WAYS OF HEARING: CHARLES CURTIS: NALDJORLAK, BY ELIANE RADIGUE / LUCIO CAPECE + MIKA VAINIO; CO-PRODUCTION WITH QO-2

The career of Charles Curtis (US, 1960) cannot be defined under a single header. During the 1980s he became known all over the world as a performer of traditional cello repertoire, but at the same time he opened up new horizons, amidst the downtown New York music scene, in the worlds of experimental rock and sound experiments. He collaborated closely with such rock combos as King Missile and Barbetomagus and composers like Michael Schumacher, Alvin Lucier and La Monte Young, who made him the leader of his Theatre of Eternal Music String Ensemble. In his recent work he explores a combination of dense tuning and pure tonality, resulting in transcendent sound patterns. In 2005 he collaborated with the influential French minimalist composer Eliane Radigue (FR, 1932) on her first non-electronic composition, Naldjorlak. In a threefold structure the hidden, complex sonority of the cello is fathomed, as a discrete sound stream balancing on the verge of perception.

The Argentinian Lucio Capece (AR, 1960), who currently resides in Berlin, plays soprano saxophone, bass clarinet and a no-input mixer, which he uses to manipulate feedback with. His work draws inspiration from the visual arts and cinema and always arises in an improvisational context, focusing mainly on the experience of time and perception. In his quest he often meets related sound searchers like Keith Rowe, Burkhard Beins, Yannis Kyriakides and Mattin. Recently he started a new project with Mika Vainio (FI, 1963), best known as one half of Pan Sonic. Both in this project and in his solo work, published under his own name or pseudonyms like Ø or Teknovil, influences from techno, industrial and minimalism converge in an analogous twilight zone, an organic sound universe submerged in anxious spheres and thrifty pulses.