin724@gmail.com)
We will confirm with you within 5 working days that you have completed the registration!
Make a transfer within 3 days to:
Bank code: 822
Name of bank: China Trust
Beneficiary: Mark Christiaan van Tongeren
Account number: 163540306745
CANCELLATION POLICY We try to keep prices reasonable. we will return 90% of the fee if you cancel 31 – 60 days prior to the workshop.
We will return 50% of the fee if you cancel 30 – 15 days prior to the workshop.
We will return 20% of the fee if you cancel within 14 days prior to the workshop.
If you find a substitute for your spot, we will keep 10% of the administration fee.
DISCLAIMER
By signing up you automatically acknowledge your understanding that this workshop may involve potentially disrupting body-work and emotionally charged sessions with a deep impact on your well-being. It is understood that you yourself best know of any risks (physical, emotional, psychological) and that there is no pressure or obligation to do each and every exercise.
All of a sudden, Arnaud Lechat passed away on September 19, in the midst of many fine projects he was working on. Not long before, Arnaud had launched several websites, one for this album project (https://lerevemusic.tumblr.com/ ), another for our ALLsymt trio.
His widow immediately decided the album should still be released, but we experienced some delays.
We expect the physical album to be ready on November 7, the way Arnaud prepared and intended it.
For now, do not order the album on Arnaud’s Bandcamp while we are sorting out if and how his account there can be continued.
We will soon add a button to buy the album directly and create a new post, but you can also follow the procedure explained below.
It is time to round up some support for our next album project. Below you can read how to suport our album, but first some more on the genesis of this music and dance piece. Over the last 12 months or so I played quite a few iterations of Arnaud Lechat’s wonderful cycle of compositions called Le Rêve, based on the painting by Henri Rousseau. Arnaud recorded his own parts for flutes, percussion and voice on one afternoon, a year ago or so. He sent me the tracks and soon after I came over to play parts on voice, flutes, mouth-harps and effects, the way he had it in mind. It fitted seamlessly so we did several performances with a dancer. Each time it was different. Some things got better, some things failed or were less interesting. Each time we had Zhan Yachun dancing with us.
The new challenge was to play the music without her dancing. We tried several times. Each time it was different, very different. But the shape became sharp. This year on Fools’ Day, we committed our audio-only version to the recording machine of French recording expert Yannick Dauby. The result was beyond our expectation. We are really excited to put this album into the world: for musicians this is always a special process and event. And not without obstacles. I have had long discussions with Arnaud about the question: to print or not to print? Fewer and fewer people have CD players. Even the car, which was the last bulwark of CD players for many people, is changing to audio and video streaming now. For decades – what I say? – for a hundred or more years, selling records was a means of generating an income for musicians.
The 1910 painting by Henri Rousseau which inspired Arnaud to write his new work
With that epoch coming to an end, one of the ‘traditional’ ways for a musician or record label to recuperate the cost of recording, desiging, printing, distributing and promoting an album is challenging. For 20 years or so we enjoyed the ability to record cheaper, in high quality, and produce small print-runs of CDs. But now physical things are harder to sell. Arnaud tried making an album with a beautiful booklet with poems and art work and a download code – no CD inside. It did not work: buyers still wanted a CD, not just the booklet with download code. But as time goes on, even our CDs are selling fewer and fewer at concerts.
And yet, being musicians, produce we must. The physical CD, a digipack or something similar in carton, without booklet, is taking shape (see the top of the message to get an impression of where the design is going at the moment).
Watch an excerpt from one of the live performances we did of this album, when it was still primarily a music & dance performance (which it also will be: we will do sections of Le Rêve in an entirely new setting in the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts in september).
I will spare you the details of why and how we came to the conclusion to put out a physical album in 2024. You can read that in my newsletter if you like (sign up if you like). Here is how you can support us, in order of urgency (most urgent support comes first):
1. Pre-order the album in the making from us, so that we can get part of the production cost together instead of investing our savings. Pay to my bank account or Paypal (see below).
2. Pre-order the album when we (Arnaud and Mark) put it on our Bandcamp pages. Bandcamp is a fantastic medium which pays a very large share to musicians. Compared to Apple Music, Spotify and YouTube it is a musician’s heaven, and a place where fans can express their interest in a very concrete way. Bandcamp is right when it claims that “artists receive 80-85% of every dollar a fan spends” and they pay very soon too, not after 6 or 12 months.
3. Buy the album when it is out, from us or from Bandcamp, or at a concert. You might never play the actual CD, we know, but you can get a download code and we can plan our next album, because people like you bought this one!
One last option: if there hides a philantrope in you, if you like to support the arts and other causes, and if you can easily spend some more, consider to pay more than just the album price. Basically, this is like tipping a waiter, or even sponsoring a project. Bandcamp too has this function to pay more than the set price, and in the last two years I noticed every once in a while fans do indeed pay extra! Every bit counts and the gesture itself is already very encouraging. If you pay more than the album price we have more chances to do more promotion, put out more albums, etc. If you want to support in a more substantial way and are interested in return-favors (a dedication in the album sleeve, a concert at home, etc.), please let us know by sending an email.
Pre-order Le Rêve now!
1. Make your choice:
CD with download code € 15,- + worldwide shipping € 10,- = € 25,-
CD with download code € 15,- + europe shipping € 7,- = € 22,-
CD with download code € 15,- + Netherlands shipping € 5,- = € 20,-
CD with download code NT$ 500,- + Taiwan shipping NT$ 80,- = NT$ 580
Ask us for special rates, for example sending to Japan from Taiwan.
Send a message to info@fusica.nl and cc to Hsi-Yin (hsiyin724@gmail.com) with ‘DreamOrder’ in the subject header or title. Make sure to leave your name + full address + phone (optional) and also let us know your banking name / last 3 digits (for Taiwan).
4. In the planned release month September or October we will send you the album as soon as it is out!
Here they are! 12 sonic snapshots of the semi-unguided missile called Oorbeek.
Ja, ze zijn er! 12 momentopnames van het half-ongeleide projectiel dat Oorbeek heet.
Cut to tape by Kasper Frenkel in the Electric Monkey studios in Amsterdam using loads of vintage equipment. Mixed down, with real tape, in fact, for some of the effects, by Kasper Frenkel and Mark van Tongeren.
Onversneden opgenomen en gemixed in de Electric Monkey Studios, Amsterdam, met vintage studio apparatuur,
Packaged with Oorbeek’s own artwork in a limited, numbered edition of 320. Each LP sleeve in silk screen print was handmade by Oorbeek.
Kavel is ingepakt in eigen artwork – 320 unieke, genummerde exemplaren in zeefdruk.
Go to Blowpipe Records for listening and to order your own copy of the vinyl + redeem code, or ask your local record store. Official release date: October 14, 2020.
Ga naar Blowpiperecords voor beluistering en om je eigen vinyl exemplaar + download te bestellen, of vraag je platenboer ernaar (officiële releasedatum: 14 oktober).
All of the band members during the recording:
Alle leden tijdens de opnamesessies:
↑ Peter Cleutjens, drums, percussion
↑ Klaas Kuitenbrouwer, bass
↑ Maarten Hepp, voice and acoustic and electronic instruments
↑ Serge Onnen, trumpet
↑ Arie Altena, electric guitar, banjo, marimbas
↑ Mark van Tongeren, voice and acoustic and electronic instruments
and ↑ Alice Smits, electric guitar
Check out impressions of the unique silk screen covers while listening to the Jew’s harps of Maarten Hepp and Mark van Tongeren, accompanied by the rhythm section, on this video.
Hier voorbeelden van de 320 unieke, gezeefdrukte hoezen op een rijtje, met de mondharpen van Maarten Hepp en Mark van Tongeren + ritme sectie.
Search for Oorbeek’s deep past on Arie Altena’s Oorbeek pages, like texts and reviews about Oorbeek, or here on Fusica.
Amsterdam’s most uncompromising
7-piece weird-jazz-avant-rock outfit
OORBEEK
organically blends
atmospheric film music with hard rock,
tribal vocals with distorted New Age bells
and yodel with dub.
For experienced listeners only!
↑ Oorbeek in the Electric Monkey studios, July 2018.
From left to right: Arie Altena (gtr), Peter Cleutjens (drs), Klaas Kuitenbrouwer (bs), Mark van Tongeren (vc), Alice Smits (gtr), Serge Onnen (tpt), Maarten Hepp (vc).
At the end of 2019, in fact around the Winter Solstice on December 21, we did the first Voice Yoga Retreat here in Taiwan. A wonderful recollection of the best stuff I have done during my 7 seven years of weekly Voice Yoga classes. It was beyond expectation: fantastic weather, great location, wonderful students, and a great three-person-strong core team (Sunny Chen, Jackal Mei, me) to take care of everything.
Most of all, we all experienced a nice flow between yogic and other exercises, sound and body improvisations, eating cakes and drinking Jackal’s homebrewn coffee, meditating, listening, chanting, learning about my methods and ‘vision.’ People came from all over the place and all walks of life, and most were new to Voice Yoga.
One student, Guang Guang, wrote an excellent report in Chinese about everything we did, in Chinese. I reproduce it here, with an autotranslation at the bottom of this page. Jackal Mei made some great photos, and there’s a couple of myself too. Many thanks to Guang Guang and Jackal for the words and images, and to Sunny !
We’ll do another Voice Yoga Retreat later this year on the beautiful, relaxed East Coast of Taiwan, where the pace is slow, weather seems to be nearly always good, birds sing loudly and the ocean is never far away. Get on the maillinglist for updates.
Because there are always many good friends around me, then put into a path. at the beginning, the leaves share the voice with me, and let me plant seeds in my heart…
So recently, I went to experience a sound yoga,
The teacher who taught is the mark of the pan-Yin.
I love his selfless and loving sharing
And take care and feel every one of us
When the first class said
The voices made here are all about the moment.
There is no bad right or wrong, every voice is right…
Let me feel free to feel at ease
First night
Mark is very natural to mix everyone’s voices together in space, let each other’s strange partner, quickly flowing, just two hours, my whole body is dancing.
/ breathing practice
A lot of things to feel in this practice,
I am also practicing to practice the feeling
Where to breathe, where to go, expand or shrink…
Never thought about what happened so naturally,
But these two recent courses are reminding this thing, that is the moment.
/ vowel triangle
Love to play with the vowel triangle
But I will find myself very short in this,
Will also want to work with other people
Make your own rhythm between perfection and coordination
Oh ~ suck ~
Oh ~ Ah ~ one
/ the ocean of sound
With the imitation of a natural voice,
Let your voice be thrown into the ocean
The Forest, the pond, the water, the swamp, the swamp, the sky, everything, the sound of the earth.
Who likes to share quietly, she feels like she’s shiny, so let the voice come out on her own…
So conscious body, I’m still on my way to practice
/ deep listening
Voice together in the outdoors,
Listen to the sound of the space and follow
Listen to the sound of not, create
In the way.
Made a contemporary music
I love this fusion melody.
/ surprise
Surround a circle and make a few voices with Mark,
Close your eyes and close your eyes
A few sounds without rules
Then slowly,
Mark puts the nissan into the circle
Close your eyes in the circle and enjoy the melody
Mark is singing faster and faster
Getting more and more specific
Starting to find something wrong
Open your eyes and look at mark
He smiled at me
She has already learned it early.
Yes, it’s really what I thought
The students laugh at one after one.
Mulberry finally realized the chú le of this party
I am in tears to accept everyone’s singing
This moment is so touching
So beautiful ~ so beautiful ~
/ Winter Solstice Lights out
Surround the candles with a peaceful night, close your eyes with the feeling of stars, the sound of nature that surround us, like the stars that have fallen in the grass, the sound of everything.
/ sana ceremony
Classmate Blues on the night for you all the night
First experience ceremony, the sana drum burst out my whole body current, under the protection of the guardian spirit, I felt the process, the jungle, the speed, the dark spin, then the snake that came out, finally let myself slowly pull away, see one Deer stop
Lithuania was called by the drum of the drum to run
It also dance, the whole field, sitting or moving.
Every world, fantasy world ~
/ vowel
I am deeply aware of my voice.
Where did the sound go in the resonance body?
Mark said
Where the body and the sound will be resonance
But but
Ideas can also let the voice go where you want him to go
At the end everyone’s voice shakes,
All have different discoveries
This makes me think the voice is so funny
Everyone’s body feels so unique
/ breathing rhythm
The difference in the length of breathing,
Can also be a beautiful song
I’m enjoying this chapter too
The sum of each instrument
It’s a movement of life.
/ Pan-voice solo
One afternoon mark singing for everyone
Sitting and lying free
It was a cloudy afternoon.
While a pan-Tone Melody keeps on the these
All I hear is the voice of an angel
Right now
The Golden sunshine outside the window goes through the pink curtains
Angel Light gentle on mark
I didn’t have time to take pictures of that one
But in my mind
My whole body is dancing
/ eight sound
Everyone’s voice is so unique and nice
There is the singing of the old soul in the voice of the old soul
Thinking of her guardian spirit grandma and love
It’s my turn to kick the card.
Is the flower God singing!!!
Clear and beautiful, so touching
When it was my turn, my head wanted to work
Later I told myself to forget it
What makes the voice is what is
Even though I know my voice is not even where I’m going
My Voice God is helping me find the level
Went for a couple of semitone
I just went to the place where I should go.
I can say too
That’s my precision in control of my semitone (allocated ~
After three days of playing
Very Loose, slow and amazing body all kinds of sour
I didn’t expect it. It was just a voice.
The body has all kinds of pull
But remember that Xin Xin said very well
(but I forgot what she said XD)
But after she said, I just had a moment.
Lala also shared mark in mechanical noise
Find out the rhythm of its regular rhythm
Make noise not just noise
Harvest a lot in three days,
Maybe I’m still in the aftershocks and feel slowly
The only part that knows what I know most
Probably I’m not that relaxing myself yet
The voice is too strange to me after all
But after these process
It’s better to lose the established impression of the voice in my childhood
The Color of the voice is so wide and infinite
Tell yourself, it’s just to play, go play!
Sound Yoga is yoga and impromptu
He is more than a voice,
Is the one that makes the heart, spirit and body
Thank you Yu Chih Lin for taking me on the pool
Thank you Xiaoying Ye for the link
Thank you Jackal Mei for the invitation XD
Thanks Mark Van Tongeren
Leading the experience of my experience
Had me so much fun on this sound tour…
I began a new class: Shruti Nights, and ran No. I-VIII throughout the year, each with a different theme.
Listen to a nice duet I did with Sunny, translator, co-producer of many of my events, and talented singing student.
RADIOGARDEN BROADCAST
MUSHIMARU’s PHYSICAL POETS
I joined a Butoh workshop and performance by the huge family of Butoh dancer Mushimaru Fujieda and his regular students and collaborators, twenty in total. They came flying in to Taiwan from Japan, Hong Kong and other places, paying from their own pockets. Very dedicated and truly inspiring!
With Hiroyuki Matsuhisa (moham-veena), Shree Katsura (voice and suwarmandar), Mikio Kawasaki (photographer); Sogyu Fukumura, a very famous monk who quit Buddhism decades ago and became activist; Himeko Narumi, whom I visited in her bar in Kyoto a few weeks later; Vinci Mok from Hong Kong, not to mention lots of interesting old and new friends from Taiwan. Our performance UNDER THE TREE OF LIFE is on Youtube, beginning here with the entry of Mushimaru himself.
Recently many Taiwanese repaid the visit to Japan to collaborate with the same people, and one commented that the same performance turned into a rather hard-edged, noisy, radical performance, completely different from the soft version here in Taiwan. More true to the Butoh spirit, for sure, but I was still impressed with Mushimaru and all the kids who joined the event in Taiwan as very narural, innocent performers.
SANGPUY live IN TAIPEI
LUGANG and its AUTOMATED SONIC SURPRISES
Trip to Lugang, where we were deeply impressed by the Longshan Temple. It is not as famous as some other old temples in Lugang, which are more centra. But by far our favorite. Major reasons: little modernization, no entertainment, quite silent (no tourgroups with amplified guides). However, in both temples I encountered automated percussion devices. There was a procession leading to the very noisy and central Mazu Temple or Tian Hou Temple. I had to get away at some point because of the incredibly loud firecrackers, which I found unbearable, and our dog really got shocked from it.
There was no smoke anywhere, and it turned out the noise was produced by a firecracker machine, which you see at the end of this video.
A little later, in Lungshan Temple, I noticed a drum was playing all the time but I saw no one beating it. It turned out to be another automatic device producing percussive sounds, just like the firecracking machine.
PULI, CENTRAL TAIWAN: WORKSHOP
In April I was off to Puli, central Taiwan, for a workshop and another one with Canjune, exploring herbs and plants in the forests. From the roof of a cinnamon producer, a panorama of Puli’s iconic Chung Tai Chan (= Zen) Temple.
After the workshop, re-connect with a nun I got to know in 2004, with a fantastic voice: Guanzu Shi. For all these years she is studying the performance of a specific song in the Huayen Buddhist tradition, for which the way to pronounce many syllables is not exactly known.
SAINKHO and KAZHUHISA ICHIHASHI in JAPAN
First trip to Japan. Too many impression so share, but here’s a few. Basically a family tour but, lucky me, I ran into Sainkho one or two days before she launched her new CD with Kazuhisa Uchihashi in Beijing. Great show together!
What a lovely guy, and what a great show he pulled off. The most astounding thing was that after the ‘normal’ stage show, which already featured lots of people from his village Jrben, some girls began singing and dancing in the lobby. The men joined and sure enough hundreds of people began to join the line after a while. The whole thing lasted at least another 45 minutes, with the last part (not in this video) some very high-energy indigenous male dancers/singers promoting their upcoming hot dance show.
TAIWAN EASTCOAST TOUR
To Mud Studio in Yilan, Zhishan for workshop in Poco a Poco, my first houseconcert in Taiwan, near Hualien, and another concert in Hualien. See my special blogpost.
Bernard produced a dozen or so throat singing CDS and many other interesting titles from around the world. All from this modest office.
EXCHANGE OF NEW TIBTEAN MUSIC PUBLICATIONS
I bring Pan Records’ new CD Phursang Kelak Lama to Ricardo Canzio on behalf of Bernard Kleikamp. Ricardo gave me his precious new book Sakya Pandita’s Treatise on Music.
Chiyou Ding is a sound hobbyist from Taipei. He is interested in the sound or music about rhythmic structure, computer related and field recording. He works mainly in theater and installation. The latest two productions he participated are Yung-Chih Hsueh’s “Plato’s Cave” in sound tech coordination, Olifa Hsieh’s “Sound-whirl” in sound programming.
He graduated from National Chiao Tung University with a master’s program of sound and music innovative technologies. Yude also created soundtrack for theater, dance, and video, working with theatre groups “Approaching Theater”, “Tainaner Ensemble”, “Oz Theatre Company”, etc. He soundtracked for Hsiao-Tzu Tien’s dance work “Hole”, and toured with the team in 2017 Avignon OFF and the 2018 Shenzhen Contemporary Theater Biennial. He also collaborated with pianist Shih-Yang Lee and produced the soundtrack for “Drawer Three” by Ting-Ting Chang, and he was the recorder and sound designer for Ya-Ting Hsu’s work “The River”.
::::妙工俊陽 Miao Gong Jun Yang aka 李俊陽 Jun-Yang Li::::
Jun Yang Li has been making work since the age of 25 and has been in the art field for more than 15 years. His works include painting (graffiti ink painting on various materials), wood carving, wire molding, large and small installations, modifying ready-made objects, reorganizing found items, graffiti on sites, and site-specific performance art, puppet making and performing, experimental theatre. He has also participated in some TV commercials and dramas, and even temple building. Jun Yang’s art practice is a manifestation of Taiwanese common people fed by folklore traditions.
交匯於科學與藝術範疇的聲音探索者Mark van Tongeren，主要以(荷麥)雙聲 / 泛音唱法聞名。早期的作品受到幾種經驗的影響，在圖瓦共和國的人種音樂學考察、蒙古喉唱與西藏低音唱咒研究、與安姆斯特丹實驗劇團Silo合作時擔任表演-錄音-聲音藝術家。之後，他加入Oorbeek即興樂團，並且與Michael Vetter學習跨媒介藝術。近期的作品包括與Superstingtrio演出的Incognito Ergo Sum, 以他做的曲Zeropoint進行的Overtone Singing馬拉松，以及與作曲家Paul Oomen合作的表演。
Mark van Tongeren is a sound explorer interested in the intersection of science and art. He is best known for his work as an overtone/throat singer. His early work was strongly influenced by ethnomusicological fieldwork trips to Tuva and by studies of Mongolian throat singing and Tibetan chanting, as well as by his role as a performer-recordist-sound artist with the Amsterdam-based experimental group Silo Theatre. He later joined the 7-piece improvisation band Oorbeek, and studied intermedial arts with the late musician and artist Michael Vetter. His recent work includes the performance Incognito Ergo Sum with Superstringtrio, and the Overtone Singing Marathon based upon his cycle of compositions Zeropoint, performed in collaboration with composer Paul Oomen.
Hui-Chun Lin is a musician who moves fluidly among work in avantgarde music, world music, jazz and improvisation and also performance. Her repertoire encompasses traditional, experimental and classical music in equal measure. Her musical work is concerned above all with sounding out the intersections, boundaries and connections among genres, epochs and cultures. Since 2011, she is a musician, performer and cello teacher in Berlin.
照片攝影 Photo credit: Mark by 蔡詩凡 / Shi-Fan Tsai。
贊助單位：財團法人國家文化藝術基金會
Sponsor: The National Culture and Arts Foundation
Excited about playing with some great Taiwanese and Dutch improvisers next week here in Taiwan.
Wilbert de Joode, Felicity Provan, Mark Alban Lotz, Onno Govaerts, and Rogier Hornman come over from The Netherlands, and from the local scene we have Lee Shih-Yang, Dawang Yifang Huang, Tung Chao-Ming, and Min-Yen Terrie Hsieh. Oh and myself as well, in a category of your choice. More info here.
I see improvisation as much more than a musical technique. While watching the performance of Joëlle Landrée, solo and with Lee Shih-Yang (November 4, Nankang Theatre, Taipei), half of my attention goes to the mimicry, body language and theatrical techniques of Landrée, who is ‘acting with’ her double bass as much as she is playing it. She talks through it, of course, but also to it. She treats it sometimes as a human being, or perhaps an animal, as she feigns anger or joy towards it. At one moment she gently kicked the lower part of her bass with her foot, as if kicking a dog bothering her.
INTERCONNECTED CIRCUITS
Joëlle Léandre responds visibly to her own music: almost as if it is not her making that music, but player and played are two; and she responds visibily to Lee Shih-Yang’s music and stage persona. In this way she sets up some sort of loops or interconnected circuits with the following elements:
a body performing, producing sound
a body responding to its own sound
a body playing with and for another performer in/through sound and in/through bodily gestures, facial expressions
a body listening and responding to that other performer in/through sound and in/through bodily gestures, facial expressions
and also, a body playing music and acting out the music for an audience
and responding to the audience (although rarely, in this case).
The music is the central theme of all these actions, it pervades it, surrounds it, generates it, steers it. But looking at the music alone would greatly limit our understanding of what is going on.
Joëlle Léandre’s performance was full of humor in more ways than music only can convey. Music in itself can certainly convey humor (I think of Dutch conceptual artist Wim T. Schippers playing a well-known Bach piece on piano, making all sorts of mistakes, trying to correct himself, repeating phrases, moving faster and slower, in the music-theatre piece Hoogwater voorheen Laagwater, 2016). But sometimes the musician herself becomes not just the medium of the music or sound, but something more like an actor or performer, aware of the fact that she is also playing a role onstage. She might exaggerate musical gestures in more than simply practical ways, she might use the body and facial expressions to convey messages that go far beyond what musicians express ‘as music’.
Léandre’s face showed some sort of running commentary to her own music and to the interaction with Lee Shih-Yang and at times made the audience laugh. By doing that, she puts the musician’s efforts between brackets, distances herself from it, provides some sort of criticism even as she is making music. It enhances the important idea in improvisation that the music itself, too, can be a running commentary on what the performers do.
You could say that some (in fact: many) musicians provide this commentary more discreetly, by only responding in music and not or not clearly in gesture, face, or body. Léandre on the other hand chose to enlarge her response through these means, making it less discrete, less hidden, less vague to the audience. Yet there were also moments when her playing, and her playing only, was a comment: this is one of the most common patterns in improvisation, and certainly so in jazz, where the musicians ‘comment’ on each other, ‘talk’ to each other. They build and exchange phrases, affirm and challenge each other, take the point of one musician further by moving on with it. This too was happening Saturday in Nankang theatre: rhythms, melodic patterns, noises and clusters going back and forth between Léandre and Lee, without obvious physical expression going along with it.
Intense music that requires concentrated listening, and where we can hardly be sure that what I hear is what the musicians intend, but where we still try to figure out what Lee is doing with Léandre’s ideas, and vice versa (of course, a perfectly valid alternative is not to care about this at all, but ‘simply enjoy’ the music, without figuring things out that you cannot know for sure anyway).
Music itself naturally triggers all sorts of physical, facial and other expressions, fitting to the roles of dedicated, serious musicians. We see it all the time, in video clips, classical performances, jazz: any music style has a number of ways in which the musician seeks ways to express music’s manifold qualities. Just some musicians, more than others, go way beyond the musical language itself. One can debate if this contributes to the music or distracts from it: purists might be bothered and uninterested in musicians acting out their performance too much. There are plenty of examples of exaggerated and silly theatricality in musical performance. One that comes to mind is many modern, female pipa players (a Chinese type of lute held upright in front of the player), who excessively sway their bodies and heads. I mostly prefer the old pipa practice where the music does not need all that visual display; it usually sounds better. Certain kinds of theatricality add nothing to the music but commercial value; it sometimes only serves to cover up a lack of genuine musical quality.
If the music still comes first, though, the expansion of the performative language can add many layers of meaning and expression to an already rich, interesting performance, instead of peeling off those layers. In rare cases, performers truly and convincingly embody multiple languages, fluently blending the musical performance mode with other ones, like dance, movement, facial expressions. In India, earlier this year, I had a chance to see a live performance if singer Venkatesh Kumar. He is an absolute master of of his raga improvisations and also of his body. In several long drawn-out pieces he used his arms, hands and facial expressions to express his journey through the dense network of musical connections that makes up a raga. Fascinating stuff!
So far for the non-musical gestures. I guess some of this can be gleaned also from a brand new book that I hope to read soon. It will certainly interest those who want to know more about the why’s and how’s of improvising: Marcel Cobussen’s The Field of Musical Improvisation, an e-book that is free for download since a few weeks.
Last night was the first concert with Makigami Koichi. Tonight is the closing concert of the TIIMF here in Taipei.
Saturday November 25
Zhongshan Hall, Taipei, 19:30
Closing concert of the Taiwan International Improvised Music Festival
With Porta Chiusa; and Makigami Koichi (voice, theremin, Jew’s harp, shakuhachi), Tung Chaoming (guzheng), Mark van Tongeren (voice, sruti box, Jew’s harp), and others
Sunday November 26
Reykjavik Lab /愛雷克雅維克實驗室, Taipei
13:30-17:00, workshop Improvise!
Details and tickets on Accupass, or send a message to 0910382749
This afternoon is for anyone interested in improvising with sound and music, from professionals (voice/instruments) to absolute beginners. Makigami Koichi is one of the special international guests for the second Taiwan International Improvisation Music Festival, doing several gigs around Taipei in this week.
Mr. Koichi is a master at manipulating groups of musicians, from absolute beginners to the most experienced professionals, and to let them create something never heard or seen before.
Powerful yet playful, with a body-language that is at once authorative and disheartening, Makigami Koichi could even turn a group of meek lambs into a fantastic bleeting-orchestra.
This man is breathing music and you cannot help breathing along with him, so that music, noise and theatrical antics will start to pour out of every pore of your skin.
As a (former) avant-rock star, an extremely versatile vocalist, the bandleader of Hikashu for almost 40 years, and as a multi-instrumentalist, Makigami has steered through numerous Japanese musical landscapes. He redefined the horizon of music in Japan, and far beyond.
Most of all, he understands group dynamics and, with few words, can guide people who never met before through a diverse musical landscape.
We asked him for the requirements of those who are going to join.
He dryly replied “no technique”.
Any styles people should know or play?
“No styles”.
Musicians, non-musicians:
it’s Mr. Koichi’s first visit to Taiwan.
Join this unique event.
You will not regret it.
BIOGRAPHICAL
Makigami Koichi is a renowned vocal performer and multi-instrumentalist who has been playing around the world for years. He rose to fame as the singer of the New Wave/rock band Hikashu in 1979. Soon thereafter the band sought more freedom, incorporating elements of spontaneity and improvisation into their music.
With some changes, Koichi and his collective continue to play a significant role in the cross-over field of rock-jazz-improvisation in Japan and around the world, with recent tours in Europe, Australia and the US.
Besides solo work, Makigami played with prominent jazz/experimental/avant-garde musicians like Derek Bailey, John Zorn, Ikue Mori and Fred Frith. He has visited Tuva/Siberia since the early 1990s and organised many tours and published CDs of Tuvan and Altai music in Japan. He is also a co-producer and the main curator of the avant-garde jazz festival Jazz Art Sengawa in Tokyo.
