Piet Jan Blauw (NL)
Jaap Drupsteen (NL)
Gerry Bassermann (US)
Tina Blaine (US)
Date: Thursday, June 12
Venue: STEIM, Utrechtsedwarsstraat 134, Amsterdam
Time: 20.30 hrs.
Entrance: 5 euros
Reservations and more information: knock@steim.nl or 020-6228690
Piet Jan Blauw
Visual artist, musician, inventor of instruments and installations: the amiable artist known as Piet Jan Blauw from the North Holland town of Hoorn is impossible to pigeonhole. Piet's vision is not just the mere manipulation of technological gadgets. Their use is meant to ultimately evoke an emotional response from the audience and spur them on to discover lost domains within themselves. His musical instruments are of sophisticated craftsmanship and produce archetypal sounds. The didgeridoo he built from aluminium also serves as a cello and a berimbau. Little details defy the ideal. Piet's music can never be played in exactly the same way and demands improvisation. He sculpts soundscapes as he plays and manipulates radiowaves with the impedance of his body. Seemingly anonymous ultrasonic waves are invoked into being by his conjurations. This results in a pantheon of sounds that are ministered by samplers, sequencers, and processors. Piet drives his own aural sculptures to their limits in every performance. Technology enables him to push the limits, yet he always uses it as a tool of creation.
Jaap Drupsteen
Jaap Drupsteen (1942) studied graphic design at the Academy for Arts & Crafts and double bass at the Music Lyceum, Enschede. He started as a graphic designer at NOS-television and was a jazz bass player in his spare time. After a career as an art director at Tel Design, designer and tv-director at VPRO Television, and creative director at Signum (BBDO group), he started his own company Studio Drupsteen. Jaap has specialized in synchronous motion graphics to live music performances with different musicians, composers and orchestras since 1999, Jaap has been immersed in the world of computer music for more than twenty years composing for TV and for his own performing groups combining sound and vision. His awards are many, including the TV-critic's Nipkow Award, Werkman Design Award, Sikkens Award, Prix Italia, L.J.Jordaan Award, Alblas Award, Holland Video Award and the Prix Sacem du Louvre.
Gerry Bassermann
Composer Gerry Bassermann is a musician who works in many different acoustic and electronic styles, playing a wide variety of instruments and programming music computers. He holds several degrees in music composition and conducting at the Eastman School of Music, and currently owns and operates OPUS NINE, a project studio in the San Francisco Bay area (www.opusnine.com). For the past twenty five years, he's worked as a musical consultant, writer, composer, and electronic instrument designer. Gerry is currently focused on music production and sound design, blending synthetic and acoustic sounds. He has taught electronic music at University of California at Santa Cruz since 1995, and is currently Director of North American Markets for Propellerhead Software. In 1993, he co-founded the Bay area ensemble Haunted By Waters which performed electro-acoustic compositions inspired by musical styles from many cultures. His current projects are Artifact, which explores loop-based trance music; Nye's Reef, a free improvisation group based in Half Moon Bay, CA; and subTribe, a Middle Eastern music and dance ensemble and production company.
Tina Blaine * BEAN
Inspired by global traditions and spontaneous music, Bean has built custom electronic midi devices and studied acoustic percussion from Africa to Asia and beyond. She has written music for NPR, video games, TV and documentary soundtracks, and has performed/recorded with Brian Eno, Mickey Hart, Haunted by Waters, D'CüCKOO, Tracy Blackman, RhythMix, Pandemonaeon, University of Pittsburgh Gamelan, Maze Daiko and others lured by the muse. Bean currently works as a curator for the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose and is an artistic inspirator with the Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music (STEIM) in Amsterdam. An energetic performer/educator, Bean developed a variety of interactive media experiences while teaching at Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center and working as a "musical interactivist" at Interval Research in Palo Alto. Her collaborative work with students and colleagues has resulted in several museum exhibits at the Experience Music Project in Seattle, Zeum in San Francisco, the Ars Electronica Center in Linz, Austria, Laboral in Gijon, Spain and Give Kids the World Resort in Orlando, Florida. Bean co-founded the New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME.org) conference in 2001 and looks forward to discovering each year's whimsical inventions.