THE EXTENDED EAR
On this snowy evening Kirsten Reese took us on a Winterreise with Imaginary Landscapes, an indoor recreation of an outdoor multimedia piece realized in rural Switzerland, realized at Certain Sundays as an 8-channel system distributed throughout the back rooms and hallways of SOWIESO. Questions about the the piece were followed by Kaffee und Kuchen and the presentation by vocalist Ute Wassermann. Wassermann demystified her wild approaches to “extending” the voice through piezo microphones, bird calls, and resonant marble-filled plastic cups in pieces by Mathias Kaul, Michael Maierhof, and herself.
Sound artist Kirsten Reese and vocalist Ute Wassermann pull our ears out of our heads and into the world: Reese’s lecture-performance about recent works in outdoor environments, and Wassermann’s program of commissioned works which transform the performer into different characters through light.
The presentation will include performances of:
Kirsten Reese: Auszüge aus Vor dem Tag
Kirtsen Reese: Imaginary landscapes
Cathy van Eck: Song No 3
Michael Maierhof: splitting 18
Ute Wassermann: swarm no 2
Kirsten Reese is a composer and sound artist based in Berlin. She creates experimental music for electronics and instruments, audiovisual installations, and performative works with electronic media. Her works have been presented at concerts and in galleries and at national and international festivals, i.e. Donaueschinger Musiktage 2006 and Festival Rümlingen 2007 and 2010, Wittener Tage für Neue Kammermusik 2011. She has received numerous grants and residencies (i.e. Berlin Senate; Stiftung Kulturfonds 2001; Cité des Arts Paris 2006, Villa Aurora Los Angeles 2009). In 2010 she was nominated for Deutscher Klangkunstpreis. In 2010 she taught at the Bern University of the Arts in the program music and media art. Until 2007 she held a research position at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg. Reese currently teaches at Universität der Künste Berlin.
Photo by Caroline Forbes
Ute Wassermann is known as a vocal soloist and composer/performer for her extraordinary, many-voiced and extreme vocal sound-language, which she has brought into experimental/contemporary music in diverse ways. She has developed techniques to “mask” the voice using birdcall-whistles, palate whistles or resonant objects, and designs sound-installations. A particular interest is the development of compositions for spaces with unusual acoustic qualities.
She studied visual arts (sound installation and performance art) at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg with Henning Christiansen and Allan Kaprow among others, and subsequently visual art, music and singing at the University of California, San Diego (with a DAAD grant). As a vocal soloist in contemporary and experimental music Ute Wassermann has performed in festivals, galleries and clubs throught Europe and also in Australia and Asia. As an improvising musician she performs regularly with musicians of the London scene (for example in John Russell’s Mopomoso and Fête Quaqua events) and in duos with Richard Barrett, Aleks Kolkowski and Birgit Ulher, in the quartet “speak easy” (with Phil Minton, Thomas Lehn and Martin Blume) as well as in larger formations such as the octet fORCH.
. As an interpreter of contemporary music she has given premieres of numerous works composed specially for her voice, for example by Richard Barrett, Chaya Czernowin, Henning Christiansen, Hans-Joachim Hespos, Michael Maierhof, Michael Finnissy and Ana Maria Rodriguez, with the ASKO Ensemble, Elision, Munich Chamber Orchestra, KNM Berlin and others. She has taken part in music theatre productions by Matthias Kaul (Ensemble L’art pour l’art), Salvatore Sciarrino, Gerhard Stäbler and others, and performances with dancers, circus artists and visual artists; pedagogical projects and workshops with her choral composition “mimic” for festivals and cultural institutions.