Concert: Sainkho Namtchylak, Joel Ryan, Daisuke Ishida
STEIM presents a very special concert by:
Sainkho Namtchylak (RU/AT) + Joel Ryan (US/NL)
Daisuke Ishida (JP/DE)
Date: Saturday, May 5
Venue: STEIM, Utrechtsedwarsstraat 134, Amsterdam
Time: 20.30 hour
Entrance: 5 euros
Reservations and more information: knock@steim.nl or 020-6228690
Curated by Takuro Mizuta Lippit
It is with my great pleasure to present Sainkho Namtchylak, one of the most extraordinary vocalists of our time. It will be interesting to see which palette of sounds and processes Joel Ryan will bring this time to match/enhance/subvert Sainkho’s nearly electronic voice. This performance will be a sneak preview of Sainkho and Joel’s upcoming collaboration that they will be rehearsing in STEIM’s studios during the previous week. Daisuke Ishida will be opening the evening with his solo laptop performance. Daisuke is an emerging talent now based in Berlin, who was amongst the first dedicated musicians to use SuperCollider in Japan. His aggressive but detailed sound should be a nice contrast to the latter duo, representing the diversity of today’s computer music.
– Takuro Mizuta Lippit
Artist Biographies:
Sainkho Namtchylak is a singer originally from Tuva, a small autonomous Russian republic just north of Mongolia. She is known for her Tuvan throat singing or Khöömei.
Sainkho Namtchylak is an experimental singer, born in 1957 in a secluded village in the south of Tuva, an autonomous Russian state bordering Mongolia. She has an exceptional voice, spanning seven octaves and proficient in overtone singing; her music enmeshes avant-jazz, electronica, modern composition and Tuvan influences. In Tuva numerous cultural influences collide: the Turkic roots it shares with Mongolia, Xinjiang Uighur and the Central Asian states; various Siberian nomadic ethnic groups, principally those of the Tungus-Manchu group; Russian Old Believers; migrant and resettled populations from the Ukraine, Tatarstan and other minority groups west of the Urals. All of these, to extents, impact on Sainkho’s voice, although the Siberian influences dominate: her thesis produced while studying voice, first at the University of Kyzyl, then in the Gnesins Institute in Moscow during the 1980s focussed on Lamaistic and cult musics of minority groups across Siberia, and her music frequently shows tendencies towards Tungus-style imitative singing. After graduating, Sainkho worked with several ensembles: the Moscow State Orchestra; the Moscow- based jazz ensemble ‘Tri-O’ (since 1989); School of Dramatic Art under the direction of Anatoly Vasiliev (Moscow), various orchestras in Kyzyl although (incongruously) as far as I am aware she has not worked with the Sayaan Ensemble, the Tuvan ‘folkloric orchestra’- a far less sanitised example of folk baroque than, say, existed in pre-independence Kazakhstan- that has housed many of Tuva’s other important singers. However, for several years Sainkho annually invited foreign musicians to Tuva to promote Tuvan culture. In 1997, Sainkho was horifically attacked by Tuvinian racketeers which left her in a coma for two weeks. Again, sources regarding this contradict- others maintain that she underwent surgery for a severe malignant brain tumour; regardless, 1997 marked an appreciable change in her life. Since then, she has been resident in exile in Vienna, and has also recorded more prolifically as a solo artist- although she has released over thirty albums in the past twenty years, only seven have been entirely solo. in 2005 Italian publish house Libero di Scrivere released a book of poetry “Karmaland”. In 2006 in Petersburg was published a book “Chelo-Vek” (in Russian, “A Human Being”) in Russian, Tuvinian and in English. (This bio has been taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sainkho_Namtchylak)
More info at http://www.sainkho.net
Joel Ryan could serve as a paradigm of a strain of American inventor/composers. Starting from a scientific rather than a musical education, he moved into music by degrees from physics via philosophy, studying with Herbert Marcuse, and Albert Hofstadter, and instrumental study with among others Mexican film composer and guitarist Jose Barroso and Ravi Shankar. This was in California at a time when it was possible to regularly attend performances by Subbulakshmi and Jimmy Hendrix, John Cage and Harry Partch, Thelonius Monk and John Coltrane, experiences which released him forever from the spell of academic modernism. He enrolled at the infamous Mills College Center for Contemporary Music near San Francisco where, by way of composers Robert Ashley and David Behrman he joined the emerging community of artist hackers which helped define Silicon Valley. Ryan sought to bring a concreteness to digital electronic media through the intelligent touch of the performer. Performance was the essential missing ingredient and he became a pioneer in the design and playing of real-time interactive digital signal processing instruments.
He has collaborated extensively with composers and artists such as Evan Parker, George Lewis, Bill Forsyth, FM Uitti, Steina Vasulka, Jerry Hunt, Michel Waisvisz and ArtAngel. Formerly a Research Associate at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories of the University of California, he has taught philosophy, physics, and mathematics. He currently works at STEIM in Amsterdam, tours with the Frankfurt Ballet and is Docent at the Institute of Sonology. His music has been performed in the Theater Chatelet in Paris, the Concertgebouw Orkest Amsterdam, the Akadamie Der Kunst and VolksTheater in Berlin, the Kitchen in New York and at the Alameda Festival in London. Most recently he has collaborated with William Forsyth on EIDOS/TELOS, Tight Roaring Circle, Sleepers Guts and Kammer Kammer for the Frankfurt Ballet; and with James McDonald on Roberto Zucco for the Royal Shakespeare Company, Other works include The Number Readers, Hat Moon Joy, and The Effect of Noise on the Sleep of Children.
Daisuke Ishida Is a sound artist born in Tokyo 1980 currently based in Berlin, Germany. Started solo activities 2000. Participated MobLab: Japanese-German media camp 2005. Is a member of The SINE WAVE ORCHESTRA and The SINE WAVE QUARTET founded 2002. http://isddsk.com
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