Friday 20 September
8:30 pm
Carte Blanche: Laura Schenk - iety
Where is Mr. R ?!
Lotus Eddé Khouri
Jalalu-Kalvert Nelson Unit
FRACHTER
Saturday 21 September
1:00 pm
Denzler-Guionnet - The Practice of Musical Improvisation, Concert and
talk followed by a discussion
8:30 pm
Gamut Kollektiv
Béatrice Graf - Mess-Ages
Pablo Lienhard Φθόγγος
Tommy Lobo
zweikommasieben DJ's
Friday/Saturday: Bar open from 19:30
GamutReWind from Dominik Zietlow
The Gamut Festival 2019 was captured in sound and image by Dominik Zietlow. The Collective's credo was applied to the recording method. The result is a miniDV tape, which was cut directly on camera during the two days by rewinding and fast forward. The film presents the complete miniDV tape and allows an intimate insight into the festival.
experiments in sound and space
Gamut has as its purpose to explore, to seek and to set new things in motion; it serves as a fruitful breeding ground for ideas, experiments and new processes. Musicians from Switzerland, Germany, France and the USA will play at Bogen F over the two days of the Gamut Festival, its fourth edition. Among those performing are musicians from a fascinating Parisian scene (Lotus Eddé Khouri, Where is Mr. R ?!, Bertrand Denzler and Jean-Luc Guionnet); new sounds from Lucerne, Geneva, Zurich (Laura Schenk, zweikommasieben DJs Béatrice Graf, FRACHTER, Pablo Lienhard); and Berlin (Tommy Lobo); and Jalalu-Kalvert Nelson, a composer, trumpeter and avant-gardist from the USA, who has ended up in Biel.
We met some of these musicians for the first time last year. Some of these encounters happened at our three-month pop-up concert venue ‚Schalter' at Bahnhofreisebüro Wipkingen, and some on our tour through France and Belgium with the newly released album Molecules, which has just been released on our fledgling label/publisher Edition Gamut.
In other words, a lot has happened in just one year. The idea of exchange with different scenes is again in the focus, but this year we were also looking for intersections between music and other forms of artistic expression which can enrich each other. So in this year's program we have not only experiments in sound, but also some that are even more physical and spatial. Lotus Eddé Khouri, for example, will give a dance performance in the middle of the Bogen F. Also new this year is the collaboration with wihajst, who, working with our graphic artist Martina Perrin, will create a flexible artistic space. The festival as a place where there is interplay, where performers and audience are right up close to one another is an idea which we also want to follow through in the light and spatial design.
The result of all of our collective thinking and idea generation is to be found here in the festival programme. We have definitely developed. Our listening, particularly deep into the night, has taken on a new intensity. The past year has shown us that we are up for more! So we look forward to seeing you at the Gamut Festival 2019!
Laura Schenk, piano
Elio Amberg, tenor saxophone
Amadeus Fries, drums
Martina Berther, bass
In our view Laura Schenk is one of the most exciting pianists in Switzerland. Originally from Lucerne, this enigmatic and profound musician has already made her mark with East Sister and her trio iety. Schenk's music is a mixture of composition and improvisation. She can play both with detachment and emotion, and has a way of tapping into uncontrolled energy as she relishes detail. This combination creates a unique sound with real depth to it. iety has reformed specially for the Gamut Festival, and will be working on wholly new material with bassist Martina Berther who has just joined Sophie Hunger and also played at Gamut Festival two years ago. We’re looking forward to this!
Luca Ventimiglia, vibraphone
Augustin Bette, drums
Basile Naudet, alto saxophone
The place we have been getting to grips with first and foremost during the past year is Paris. And this trio is undoubtedly one of the most exciting groups of the improvised scene. Coming from a younger generation, they are particularly enlivening. They have grown together in Paris, where they were involved in the fascinating musicians' collective Collectif 2035. These are three uncompromising musicians with innovative concepts. Where is Mr. R ?! where is mr r where is mr r here is mr r here is mr r here is mr r whrre isr mr r whrre isr mr r whrre isr mr r whrre isr mr r wrrhre irs ms rs wrrhre irs ms rs wrrhre irs ms rs wrrhre irs ms rs wrrhre irs ms rs
Lotus Eddé Khouri, dance
Reductionism is the basis of my work (inner reduction : gestures/movements, map out of the narration/meaning, and external reduction: artifacts like costumes, set up, lights).
Lotus Eddé Khouri's Le Temps l'Emportera - a choreographic piece for two dancers and a lighting technician - forms the basis of her current projects, which all contain the same approach, along with two duos with the musicians Jean-Luc Guionnet and Stéphane Rives: Exploring different forms in which time and space influence each other through dance and choreography; moving freely between autonomy and synergy, dialectic and pure process, mixture and division.
As a matter of fact, my work is tight by the hypothesis of a continuum between decision, strategy on one hand and organic, intuition on the other. The slowness - as a mean to stretch time and by its multiple possibilities - is an important tool. Being the opportunity of a point of view on this continuity, by setting, almost tone on tone, some micro-variations that, once developed, reach some radically different space and time.
Jalalu-Kalvert Nelson, trumpet, voice
Xaver Rüegg, bass
David Meier, drums
As Takemitsu once said, "music is like a mountain and you take from it what you need." For Nelson, the world of music is his universe. He must maintain constant vigilance against a world that feels very comfortable with labels and categories that are only safe and limiting.
Oklahoma-born trumpeter Jalalu-Kalvert Nelson studied composition with John Eaton and Iannis Xenakis, lived in New York from 1974 to 1994 and played with his contemporaries William Parker, Hamid Drake and many others. He collaborated with the Lincoln Center Institute and the Guggenheim Museum until he moved to Switzerland in the mid-90s, more precisely to Biel. A few years ago we came across this greatness of composed and improvised music, and are delighted to welcome him to the festival in a brand new trio formation. We present: Jalalu-Kalvert Nelson Unit. Not to be missed!
Flo Götte, e-bass, bass pedals, tubes
Daniel Sailer, e-contrabass, pedals, tubes, fog
FRACHTER produces drones at very low frequencies. The power of this sound is visceral and hypnotic. A sound to reach in and massage the listener's very core and to shake the body! Mean, heavy, malicious riffs, slowed down beyond recognition, rise now and then above thundering monotones and darkness. This is repeated until a hypnotic effect sets in. Every change of tone is celebrated with elemental force. And all this can be heard in the stone surroundings of Bogen F. It’s late, you lie between the towers of amps and take it in: Slow...Low...Loud!
Trio concert + talk about their book "The Practice of Musical Improvisation" by B. Denzler and J.-L. Guionnet (editors) + open discussion with festival musicians and audience
Bertrand Denzler, tenor saxophone
Jean-Luc Guionnet, alto saxophone
Luca Ventimiglia, vibraphone
After our talks and interviews in the past years with Seymour Wright, Paul Abbot (EG01), Eddie Prévost and John Tilbury, we have Bertrand Denzler and Jean-Luc Guionnet as guests for this year's Gamut Festival. The two saxophonists have been working together since 1999 (e.g. Hubbub, to name just one of their groups) and interviewed fifty different musicians between 2003 and 2011 to ask them about their practice of (musical) improvisation. From selected excerpts of all these interview texts, they made a montage that summarizes all the interviews in a huge, quasi-composed discussion. This resulted in the soon to be published book "The Practice of Musical Improvisation".
Composition by Lotus Eddé Khouri
Silvan Schmid (trp)
Tapiwa Svosve (asax)
Tobias Pfister (tsax)
Philipp Eden (p)
Vojko Huter (guit)
Xaver Rüegg (b)
Paul Amereller (dr)
Our current collaboration with the dancer Lotus Eddé Khouri is an example of our search for intersections between different forms of artistic expression which can result in mutual enrichment, or in the best case for something new - a paradigm shift. The dancer/choreographer/improviser has written a composition for our collective which will be premiered at the Gamut Festival.
Béatrice Graf, everything that sounds
It's 2003, somewhere in a park. Béatrice Graf is practising. As she herself describes it, "sur des batteries maison" (on home-made drums), like a wooden case from 1940 functioning as a bass drum, or on something like a child's drum set. The percussionist from Geneva has been pursuing her own projects since the mid-90s: solo performances, a sextet, improvisation, composition, swing, hardcore, electronics- there is more or less nothing that this drummer hasn't done. Fast forward to 2016. She’s performing in her superb duo Ester Poly, where her voice has been added to the drumming. And a bit later still, in September 2018, she adds two one-string guitars to her life. She places them on the wooden case (the one from 1940 we were talking about earlier) and plays them with chopsticks. A drum case, one-string guitars, vocals: MessAges is born! Her lyrics are intelligent, shrewd and political. A solo that has something to say, and which sets about confronting the problems of today's world in its very own way.
Pablo Lienhard, enhanced alto saxophone
Pablo Lienhard knows no middle way, no compromises. No, he is a musician who finds his own path. This highly radical saxophonist, of the kind who is very rare in Switzerland, is not afraid of anything and pushes himself to the limit. Long after his concerts have ended, what he has played lodges in the listener’s mind. In his new solo project, the word Φθόγγος (phthoggos), freely translated, can sometimes describe the delectable song of the siren songs, and sometimes the rumbling of the cyclops. Singing, sounding, screaming, making noise. It is about sound itself. Pablo Lienhard investigates interactions between supposed opposites. Physis (the inherent quality of a being or object) and digitality, chance and control, trash and perfection. The instrument becomes the interface between human and machine. Both improvise, both react by creating sounds: "That wailing ghost, one knows not whence it comes, / That caresses the ear and withal frightens it.” (Baudelaire)
Zooey Agro, voc
Tomas Hohler, electronics
"TOMMY LOBO IS UNACCEPTABLE. TOMMY LOBO IS TOMAS HOHLER AND ZOOEY AGRO. ARGO MEAN SLOW AND AGRO MEAN ARTILLERY /TOMMY MEAN GO LOBOTOMMY BRAIN SURGERY /LOBO MEAN WOLF AND SHE HOWLIN LIKE YOU WILL SEE/LOCO MEAN CRAZY SO WE ON IT INFINETELY." After that, what else can there be to say?
zweikommasieben is a Swiss magazine that has been documenting contemporary music and sounds since the summer of 2011. It has interviews with artists, essays and columns, plus original photography, illustrations and graphics. In addition, zweikommasieben curates and organizes events in Switzerland and abroad – for example Ebbing Sounds, a symposium held for the first time in summer 2018 in San Francisco, or the festival Oto Nove Swiss in London, which takes place every two years. For the last evening of the Gamut Festival, this Lucerne collective will curate the later hours with two in-house DJs, bringing the Gamut Festival 2019 to a close in the night.
