Sound artists 2023

To call Jaap Blonk (NL) a singer is not accurate, because the directness and agility of his vocal expression goes far beyond singing. His voice creaks and bubbles, whines and grunts. The idiosyncratic autodidact, musician, sound poet and vocal performer specialises in sound poetry and is characterised by his powerful stage presence and his unrestrained freedom to improvise. His studies in physics, mathematics and musicology, as well as various jobs in offices and other straight-line systems, reinforced his penchant for Dadaism.

Steffen Roth is a drummer who has been living in Leipzig for several years after studying in Dresden with Günter “Baby“ Sommer. The seemingly “infinitely“ repetitive as well as moments of chaos in music are among the most important textures for him and serve as door openers to a new state of concentration. His playing partners include musicians such as Bruno Angeloni, Ulrike Brand, Julia Kadel, Carl-Ludwig Hübsch, Alexander von Schlippenbach and Achim Tang. Since founding the quartet Social Structures, his playing space has expanded across the Atlantic to New York City. In 2018, the festival initiated by him and Künstlerstadt-Kalbe, the (((potentiale))), celebrated its premiere. With this, Roth created a new playground for the national and international contemporary music scene in the rural area of the former GDR.

+ www.steffenroth.de

Stephan Froleyks (D) works internationally as a composer, interpreter and inventor of novel instruments. He has received several scholarships and art awards; his compositions, installations, audio pieces, multimedia works and theatre music have been commissioned by WDR, Radio Bremen and Deutschlandradio, among others. Stephan Froleyks is professor for percussion and music of other cultures at the Musikhochschule in Münster and curator of music and sound art festivals.

+ www.stephan-froleyks.de

Michael Bradke has been working in the intersection between sound art and cultural / museum education since 1984. With programmes and sound sculptures, he encourages children and adults to actively deal with music and sounds, collects musical rules, sounding found objects and instruments from all cultural circles and incorporates them into his play actions and large sound sculptures. Since 1993, he has devoted himself increasingly to the conception and construction of interactive sound installations for (children’s) museums and themed participatory exhibitions.
The Mobile Music Museum has been collecting, preserving and developing sound sculptures, musical instruments, sound tools as well as sounding found objects, musical rules and body music from all over the world for 20 years.
With stage programmes, hands-on exhibitions and open-air events, children, families and educational multipliers are enticed to actively make music.

+ www.musikaktionen.de

The newly founded ensemble “Ears Wide Open“ wants to transfer the philosophy of community music into concert formats.

Marion Haak-Schulenburg is a community musician, singer and music teacher. After studying
After studying school music at the Berlin University of the Arts, she worked as a choir director and music teacher for the Barenboim-Said Foundation in Ramallah from 2006 to 2009. Subsequently, she began freelancing as a choral conductor, workshop leader, vocal coach and lecturer at UdK Berlin, Landesmusikakademie NRW, among others. Since 2016 she has been a trainer for Musicians without Borders (NL).
As part of a doctorate, she is researching musical concepts in musical project work and is a research assistant at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt in the MA “Inclusive Music Education / Community Music“.

Mathis Mayr has been a member of the Mosaik ensemble since 2008. He studied cello with Uzi Wiesel in Sydney / Australia and at the Hochschule für Musik in Munich. In 2005 Mathis Mayr was awarded the Förderpreis für Musik der Stadt München. His repertoire includes works from Renaissance and folk music to contemporary compositions, from jazz to flamenco. He has played improvisation concerts with Sebastiano Tramontana, Gunnar Geisse and Christoph Reiserer, dance theatre projects with Monica Gomis and Mikel Aristegui, as a soloist cello concertos by Schumann and Dvořák as well as numerous world premieres of contemporary compositions.

Ravi Srinivasan is a percussionist, singer and composer, performing worldwide as a soloist and collaborating with orchestras and institutions such as the Berlin Philharmonic, the Thalia Theater Hamburg and the Icelandic National Opera. Trained on the Indian tabla and in Indian classical vocal techniques, he is also known for his virtuoso whistling.
Ravi Srinivasan has composed music for numerous films, plays, ballet and classical Indian dance. His ensemble “Indigo Masala“ won the Creole World Music Prize in Hannover in 2006. In 2022 Ravi Srinivasan’s film “Dreams are like wild tigers“, for which he recorded tabla, percussion and vocals, won the German Film Music Award.

Gregor Schulenburg is a founding member of MAM.manufaktur für aktuelle musik, a member of the Ensemble Extrakte and guest musician with Ensemble Modern. His repertoire ranges from baroque to new and new and experimental music. He has a great interest in improvisation and in the diversity of ethnic music. In this context he is also in demand as a duduk and kyotaku player. After his music studies at the Koninklijk Conservatorium Den Haag, Gregor Schulenburg was a scholarship holder of the International Ensemble Modern Academy (IEMA) (2009/10).
Gregor Schulenburg has won prizes and scholarships at renowned competitions. In addition to his work as a performer and interpreter, he works in the field of community music and has been a trainer for the peace organisation Musicians without Borders since 2019 as well as Artistic Leader for the Ethnocamps of Jeunesses Musicales.

+ www.gregor-schulenburg.com

Albrecht Fersch is a wanderer between disciplines, born in Schweinfurt in 1970. Meanwhile, music and sound play an essential role in his work. During his studies at the Academy of Arts in Munich until 1995, he was mainly concerned with writing systems, linking concepts, experimental drawing and painting as well as with logorealism, which he invented at that time and which still forms a continuous series of works today. From 2005 onwards, further training in essential theatre and involvement with performances and participatory projects. In 2008, his interest expanded to the construction of large-scale installations. He led design workshops such as most recently the sound laboratory Urknall in Greiz, created participatory art events such as the Supertheater or built stage sets for the Mondstaubtheater in Zwickau. Since 2014, invention and construction of sound installations and musical instruments. Sound, theatre, participation and visual art unite, for example, in his installation Raumklavier. Since 2018, Fersch has been a lecturer for mask making and performance at the Ikusa Institute for Art Therapy in Saxony.

+ Albrecht Fersch auf YouTube

+ www.albrechtfersch.de

Pia Marei Hauser studied flute in Germany (Münster, Essen) and France (Montpellier, Strasbourg) and specialised in Romanticism as well as contemporary music and performance. She attended various master classes and was a scholarship holder of the Musikfonds and the Yehudi Menuhin Foundation “Live Music Now“, among others.
At home in New Music, she regularly collaborates with composers, has participated in several world premieres and performs internationally as a soloist and in various formations, including with the Duisburg Ensemble CRUSH and the Düsseldorf ART Ensemble NRW, at concerts and festivals for contemporary music.
She has been heard in broadcasts and productions of the BNR, SFR and DLF and in 2021 was a prize winner of the international music video competition “corona encore – coffee mask“. After training as a flutist, she studied concert dramaturgy at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen and, as a dramaturg, specialises in particular in multidimensional concert programmes for solo flute.
In addition to her artistic activities, Pia Marei Hauser teaches at the conservatories in Münster and Osnabrück and at the music school in Rheine.

+ www.piahauser.com

Suchan Kinoshita was born in Tokyo in 1960 into a Japanese-German family. She studied music in Cologne and visual arts in Maastricht, the Netherlands. Kinoshita’s art incorporates elements from her background in experimental music and theatre, especially the direct connection between work and audience. That Kinoshita grew up between two cultures and was trained in different artistic disciplines is reflected in her work, which seeks, crosses or simply ignores boundaries. She combines the process of theatre and music with the often rather static character of visual art. Suchan Kinoshita holds a professorship in painting at the Kunstakademie Münster. Students of Suchan Kinoshita’s class will open SOUNDSEEING 2023 at the Haus Nottbeck cultural estate.

The artists are Alma Mariama Camara, Anja Mothes, Bastian Buddenbrock, Jennifer Rommel, Leon-Maxim Lindner, Malin Schlebusch, Marie Parohl, Micael Gonçalves Ribeiro, Sophie Rebentisch.

+ Suchan Kinoshita on YouTube

+ www.klassekinoshita.de

The two sound artists Jörg Kerll, chi gong teacher, musician and sound masseur in his own practice at the Osnabrück Sound Centre, and Hilmar Hajek, orchestral musician in the Osnabrück Symphony Orchestra and composer of electronic music, have been making music as KlangDuo since 2001. In various formats, the artists combine electronic and acoustic sounds in space and take the audience on a journey.

+ Klang Duo on YouTube

The Sound Institute is an initiative founded at the beginning of 2020 with the aim of developing new concepts for music education and linking them with content from STEM subjects in an interdisciplinary way. The learning concepts developed range from programming simple sounds to developing and building new types of musical instruments, with the explicit aim of being able to reach people of all ages and social positions. The aspect of digitalisation is reflected not only in the way of teaching, but also in the learning content itself. Furthermore, Das Klanginstitut realises special projects for commercial clients, for example by designing interactive sound installations.

+ www.dasklanginstitut.org

The name MONDOLETTOSOTTOILCORVO is the combination of the three artists’ home addresses, mondoletto – world bed, sotto il corvo – under the raven.

Gandolfo Pagano is co-founder of several groups: Enterico trio, Nero Diaspora, trio soleil, Torba …
 Performances with, among others: Tim Hodgkinson, Fabrizio Spera, Tristan Honsinger, Eugene Chadbourne, Thomas Lehn, Mark Dresser, Tholem Mc Donas. Permanent member of the Sicilian Improvisers Orchestra

Willehad Grafenhorst – since the 2000s the focus of his work has been the production of interactive dance-video-music performances in the duo “cri du coeur” with Fine Kwiatkowski.
 Willehad Grafenhorst’s electronic music is created from the natural sounds of a stringed instrument, bass guitar, double bass balalaika or Hawaiian guitar, digitally processed with applications based on Pure Data software.

Fine Kwiatkowski lives in Berlin and Collesano in Sicily. Devoted to bodywork since the age of 4, she began the consistent development of her own movement language towards dance in 1980. IMPROVISATION has always been at the centre of her approach, in collaboration with artists from the genres of improvised and contemporary music, visual arts, film and drama. 
Fine Kwiatkowski danced in the GDR, Bulgaria, Romania and Poland until 1989.
 Since 1990 also in France, Austria, USA, Denmark, Belgium, Spain, Switzerland, Canada, Mexico, South Africa, Sicily.

+ Tracks on Soundcloud

+ www.grafenhorst.info/mondolettosottoilcorvo

Muzak & Riha work in a participatory way. In a lively process between artists and audience they try to find new strategies, forms and ways in production, expression and presentation of contemporary art. By means of collage, interventions, multimedia sets and scenarios are created.
“In search of the undiscovered behind the images that surround us every day, it is important to look at things closely, to explore them from different angles and to test the limits of generally valid views. In doing so, we are interested in the connection between digital and analog and the repurposing of tools for image production.”

+ www.karolineriha.at

Emeka Ogboh connects to places with his senses of hearing and taste. Through his audio installations and gastronomic works, Ogboh explores how private, public, collective memories and histories are translated, transformed and encoded into sound and food. These works contemplate how auditory and gustatory experiences capture existential relationships, frame our understanding of the world and provide a context in which to ask critical questions on immigration, globalization, and post-colonialism.

Ogboh has participated in numerous international exhibitions including documenta 14, (2017), Athens and Kassel, Skulptur Projekte Münster (2017), the 56th edition of La Biennale di Venezia, Italy (2015), and Dakar Biennale (2014).

+ www.emekaogboh.art

+ Statement Emeka Ogboh auf YouTube

English with subtitles | Art of Berlin | rbb Kultur

Paul Panhuysen (Netherlands), who died in 2015, was one of the pioneers of multimedia sound art. He first studied art at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht from 1954 to 1959. Afterwards, he devoted himself to studying the sociology of art at the University of Utrecht until 1961. In Leeuwarden he worked as director of the School of Applied Arts, curated in The Hague and Eindhoven. Influenced by Situationism, he became one of the leading members of the second generation of the international Fluxus movement. Starting with painting, he expanded his spectrum in the late 1960s by working with media, in urban planning and music, founded artists’ associations and became involved in numerous committees as well as in museum education. He is also one of the protagonists of time-based arts with hundreds of performances and worked with the Maciunas Ensemble. He has also worked intensively with generatively produced music. Together with his wife Hélène, he founded the artist platform “Het Apollohuis” in Eindhoven in 1980, which closed in 2001 and whose archive is looked after by the ZKM.

+ www.paulpanhuysen.nl

Ralf Schreiber plays with electromechanical sound generators: small motors, percussion and spring mechanisms and strings that vibrate themselves. He makes music with these devices, which often follow their own logic. 
In the process, the machines and prepared materials are made to sound with the help of the smallest movements and interactions, thus investigating the elementary interactions of sound and material.

Frederic Schröder offers various workshop formats for children and young people: Handicraft workshops with electricity, light and sound, light art workshops, multimedia staging of theatre and musical performances to talking solar-powered dustbins. Among other things, they created their own interpretation of the theremin, which is influenced by hand movement and light and thus opens up new creative possibilities. At the same time, it is so impressively simple that it can be set up with children.
With his company Light Art & Sound, he rents out event and media technology. For action artists:indoors, churches and exhibition spaces, he develops individual electronics, media technology and lighting concepts with special attention to precisely fitting function, professional implementation and simple operation.
Frederic Schröder is regularly on the road with his light art exhibitions and delights audiences with a mixture of creatively staged everyday objects, participatory actions and modern light and sound artworks.

+ Fredric Schröder on Instagram

The percussion ensemble SPLASH – Perkussion NRW offers young talented percussionists the opportunity to develop a programme between New Music, Improvised Music and World Music and to perform it under professional conditions.
 SPLASH has performed at the Philharmonie Essen, the Kölner Philharmonie, at the “Ensemblia” in Mönchengladbach and at the Kölner Musiknacht. In the Cologne concert series “Schlüsselwerke”, the young people performed Varèse’s “Ionisation” and Reich’s “Six Marimbas”, among others. The young artists entered the field of symphonic music at the beginning of 2009 in cooperation with the State Youth Orchestra and the Robert Schumann University with performances of “Le Transfiguration de notre Seigneur Jesus Christ” by Olivier Messiaen.

SPLASH – Perkussion NRW is funded by the Ministry of Art and Science of the State of NRW and, on a project-by-project basis, by other cooperation partners. The artistic direction is in the hands of Ralf Holtschneider and Stephan Froleyks.

Floris Vanhoof ( born 1982), is interested in the hybrid forms of music, visual art and film. His first projections – experimental films on 16 millimetres – developed into purely visual experiences that question our viewing habits.
Inspired by structural film and early electronic music, he builds installations, creates extended cinema performances and releases his music. He builds his own instruments to explore the boundaries between image, light and sound. Vanhoof lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium.

+ www.florisvanhoof.com

Over four decades, Peter Vogel, one of the pioneers of sound art, designed electronic sound sculptures and stage performances that encourage the viewer to discover different patterns through repeated interaction. Using various electronic components such as generators, transistors, switches, amplifiers, loudspeakers and photocells, Peter Vogel manages to combine the randomness of observer-dependent reactions with certain determinate systems to create a complex responsive network of structures and patterns.

Achim Vogel Muranyi is a German contemporary artist and composer. 
His work includes comic illustrations and series of paintings. His focus is on electronic control mechanisms, interactivity and computer-controlled visual as well as musical events. Exhibitions, happenings & performances at E-Werk Freiburg, Galerie K Staufen, among others,
Art Karlsruhe, Espace Lézard Colmar, Gallery TOM Tokyo, Galerie Lara Vincy Paris, Espace Monte-Cristo Paris, Positions Art Fair Berlin, Kunstverein Mannheim.

+ www.petervogel-heritage.de

+ www.vogelmuranyi.de

+ Achim Vogel Muranyi on YouTube

anni YU (she/her) is a multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and singer living in Cologne and musically moves between neo-soul and melodic techno.
Under the motto Love is Love, anni YU uses her music as a platform to give queer people space, to become visible and to create exchange.

+ www.soundcloud.com/anni-yu