Some people know about myself , Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg, as a sort of free – music / improvised music
activist and vocal improvising performer or “organizer” and critic based around
Brussels. The truth is that I evolved from free-music supporter, buyer of vinyl
albums of all the Incus FMP ICP Po-Torch Bead Ogun Ictus Hat-Hut Nato Black Saint
ESP of the world and also wanna-be amateur improviser in the eighties to vocal -
improviser / trained singer but completely autodidact performing currently in 9 European Countries as UK , Italy , France, Hungary, Slovakia,
Czech Republic, Germany, and both once in Madrid and Rotterdam.
This would haven’t
happened if :
1 / I hadn’t been
exposed MASSIVELY to the Coltrane,
Ornette, Lacy, Taylor, Ayler, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Braxton, Bley, Evan Parker, Derek
Bailey, Han Bennink, Fred Van Hove and Brötzmann the Paul trilogy of the Lovens
Lytton and Rutherford, Barre Phillips’ Journal Violone, Gunther Christmann and
Phil Wachsmann a.o… + everything else
from Ocora to Wergo, Dagar family’s Dhrupad, Pygmy or Chinese music, Varèse or
Xenakis… Jimi Hendrix and Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band....Howlin'Wolf ...
2/ I hadn’t met and cooperated with some other Brussels individuals who inspired me and supported me along
the years, I wouldn’t have developed my musical personnality. They were many
people and, among them, I would love to
express my eternal gratefulness to some of them specifically, after quoting all
their names. Guy Strale, Michael W Huon, Kris Vanderstraeten, Daniel Van Acker,
Mike Goyvaerts, Jan Huib Nas, Adelheid Sieuw, Jacques Foschia, Jean Demey, José
Bedeur, Peter Jacquemyn, JJDuerinckx, Willy Van Buggenhout, Marco Loprieno, Pat Lugo, Audrey Lauro, Peter Deprez, Marjolaine Charbin, Frans Van
Isacker, people like Alain Bolle, Jean-Louis
Hennart and also in foreign countries John Russell, Peter Strickland, Zsolt Sörès,
Sabu Toyozumi, Pascal Marzan, Lawrence
Casserley, Marcello Magliocchi, Matthias Boss, Jozef Cseres and the people at
Ateliers Mommen etc..
Without the
interaction, understanding and trust of most of these individuals and artists ,
one has to stop immediately to exist artistically. So I think interesting to
present some of these individuals because they
generously worked on the Brussels scene helping to establish free
improvisation in a creative way.
The first man who introduced me to practice improvisation
and connecting me to the then blossoming
improvised music scene is Guy
Strale. Born 1943, explorer of the innards of the piano, builder of
instruments, photographer, movie cameraman, recording engineer, intellectual, political activist, founder of
the Brussels longest living improvised music workshop ( 1975-2007)and the
Inaudible association, Guy Strale welcomed so many people to try improvising on
the spot, being trained classical musicians, jazz guys, poets, non-musicians,
wanna-be singers and improbable sound makers. Nothing was allowed, everything
could happen. If one could say that some of Inaudible’s actions and musical moments inspired by Guy’s
very generous philosophy and attitude would have been misunderstood by some
people, the overall balance of the proceedings along decades helped many people
to develop their music, to present their projects and to be involved in the
improvisational scene, and all this was doubtless quite positive. During some
seventeen years, I practiced improvised music in private sessions and workshops
mainly with Guy Strale and whoever showed up.
In 1993, Mike Goyvaerts, a
drummer, came into the picture and
he helped to attract capable musicians.
And of course I did a lot of visits to percussionnist Kris
Vanderstraeten and multi instrumentalist
Daniel Van Acker and this ended up with a duo with Kris Vanderstraeten. Both
Kris and I played around some one hundred of sessions in his successive homes. I was travelling by
train around three hours go and back each time and we listened to improvised
musics; jazz or traditional music in the
intermission. Kris has a large artist workshop place suitable for music
practice, books reading , hi-fi listening and his great drawing and graphic
works. We were focusing on playing with
very very few performances. I was playing guitar in a sort of Bailey Russell
way which was documented in our DIY cassette Almost Free Fall which cover
art is a marvellous item. My brother Luc
Van Schouwburg ( an expert video and movie sound engineer) made the duo recording in between the local trains’
passages as Kris’house is actually the housing part of a railway station on the
way to Hasselt. This years’practice build my skills as an improviser long before my more recent staging as a performer.
So when I thought that my vocals were worth enough to make gigs, I called Kris to
share some concerts and one festival . Indeed, I was sure that his “soft and dynamic”
percussive conception was in sync with one singer’s requests.
If Guy hadn’t welcomed them, offered them space and time in our workshop and stages, and
also documented himself each stage meeting on cassettes and CD’rs , secured
funding with the art administration, and dealt with official venues etc.. , I
have some doubt that the players we met
would have become interesting focused improvisors as they became since :
JJ Duerinckx, Jean Demey, Kris Vanderstraeten, Jacques Foschia, Adelheid Sieuw
Jan Huib Nas etc… and myself, Jean -Michel Van Schouwburg, My
personal experience is the living proof
that Guy Strale’s belief that non-musicians or “amateurs” could be involved in
free improvisation was right from the
start. The similar belief that the late and legendary John Stevens , his
friends Terry Day and Maggie Nicols fondly assessed . Among the individuals who trade with this
workshop and Inaudible and morphed in authentic improvised music scene artists, I would love to quote some of the
players. The pair of Jacques Foschia,
a master of the bass clarinet, and percussionist Mike Goyvaerts who share the Canaries on the Pole group with
Wuppertal violinist Christoph Irmer and Köln
saxophonist Georg Wissell since more than
12 years. Jacques is an outstanding clarinet master having worked in the
field of classical and contemporary music such as in the Orchestre Philarmonique de la RTBF. I had introduced into the
London Improvisors Orchestra in june 2000. Jacques performed and recorded with the LIO from
2000 to 2010 and was then considered by
his peers as “the” bass clarinet player in the London scene. He has a great
inspiration for very subtle intonations and pitch placement , also with the
smaller clarinet in B flat (sopranino). Mike had a central position in the
workshops and concerts of Inaudible from 1991 until 2000 and he helped us to
grow attracting new players , while being a WIM’s member. WIM was the historic
association run by Fred Van Hove , Ivo
Vanderborght, André Goudbeek , etc from the early seventies to the 2000’s .
They were absolutely crucial in the development in Free Music in Belgium. Two
other classical formed players had a prominent role in Inaudible as improvisors
of note and committee members : flute virtuoso Adelheid Sieuw and guitar maestro Jan Huib Nas both partners in life and Academy of Music teachers, like their mate Foschia. Personally as
Jacques encouraged me to improve and to develop my vocals, the couple of Jan
Huib and Adelheid took me very generously under their very subtle tutelage /
wing for to work and perform together with Guy Strale. What could be said about
these two great free spirits ? Adelheid is a real instant reflexive composer
who is juggling with all parameters of free improvisation and musical
construction where spontaneity and sound exploration are balanced with logic
and progressive development of forms , silence and and alternative techniques.
This can be said also about Jacques Foschia. Jan Huib has a fantastic sound projection with
his acoustic classical nylon stringed guitar that he doesn’t need to amplify
even in front of + 100 in large rooms. Jan Huib has great sure hands to make
music in various genres. Without both of them , Guy Strale and the fatherly
encouragement of cellist José Bedeur,
one of the great jazz bass players and
cello virtuoso in our country, who shared our enthusiasm and played in our
concerts, I would have never evolved as a singer. Solo Voice performance video
So, Lawrence
Casserley, the great live signal processing wiz, called me in 2007 for to
make a gig in Belgium and I secured a show in a local art school with trombone
player Paul Hubweber, as my mate
Adelheid couldn’t make the date. Before and after the gig, I was so fond of the
proceedings that I practiced more than
ever , diving daily in my own vocal sounds and reaching a quite euphoric cathartic state.
Focusing with a better concentration, I was trying to achieve diphonic singing (à la
Mongolian) and shaping the low voice in
the throat (C sharp 2)… resonating in my mouth cavity. During a duo
concert with John Russell in Adam
Bohman’s Bonnington place in 2005, I kept the ululating high falsetto on
the spot (Mercelis Concert cd). John had
offered me my very first solo performance in his Mopomoso serie in june 2001 which is issued in my first solo CD Orynx,
the ending of the performance being
included in the soundtrack of Peter
Strickland’s Berberian Sound Studio . Timo
Van Luyck recorded the first tracks of this CD in 1997 in his flat and it
was on the basis of these first recordings that I was hired here and there a
little.
During the weeks after the Casserley gig in late spring and
early summer 2007, I was practicing
hardly and I miraculously got a clear distinct falsetto moving on all intervals
with the greatest ease, like I would have passed through Alice’s Mirror to Voiceland… Strangely all the registers of my voice took
place unexpectedly and my falsetto range shifted in unexpected twists and
colours. I ignored completely how it happened. Invited by free – music mecene
/supporter John Rottiers to perform the A’pen Festival for the Radio Centraal
in Antwerpen in august 2007, I called my dear friend percussionist and poster
artist Kris Vanderstraeten, because
both Adelheid and Jan Huib couldn’t make the date. We had to perform in an open
air space by a summer afternoon on a strange stage bandstand close to the
river. A larger crowd than usual was spread
between the stage area and the bar. As our friend and bass player Jean Demey found himself alone as his colleague didn’t show up,
Kris and I proposed Jean to play together as an impromptu ad-hoc trio. Jean and
Kris were part of Guy ‘s workshop, Kris during the eighties - early nineties
and Jean since 1999, but they never met musically. As Kris lives far away from
Brussels , he stopped to come. But I travelled regularly to his home along the
years to play as a duo or as a trio with multi - instrumentalist Daniel Van Acker. Since the beginning
of our relationship around 1985, Kris and I became friends- in – the- music,
sharing our love for jazz and improvised music as buyers – listeners –
supporters. We did a guitar- percussion duo and after we recorded a self-produced
cassette, I took the resolution to focus on voice around 1996. This shift was
under the questionment of Kris who, like the other workshopgoers , couldn’t
believe me as becoming a vocalist… as he
liked my guitar work.
Anyway, on the Antwerpen stage, our ad-hoc trio delighted the audience who liked my personal
mad man antics, Kris’ crazy DIY drum set-up and Jean Demey's musicianship. It was the
first time of my life I actually sung jodels with falsetto , sounds almost
unbeknownst to me until I stepped on this memorable stage. So as two famous
musicians in the audience congratulated both of us three and my vocals, Jean
proposed us to continue as a trio. But he said : “Man don’t stay always on this staccato
endless. You have to sing in different ways ! “ Jean’s stature as a performing musician is so
impressive and he is so experienced that he literally “engueule” dilettantes like myself as a father would have done with
a schoolboy’s bad report. As John Russell says : “Sometimes I feel like being
an idiot”. I have to trust in Jean’s musical instinct and experience as a
blindman does with his guide. Not only he is a very competent bass player
loving the wooden acoustic quality of his double bass Aldegonde, Jean is a master
derbouka player, a skill he honed while working with master lutist Hasan Erraji
with whom he toured endlessly in the nineties with the Arabesque trio. More
recently, he became a nice bass clarinet player. In his youth , Jean Demey opened for Brötzmann /Van Hove /Bennink and
the Schlippenbach quartet w Lovens, Parker and Kowald during the WIM 1973 and
1974 festivals in Anterpen and Ghent. He was the bass player in the trio of the
legendary saxophone player Kris Wanders, the brother-in- law of Peter Kowald.
Wanders, a strong Dutch carachter vanished in Australia around 1975. Wanders
was listed in the first Globe Unity recording and Fred Van Hove’s Requiem on
MPS. He reemerged recently in the company of our friend Peter Jacquemyn, bass player and spiritual heir of the late PK .
Peter, an autodidact like me, sawed his bass frenetically as early in 1985, while I was organising the concerts which surfaced as Waterloo 1985 on EMANEM
4030 of Evan Parker Paul Rutherford Hans
Schneider and Paul Lytton and as some tracks of the recent 5cd box of The
Recedents, the trio of Lol
Coxhill Roger Turner and Mike Cooper, issued by Free Form Association. These
concerts were remarkably recorded by Michael
W Huon, an exceptional recording engineer and dedicated lover of improvised
music since the early seventies. Michaël supported us since the very start, recording
spontaneously many gigs and festivals. This 1985 Waterloo thing poster was already made by
Kris Vanderstraeten and this Waterloo festival was my first step as one free-music-
involved.
Since 1999, my work in the collective was mainly focused on the concert organization of the funded
INaudible series in Théâtre Mercelis, ULB concert hall and the recent
cooperation with Ateliers Mommen’s artists residence and, until then, I was
considered more as an organizer than as an artist. I am not a foolish guy .
I was first an improvised music listener and I couldn’t be interested of
my own music , only if the listener in me and some experienced practicioners
would have been interested and wanting for more. When I came back from my well appreciated 2001 Red Rose solo gig to Veryan Weston ‘s home in
Welwyn Garden City in the late train, I said to him that I was feeling to be far of
actually being successful musically and that
I have to achieve my skills in a more musical way. How to find out a way to
relate all the sounds that I could produce to each other with developments and
pathways uniting them in one original universe. I didn’t know yet. In 2001, my
reputation as “an organizer” grew a little bit because Jean- Louis Hennart agreed to welcome some improvised music
concerts in his bar L’Archiduc, an authentic Art Deco place in the heart of Brussels ,
where Jimmy Smith , Nat King Cole, Barbara performed after WWII. Jean Louis got the place from Stan Brenders ‘s widow,
Stan being a famous jazz pianist and Belgian bandleader from the thirties to the fifties. Also we organized interesting performances though the Inaudible
association.
Our cooperation with Hennart & L’Archiduc worked very
well also because Kris Vanderstraeten offered to draw the posters, Michael Huon recorded all the gigs, and because we dealt with advertising and
accommodating the musicians (thanks to Joëlle and Marjolaine). We begun with the duos
of John Butcher and John Edwards , Veryan Weston and Lol Coxhill, and the recordings of these gigs were issued by Emanem label : Optic and Worms Organising Archdukes. Along the years , we had among others Fred Van Hove, Paul Lytton & Michel
Doneda, André Goudbeeck, Han Bennink & Peter Jacquemyn, John Russell, Paul Dunmall &
Paul Rogers , Evan Parker, Paul Lovens &
Alex von Schlippenbach twice, Paul Hubweber and Phil Zoubek ( Emanem
L’Archiduc Concert CD) Damon Smith & Peter Jacquemyn with Van Hove, John
Russell again with Stefan Keune, Thomas Lehn, Trevor Watts, Jim Denley , Gail Brand, Ulli Böttcher and one of the very first
European gig of Peter Evans and Tom Blancarte . Not only I booked some famous improvisors, but I
arranged that the local players could meet their visiting friends from
abroad. So Mike Goyvaerts and Jacques
Foschia met Butcher & Edwards for
this first Archiduc gig and later with Georg Wissell and Christoph Irmer. Alto
saxist Audrey Lauro and pianist Veryan
Weston duetted, Kris Vanderstraeten
played with John Russell and Stefan Keune - who missed the first memorable John
Russell gig. For John’s early gig, we all played with him in a Qua-qua like
meeting with short duos and trios. Our trio Sureau ( J-M VS , Kris and Jean
Demey ) opened our most attended concert with the Alex von Schlippenbach trio
with Lovens and Parker. Personally, I sung also with Paul Dunmall, pianist
Marjolaine Charbin and Jean Demey and
met there Sabu Toyozumi for the first
time with both Audrey and Marjolaine. This led me to invite Sabu Toyozumi in our festival Sons Libérés
2011 and to sing with him in a friendly peanuts tour from Paris to Brussels,
Provence and Toulouse. The label Improvising
Beings of Julien Palomo issued a double cd Kosai Yujyo (Enjoy friendship) documenting Sabu performing with a
little help from MY friends.... There is
now a cd duo project with Sabu and trio with drummer Luc Bouquet recorded in Provence on the pipeline. Sabu is an amazing drummer having performed and recorded with Mingus,
Roscoe Mitchell and Joseph Jarman (in Chicago), Brötz, Bailey, Barre Phillips, Leo Smith, John Zorn, Misha Mengelberg and
John Russell in lengthy tours of Japan. He counts among the main pioneers of free music in his country, having played and shared the lives of the late Kaoru Abe, Masayuki Takayanagi, Mototeru Takagi, Motoharu Yoshikawa and his guru Masahiko Togashi, all idealists and revolutionaries who created the Japanese free scene. He is also one of the less egotic and
selfish – “business” performer I ever met. Sons
Libérés took place regularly in the
Ateliers Mommen, the gallery space of a Cité d’artistes with appartments and
workshops in central Brussels . Besides these two more established places, we set up gigs in various
locations among them the friendly loft
of Patrizia Lugo and Marco Loprieno who experimented with
wind instruments finding more recently his way on the tenor and sopranino sax
and a metallic Turkish clarinet.
Importantly as our workshop vanished because of the
increasing renting price of the famed La
Vénerie Cultural Center, which was our main spot during our neglected
years between 1986 and 2000, I proposed around 2011 to the Loprieno’s
to hold permanently a voice workshop at their place. Fortunately, the first
members stayed and became enthusiasts attracting other people and more female
voices. In this workshop I try to transmit some basics of the voice development
and the discovery of its possibilities creating pieces out of simple exercises
like singing one sustained note without loosing the pitch until out of breath and
making all sorts of mouth sounds without the vocal chords !
In October 2007, our trio with Kris, Jean
and myself met in Michaël Huon’s recording studio and begun spontaneously to
play 42 minutes without stop but with
some silences just after the red light
went. We edited some noisy bits and put that on our first CD Sureau on Creative
Sources, this title because my then tired voice needed “sureau” or elder tree
fruit ‘s juice to be protected. Since then we perform together about twice a
year, making only one date in Germany at Essen Free Festival 2009 and in some
fringe concerts organized by artists like in the Werkhuys in Antwerpen, the Useum.be
of poet and sculptor Peter Deprez in Ghent’s Botanic garden, Rinus De Vos for
this summer 2014 Gentse Feesten or Leuven Oratorienhof in 2009. This latter gig
was issued on Setola di Maiale as” the Leuven concert” with Enzo Rocco and
Gianni Mimmo duet on half the CD . We recorded also concert sets in the Pianos
Maene concert hall and in Michael W Huon ‘s Odeon studio in Brussels, this time
with saxist Audrey Lauro.
Among the interesting collaborations which fortunately
happened, there was a recording session
with Gianni Mimmo John Russell Andrea
Serrapiglio and Angelo Contini as Five Rooms for Gianni’s Amirani label in
February 2008. This was issued as Five Rooms : No Room for Doubt on
Amirani amrn 020. The session took place in Paolo Falascone famous Mu-Rec
studio (ex Barigozzi studios) in Milano. Mu rec was home for Cecil Taylor, Bill
Dixon, Tony Oxley, Paul Bley, Steve Lacy, Chet Baker, Mal Waldron recordings
since the mid-seventies. Around the same time, I went to Bristol to record with
the great saxophone hero Paul Dunmall, guitar wizard Phil Gibbs and a
sympathetic bass player, Peter Brandt, in a session which surfaced as
Bionic Beings Beginnings on Paul Dunmall’s Duns Limited Edition. Paul
played mainly soprano and there was a dangerous track with his bagpipes. I have
a fond memory of an ad hoc trio with sax player Heddy Boubeker and bass supremo
Simon H Fell during a small festival in Paris run by Pascal Marzan who himself was invited in Brussels to meet violinist Christoph Irmer. Along the years, I went to share the stage
with some quite interesting friends like Lawrence
Casserley in our MouthWind
project (MouthWind Cd on Jozef Cseres’s heyemears label) : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IriH7fyIrZE
Lawrence was a
Professor in the Royal College of Music having developed electronic music and
musical instruments. His ever evolving live signal processing is among the most
complex system existing and his skills as technical expert in the Evan Parker
Electro Acoustic Ensemble is unmissable. We did very interesting concerts as a
duo and with other musicians like pianist Marjolaine Charbin, Phil
Wachsmann and pianist Yoko Miura.
The main task for a singer working with Lawrence’s live signal processing is to
use different approaches simultaneously : to feed the system with interesting
or catacteristic sounds (even a snippet), to solo like in a concerto situation,
to interact with or against the processed sounds of your own vocal sound. When
a third instrumentalist goes in the proceedings it becomes more complex. So
this kind of performance with Lawrence is a fantastic experience improving my
skills. If people love it , good ! I am considering to perform improvised music firstly as an attempt to
create something and I am not fetichising “my” project. One other great experience I had was improvising frequently in 2008 with pianist Marjolaine Charbin, a strong personality sincerely searching to explore both sides of the piano, the keys and the strings and carcasse/ sound box. We begin to work on free patterns and fluid lines and this challenge makes evolve my singing as I had to meet all twists and turns from two hands and twenty fingers on a keyboard and to develop sounds inside my throat and mouth in order to match the piano frame's sonic universe. We did some gigs together and a concert with composer Dario Palermo in Norwich UEA. Dario wrote Trance : Five Stations for Voice and Electronics using my alternative techniques.
Another great experience came when I met Zsolt Sörès, a Budapest viola player ,
in march 2000 when Peter Strickland
made his first essays of shooting his much awarded cult movie Berberian Sound Studio. As Adam Bohman and I were invited in
Budapest to be involved in the teaser of
BSS, Zsolt put a gig with both of us and the British vibist Oliver Mayne, since then a BP resident.
It happens that I witnessed firstly Oliver in London’s Freedom of The City 2002 when he throwed his vibraphone two meters
in the air above the stage as a kind of reaction about the presence in Eddie Prévost’s
workshop of some musicians. This ad-hoc gig in a remote squat
inside a Budapest wrecked industrial area went fine and since we perform from
time to time in Hungary. The quartet,
enchristened as “I Belong To The Band” is among the strangest band I ever met .
Crazy amplified objects’s capharnaum on
a table were handled by Adam Bohman ,
the jazz tinged vibraphone of Oliver Mayne and his electronic effects, Zsolt
Sörès’s electronic toys and bending circuitry circumventing a viola “on the
table approach” and my vocals with microphone could be tagged as transdanubian
electro noise psych improv. We recorded some of the concerts and in a studio
and its is quite impossible to say what is our specific musical area. We don’t
focus on a specific focused esthetic : we just play sincerely, hating esthetic narrowed “cup of tea” labelling whatever one hears following what he thinks that he has in mind. Music is actually a collective
experience. Fortunately, artists and
listeners in Budapest enjoy what they hear in a very open minded attitude ,
because they know the price of freedom. I have also the pleasure to be accommodated in BP by the great painter and drawer Sàndor Gyorffy in his flat full of artworks of dozens of his friends. These hungarian trips made me inviting Zsolt Sörès with
Slovakian composer, pianist and teacher Julius
Fujak and Austrian trumpet hero Franz
Hautzinger in Brussels at Michaël Huon ‘s Odeon 120 studio. The recording
went issued as The Brussels Concert by
the Slovak Hevhetia label. My work as
free improviser is also concerned by making other people / friends working
together in a creative way. So when pianist Yoko Miura asked me where she could perform in Brussels, it was
absolutely impossible for me to organize myself again with a visiting musician in a venue where I map only two or three
concerts a year. So Yoko performed with bass and contrabass clarinets virtuoso Ove Volquartz and Jean Demey in the Archiduc bar and this memorable concert went
issued on Stefano Giust ‘s Setola di Maiale as the TAG trio “Discovery of Mysteries”. On the same batch of Setola’s cd was also
issued a duo with alto saxist Audrey Lauro tagged as the Systers. We rehearsed
often together and I appreciate her sensitivity and her well connected sound resources. Our best concert
went in Michael’s studio as did also our trio Sureau with Audrey as a guest. This trio augmented meets my
conception of improvised music where you are trying to mix personalities on the
same moment without any rehearsal and succeeding in the whole concert. This
challenge of meeting people who you never met made me singing in Germany with a
dynamic reed player now focusing on flute , Nils Gerold. We performed once with acoustic guitarist and zheng player Mano Kinze in Bremen and then with Berlin
based Klaus Kürvers, a retired
scholar in Archtecture History who is actually a great contrabass player, a
longlife supporter of our music and huge jazz vinyle collector. Mano performed
for the first time abroad in our Sons Libérés festival 2012 and I put Nils in
connection with Nicolà Guazzaloca and Stefano Giust in Bologna. They
performed and recorded together as a
trio for Setola di Maiale, surely one of the safest and largest “musician’s”
label.
The last and very fruitful collaboration came recently
meeting and sharing with percussion master Marcello
Magliocchi, a veteran drummer of the Italian jazz scene, percussion and
music teacher and metallic plates percussion designer etc.. and violin wizard Matthias Boss, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spHYKS4nb-0 .
Matthias is the violinist I
hear with the strongest sound projection –still full of nuances after the boss
himself , the Australian maverick composer and Violin total art visionary Jon Rose. Thanks to Jon Rose, I was
introduced in the East to semiotician composer and Professor Julius Fujak and Professor in Esthetics Jozef Cseres and consequently I met Peter Strickland who himself
was interested in my vocal performances and proposed me to appear in his
Berberian Sound Studio. Jozef was very instrumental in presenting western
alternative avant-garde composers performers in his country and Czech Repulic
creating a fantastic following with the students of the Universities where he
is teaching. Jozef is the Director of the Rozenberg Museum , once located in
the Slovakian village of Violin, and myself a somewhat Ambassor of the R.M with
the E.U. Also, I helped to organize the concerts , sessions and recordings of the duo Temperaments of Jon Rose and Veryan Weston in Brussels (Temperaments double CD on Emanem and Tunes and Tunings on
Jozef Cseres' Hermes – heyeremears label). Veryan is the musician who was invited by me in
Brussels the more often and I will do it again when a nice piano will be available. The
list of the best Rosenbergian appreciated strings – improvised music recordings
is by now the most read page of this blog. So all this interest for the Violin art à la Rosenberg is a very good introduction to sing with a violinist like Matthias Boss. Matthias can
follow the intricacy of the ornament of the voice in a very fantastic and
authentic way. Also, only one thing counts for Matthias : to play music with good
friends – like minded enthusiasts without any consideration for status, career,
business and so on. We decided to found
our trio after the two first gigs with
the very creative and master of percussion, Marcello Magliocchi who thought
about reuniting all three in his very nice Puglia region in South Italy. https://soundcloud.com/jean-michelvanschouwburg/marcello-magliocchi-matthias-boss-jean-michel-van-schouwburg Marcello was instrumental in establishing free music in the very south of
Italy, touring with Steve Lacy at the age of 19. Since then, Marcello learnt to play
classical percussion, jazz drumming, composing, becoming a teacher of note and
a musician in demand. His designed metallic percussion plates (cymbals, gongs
etc) and seven tuned incredible
resonating bells (unlike anything else) in collaboration with the renowned
U.F.I.P company. For me working with Marcello
is going back to the time period when the percussion sounds and free – drumming
fascinated me the most decades ago : discovering Bennink, Lovens, Lytton, Oxley,
Jamie Muir, Roger Turner, John Stevens, Andrea Centazzo, Barry Altschul, Andrew
Cyrille and Milford Graves on head phones was one of the main inspirations of my musical life. During a small tour in December 2014, we three ( trio 876) take profit of a free day to make a recording in the
above mentioned Mu-Rec studio in Milano.
But I was very touched by this very kind and friendly guy who held an
electric bass during our jam-meeting in Milano after our trio set : Roberto Del Piano, a veteran of the
pianist and Italian pioneer Gaetano
Liguori’s trios and groups. The electric
bass is among the less revered instrument inside the improvising community, but
Roberto is a very sensitive instrumentalist and a guy-committed-to-the group. As his left hand is much disabled by two fingers , Roberto invented his own electric bass fingerings with a fretless custom Fender Precision. So, this special quartet made fine short vignettes and some lengthier sound
explorations very well focused. Improvising Beings has issued the CD of trio
876+ of the Boss/ Magliocchi/Van Schouwburg
plus Del Piano quartet selecting the tracks with an addition of
recording engineer Paolo Falascone playing the innards of the grand piano on two
tracks. We never thought this trio with
electric bass could happen and succeed, but it worked actually and this
challenge and the music recorded enthused Julien Palomo, one of the most sincere and respectful producer existing not unlike
the great Martin Davidson. So trio 876+'s Otto Sette Sei is now issued by Improvising beings label (ib 33). https://julienpalomo.bandcamp.com/track/bread-and-tomato
A new connection by now is the trio made by the guitar player Daniel Thompson , violist Benedict Taylor and clarinettist Tom Jackson. We have just made a recording with Lawrence Casserley and some concerts together with other friends like pianist Yoko Miura, Jean Demey, Mike Goyvaerts. A new quartet happened with Adam Bohman, sax player Adrian Northover and Daniel Thompson . Adam and myself did a three dates National Coach mini tour in april 2014 in Edinburgh, Newcastle and Brighton and Mark Wastell's Confront label issued an Oxo Tower studio recording of this particular duo : Bagpipes and Blackberries. There is also a duo and trio with Phil Gibbs + Matthias Boss in the pipeline. So Marcello and Matthias went performing with Adrian, Daniel Thompson, Marcio Mattos in London and then, we will all meet in Puglia or elsewhere in Italy or Brussels creating a sort of sincere bridge between communities.
As Lawrence Casserley wanted to perform with both Yoko Miura and myself and as they had barely one gig , Yoko suggested to make a trio in the Mopomoso /Vortex in 2014. This went fine and we planned to do more in London, Oxford, Leuven and Brussels.
The duo of MouthWind (LC + JMVS) in the Foley Street 7th march 2015 was magic if I believe fellow organizer Daniel Thompson, Tom Jackson, Bened Taylor and the trio Casserley Miura Van Schouwburg stunned ourselves in Oxford : we didn't expect such marvelous and miraculous three way journey through weird sounds, polymodal piano haïkus and vocal utterances. I had the rare feeling of time stopped in heaven. It was hard for me.
Unfortunately and incredibly, Lawrence's expensive electronic gear was stolen in the Eurostar London to brussels and he returned the day after in UK without having performed the Belgian leg of the tour. Thus Yoko Miura and i played for the first time in duo in Leuven at the inviation of Kris and we did a three way sensitive conversation with Tom Jackson , plus vocal improvisor Pierre Michel Zaleski. Then in 2016 a new duo concert and a duo recording made in Paris by J-M Foussat which is one of the nicest stuff I did with an artist quite different of my own music path.
Finally, I am now practically out of business with Inaudible collective as my own ethos and involvement railed me on a different way after 30 years of sometimes hard work.
To end up :
I am also working with singers – non singers in vocal workshops
based on various focus. To discover the possibilities of human voice in
relationship of his / her personality and capability using basic exercises
(crescendo), my phonoetry concept and off the wall proceedings. To work collectively of various sound
areas from one note everchanging drones to invented languages and mouth sounds.
To lead the choir with hand signs and symbols in order to create collectively
ensemble an individual pieces of music. Not far from to be a therapy or a serious glimpse
about the voice and the singing. My workshops were held in Brussels, Nitra in Slovakia, Budapest, Bari, Liverpool and
Torino and we performed publicly.
Now our Brussels circle members and related friends who are still active here is : Kris
Vanderstraeten, Jean Demey, Jacques Foschia, Mike Goyvaerts, Jiji Duerinckx, sopranino and baritone sax, Pierre-Michel Zaleski ,
voice, Kostas Tatsakis, percussion, Sofia Kakouri, dance, Willy Van
Buggenhout, analog synth, Jean Philippe Burg, photos, Audrey Lauro alto sax, Frans Van Isacker,
alto sax, Jan Pillaert tuba, sopranino and baritone sax, Fred Leroux, guitar, Peter
Deprez , poetry while Guy Strale, Marco Loprieno saxophone and clarinets & Pat Lugo, multimedia artist are focusing on amore multimedia and artivist approach. My main interest in Belgium is now to introduce my foreign friends to my Brussels buddies in order to extend and improve the musical relationships and perspectives individually and collectively.
All drawings and posters : Kris Vanderstraeten. Photos : Lieve Boussauw , Cedric Craps, Pat Lugo.
