STEIM Season Opening Concert 2008 featuring:
Byungjun Kwon (NL/KR) - digital & analog sound-image drawing tools
Cor Fühler (NL) - analog & digital electronics
Rafael Toral (PT) - "space studies": sensor gloves and modified MS-2 amplifier
Date: Thursday, January 24
Venue: STEIM, Utrechtsedwarsstraat 134, Amsterdam
Time: 20.30 hrs.
Entrance: 5 euros
Reservations and more information: knock@steim.nl or 020-6228690
Rafael Toral
Rafael Toral is a musician and artist. Born in Lisbon, he has been performing live since 1984. Having attempted to study music, he realized his path was one of exploration and discovery, to which conventional music teaching was irrelevant. He learned acoustics, electronics and music writing, having started to write music on paper after his former fascination with graphic scores. In 1994, Wave Field determined a shift in composing methods, taking from then on sound itself as the basic matter for all music, thus rendering his work unwriteable. Considered later in the 1990's by the Chicago Reader to be "one of the most gifted and innovative guitarists of the decade", he has been working on the possibilities of ambient music (variable attention listening process) and improvisation with higher levels of risk (using instruments or systems that behave in unpredictable ways), amongst other things.
Space Studies: Using gestural controllers (sensor gloves, optical sensors, portable amplifiers), Rafael Toral has been suggesting a reflection on the physicality and visuality of human performance as musical gesture. He has also been practicing an approach to music centered on a universal, pre-historic and pre-aesthetical impulse to produce sound, aware that music and language may have a common root.
www.rafaeltoral.net/
Cor Fuhler
Born 1964 Barger-Oosterveld / Drenthe / the Netherlands. Began with piano and organ at the age of 6. Later also on self-made instruments. Started studying piano (improvised music) in '83 at the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam (a/o. with Nico Langenhuijsen, Charlie Green, Ron van Rossum and Misha Mengelberg). Graduated in `89.
Amsterdam-based Cor Fuhler works in the field of electronic and improvised music. Piano is his main acoustic instrument, and he seeks to take it musically beyond usual perceptions, specializing in sustained sounds with use of various string stimulators: 12 ebows, rotating threads, spinning disks. Fuhler also manipulates sounds from turntables, linguaphones, springs etc and filters them through an analogue synth: the EMS Synthi AKS, his main electronic instrument. Currently he is working on a new analogue set up: the NIGLO 1. He often builds his own instruments/ installations/ modifications such as the Keyolin: a violin with keys.
Byungjun Kwon
Byungjun (1971, Kr) started his musical career in early 90`s as a singer/songwriter and has released 7 albums ranging from alternative rock to minimal house. He creates music for records, sound tracks, fashion collections, contemporary dance, theater plays and interdisciplinary events. Recent works and performances have been presented in many international venus. Now he lives and works in Amsterdam.
For this concert he will be playing his digital and analog drawing tools for sound and image. This will be the second version of 'Draw True Drawn' which was premiered @ Tag, Den Haag in 2007. Cheerful live drawing, sound of handwriting, homemade analog synth and more...