Gamut Festival
18. + 19. September 2020
Bogen F / ZWZ, Zürich

Audiovisual installation / running all night Friday from 18:30 + Saturday from 17:00

Slam Your Doors In A Golden Silence

by Esther Venrooij

"Sounding things out isn’t always so forlorn a task. There can be beautiful coincidences. Once, out walking in a forest in central Morocco, I had the creeping sensation that something was happening – something that I at some level recognised, and at once cried: ‘Stop!’ Excitedly I pressed record – and then nothing, only birds. I was about to end the farce when far, far away I suddenly heard somebody singing, and then the sound ceased as abruptly as it had wafted in. Almost like I had captured a phantom singing on the recording. But the phantom, as I realised when I played the recording back, was me: I had said nothing at all throughout the event."

Drawing on anecdote and personal insight, Esther Venrooij explores the spaces between sounds in this audiovisual essay, following the subject through the cracks where it isn’t supposed to go.

http://www.esthervenrooy.net

Audio installation / running all night Friday from 18:30 + Saturday from 17:00

Comptrollers of Hollow Earth

by Mark Charles Morgan

“I was first introduced to the concept of Mark Charles Morgan by Thurston Moore in a series of conversations that all went something like this: TM: Dude, Sightings is coming to town. You should check them out. I think you'd really dig them. And you'd love Mark; he's hilarious. Me: un-huh TM: No, really. Me: When and Where? I'll try to make it. TM: They're playing Friday at... At which point, I'd nod politely, internally shutting down, or just walk away, while he was mid-sentence. This went on for approximately seven years. Until in 2012, I finally caught Sightings at the local American Legion hall. […] Mark has always had this really great guitar sound, only partly courtesy of all those shitty pedals he insists on using. He's not coming at this from a Pharoah Sanders-worshipping, free jazz-loving, sensibility. Rather, I hear his home town, Detroit. The record is scuzzy, and raw-sounding, punctuated with moments of utter desolation. Moments build, only to collapse again. There are even funky grooves but, of course, they fall apart. It's fucking great. Dude, you should check it out!” - Julie Cafritz, in August 2018 for soundohm.com

Mark Charles Morgan, voice, guitar

markcharlesmorgan.bandcamp.com

Soundwalk(s) / Friday 13:00 + 19:00

song walk with me

by Anouck Genthon and Antoine Läng

Book available on Edition Gamut in early September

“Whether considering folk music and how - from aboriginal songlines to modern anthems - songs create countries and suggest different types of ownership, or how more commonly noise is part of the identity of a place, territories and sounds are connected. As sounds can reveal places, their multiple architectures and borders, we’d rather consider places and recieve their sound proprieties as a first step to make music, by showing how they already sing themselves. A song walk would be an invitation to listen to the path we follow as a composition made of elements borrowed from the environment, from the motion of our steps and from the features of our attention, sometimes with sounds performed to make the song easier to hear and invite us, as an audience, to eventually hum its refrain.”

Anouck Genthon and Antoine Läng are interested in ways space and sound can influence each other and gather into a shared identity and produce something that can be heard as their own music. song walk with me is an extension of listening sessions that happened earlier in Parc Beaulieu, Geneva, a sonic palimpsest initiated by an invitation from Gamut Kollektiv and shared now as a book and a composition in motion, from layers of listening traces, urban walks, inspired by sound poetry, bioacoustics and previous collaborations with the musicians involved in this project. This project will be released on the Kollektiv’s own imprint, Edition Gamut and performed in the future as an orally passed on composition that will be performed by various local musicians in public spaces in Switzerland, to further the idea of shared collective learning and identity through sound.

Anouck Genthon, violin, composition, Antoine Läng voice, composition, Matthieu Jaccard speech, Jason Kahn, voice, Jonas Kocher, accordion, Olga Kokcharova, trumpet speaker, Louis Schild, harmonium

anouckgenthon.com antoinelang.tumblr.com

Lecture/performance / Saturday, 16:00

Sounding Things Out: A Journey Through Music and Sound Art

by Esther Venrooij

“Sound is ephemeral. It does not belong to anyone. It cannot be captured in words. Talking about sound art usually focuses on the same familiar figures, but in this lecture/performance I hope to broaden the field to explore artistic practitioners like the godfather of movie sound, Walter Murch, the king of the jungle Chris Watson, naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt, pioneer wildlife recordist Ludwig Karl Koch, American pioneer composer and master teacher James Fulkerson, uncompromising composer Eliane Radigue, visionary sound sculptor Edgard Varèse, offbeat composer Luc Ferrari, and sonic terrorist MSBR aka Koji Tano and others. In "Sounding Things Out" I will explain what it is like to work as a composer with sound and installation art."

esthervenrooy.net

Concert

Carte Blanche Anna Frey
Anna Frey + Vera Kappeler

They first met each other late at night in a strip club, where they happened to find themselves sitting together at the bar into the early hours of the morning. That was many years ago. Now finally Vera Kappeler and Anna Frey are performing together for the first time; as a duo, each giving undivided attention to the other. Vera Kappeler has long had an affinity for lyrics and their musicality, Anna Frey has devoted herself more and more to improvisational reading of her texts over the past years. One is bound to be curious about how these two unconventional musicians will interact; we are extremely looking forward to this first Carte Blanche by Anna Frey!

Anna Frey text, voice, Vera Kappeler, piano

Concert

Carte Blanche Anna Frey
Anna & Stoffner mit Membrez und Bürki

Anna Frey is a rapper, performer and theatre director who has been rapping in Zurich for many years. On the new album "Gold" by Anna & Stoffner with Membrez on synthesizers and Bürki on drums, the lyrics are always to the point: they revolve around an individual who is so driven, it always seems to be chasing after its own tail, while at the same time having a go at trying out love. The imagery is atmospheric: people are gathered around a table who are blind and deaf, who are eating white whale - while never realizing that they have actually been in its belly for a long time. "Gold" impresses with a highly energetic interplay of virtuoso musicians and urgent, unsparing lyrics.

Anna Frey, text, voice, Flo Stoffner, guitar, Vincent Membrez, synthesizers, moog, Fred Bürki, drums

annastoffner.bandcamp.com/album/gold

Concert

Irena Z. Tomažin Solo

“We sing with our bodies. And if we dare, we open our soul through it. Whether we are aware of it or nor - voice declares us. Voice defines our being. Voice is emotional, physical and therefore spiritual.”

Irena Z. Tomažin is a Slovenian performer, choreographer and a voice teacher. The (heart)core of her work is the voice in its various existence. Starting out her dance education from the urge to move and release inner tensions and inspirations, her performance practice has since then shifted towards the investigation around the embodied voice. Her voice work is always physical, connected with body, gesture/dance and space, but at the same time is very oriented towards the sound textures of the voice. Her practice manifests in the form of thoughts, songs, spoken word events and experimental concerts, as well as through directing dance and theatre work. Sometimes it rises from the encounter and collaboration with other artists, other times from being alone, making space for listening to what is outside and inside.

Irena Z. Tomažin, voice

sploh.bandcamp.com/album/cmok-v-grlu-lump-in-the-throat

Concert

DLW

“These three lead us over cracked planes, through dark valleys and still there are always little pockets of melodies blossoming along the way.”, Andreas Müller from Deutschlandfunk once said. All three musicians ensure that the focal point of the music always remains the ensemble. The purpose of improvisation is to serve the music. Müller adds: “The music combines high density with floating lightness at the same time. Three musicians become one. Egos are non-existent. This is more than a collective. These musicians form a new organism.” The trio combines energetic playing with structural composition in real time. Form comes into being through musical production. Christopher Dell, asked about their music and the album, added to the conversation: “Grammar II examines and experiments on structural framework as a set of strategic musical viewpoints that inform the practices of DLW as a community of players.” Eyal Hareuveni, maybe at the exact same time, was writing about DLW’s latest release Grammar II too, and finished his review with the following words: “[…] simply enjoy the profound understanding between Dell, Lillinger and Westergaard. ”

Christopher Dell, vibraphone, Christian Lillinger, drums, Jonas Westergaard, bass

youtu.be/1_jOHpHwGoo?t=14 christianlillinger.bandcamp.com/album/d-l-w-grammar-ii

Concert

Maxine Yolanda

Maxina Yolanda submerges listeners into a dreamscape with repeated vocal harmonies and sustained basslines. She creates melodies that tell stories transcribing her state of mind by leaning on electronic rhythms. The presence of synthetic keyboard arrangements throughout the performance give it texture and vibrations, as she moves from one point of tension to the next.

sunrise without palm trees
nobody’s watching
twelve hours before bedtime
the sun in his head…
…and now it burns
ohh, soft breeeeze
spring is kinda here

Maxine Yolanda, voice, electronics

yolandamaxine.bandcamp.com/album/spring
https://youtu.be/UGcGKxT88oQ

Konzertreihe nach dem Festival (TBA)

Composition in motion

von Anouck Genthon und Antoine Läng mit verschiedenen Musiker*innen und dem Gamut Kollektiv

Das Projekt, das mit Anouck Genthons und Antoine Längs Komposition Ideen über gemeinsame Identität und kollektives Lernen durch Klang weiterführt, wird sich in naher Zukunft als Konzertreihe an verschiedenen Orten manifestieren. TBA.