Sound Anatomy I: Richard Scott & Audrey Chen + Sam Andreae #91
Doors: 19:30
Start time: 20:00
Sound Anatomy presents:
Richard Scott & Audrey Chen, modular synthesizer and voice, launching this new series and their new work "Hiss and Viscera" on the Sound Anatomy label, plus Sam Andreae (Tombed Visions)
“After a recent performance in Berlin at the Geoff Stern Gallery a member of the audience came up and asked how I was processing Audrey's voice with my synthesizer. He was surprised when I said that I wasn't at all. But this kind of overlap, this common approach to material, is certainly part of what gives our sound its character. Voice and analogue synthesizer may seem to have little in common but we share a brittle, visceral, dynamic and often percussive sound world out of which a rather unusual and mysterious musical conversation develops; swapping syllables and phrases, somewhere between the telling of a story and the exploration of a dank, mysterious sonic environment.”
Part of the transmediale/CTM Vorspiel 2016 festival
Audrey Chen is a Chinese-American vocalist who was born into a family of material scientists, doctors and engineers, outside of Chicago in 1976. Parting ways with the family convention, she turned to the cello at age 8 and voice at 11. After years of classical and conservatory training in both instruments, with a resulting specialization in early and new music, she parted ways again in 2003 to begin new negotiations with sound in order to discover a more individually honest aesthetic.
Chen’s work delves deeply into her own version of narrative and non-linear storytelling. A large component of her work is improvised and her approach to this is extremely personal and visceral. Her playing explores the combination and layering of the homemade analog synthesizer, preparations and traditional and extended techniques in both the voice and cello. She works to join these elements into a singular ecstatic personal language.
Over the past decade, her predominant focus has been her solo work with the cello, voice and electronics, but she has more recently begun to shift back towards the exploration of the voice as a primary instrument. Recent projects, aside from performing solo, include her voice only duo with London based artist, Phil Minton, a duo with NYC abstract turntablist, Maria Chavez and a collaborative project with German conceptual artist, John Bock. Her most recent album releases (2013) include, a quartet LP with Nate Wooley, C. Spencer Yeh and Todd Carter on Monotype (Warsaw), and a duo record with Phil Minton on Subrosa (Brussels).
Richard Scott is a free improvising electroacoustic composer working with electronics including modular synthesizers and controllers such as the Buchla Thunder and Lightning and his own self-designed WiGi infra red controller developed at STEIM. He has been composing and performing for over 25 years recently working with artists such as Evan Parker, Jon Rose, Richard Barrett, Kazuhisa Uchihashi, Shelley Hirsch, Ute Wasserman, Michael Vorfeld, Frank Gratkowski and his own Lightning Ensemble. He studied free improvisation in the 80s with John Stevens, saxophone with Elton Dean and Steve Lacy, and electroacoustic composition with David Berezan and Ricardo Climent. He has released many albums, for example with Grutronic and Evan Parker for PSI records, The Magnificence of Stereo (sruti BOX) and has a solo double modular synthesizer LP, Several Circles and an album with Sidsel Endreson, Debris in Lower Earth Orbit, both due for release on CUSP Editions in 2015.
Sam Andreae has developed a distinct methodology as a composer and sound artist. His composition work crosses into sound art explorations and he enjoys playfully exploiting behavioural/interaction based elements. However deeply thought out a work might be, Sam believes keeping a certain lightness in any performance situation is essential in order to achieve an engaging and truly spontaneous experience. From Manchester and now based in Berlin, Sam has his roots in a very much DIY creative scene with community and collaboration at it’s heart.
“Andreae delves into an impressive vocabulary of skilfully controlled overtones, rapid keypad flutters and fragile harmonics, glistening like filaments held up to the light” - Daniel Spicer, The Wire (May 2015)