Tomorrow is Too Late: John Chantler, Okkyung Lee, Nina Pixel
Borealis X Bergen Kunsthall
22:00
“Tomorrow Is Too Late”: John Chantler, Okkyung Lee & Nina Pixel
New music for multiple speakers, spanning drone, noise and improv from three diverse and dynamic voices in today’s music world. Australian modular synth performer John Chantler and South Korean cellist Okkyung Lee developed their pieces with the legendary Acousmonium system at INA GRM (French National Audiovisual Institute/Groupe de Recherches Musicales) in Paris, and Slovakian «dirty dark” techno artist Nina Pixel on The Pentacle – a powerful high fidelity mobile speaker system developed at STEIM (Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music) in Amsterdam. Their new works, blending live performance with electronic sound through multiple speakers, are reimagined and performed live for a new 8 channel setting in Landmark, Bergen Kunsthall.
_John Chantler: Tomorrow is Too Late
Commissioned by INA GRM, with the premier at Présences électronique Festival 2018._
John Chantler is a musician and organiser living in Stockholm, Sweden. He works with synthesizers and electronics to create unpredictable, highly dynamic music where passages of spare, alien beauty bridge distorted washes of masses harmonics. His work Tomorrow is Too Late was made at the INA GRM in Paris using a recreation of the François Coupigny Synthesizer, the legendary synth created in late 60’s at GRM studio.
_Okkyung Lee: 틈 / Teum (The Silvery Slit)
Commissioned by INA GRM and Sonic Acts, with the premier at Sonic Acts 2019. _
Okkyung Lee is a cellist, composer and improviser who moves freely between artistic disciplines and contingencies. Since moving to New York in 2000, she has worked in disparate contexts as a solo artist and collaborator with creators in a wide range of disciplines. A native of South Korea, Lee has taken a broad array of inspirations – including noise, improvisation, jazz, western classical and the traditional and popular music of her homeland – and used them to forge a highly distinctive approach. Her curiosity and a determined sense of exploration guide the work she has made in disparate contexts. Okkyung Lee’s piece was written for computer generated sounds, pre-recorded materials and cello and was created during the residence at INA GRM, Paris, in January 2019.
_Nina Pixel: Bias Loop
Commissioned by A4 and Sonic Acts, with the premier at NEXT 2018 Festival._
Nina Pixel is a musician, conceptual storyteller, techno poet, and sound artist. She is known for playing hard distorted or “dirty dark” techno and dreamy soundscapes, composed of layered fragments of tracks, field recordings and sound experiments with organic objects. Her music and sets are sonic stories inspired by dark fairy tales, myths, and the deep forests of Slovakia. She often uses her own experiences, emotions, feelings and instruments she cannot play correctly or in a traditional way to create a demonstration of the organic beauty of the imperfect life. Nina is also part of the audio-visual group Hertz | Kunst-Plattform from Brno and female:pressure from Berlin.
Bias Loop is a sonic poem about reconnecting with the self. It is about looking into the eyes of our monsters and getting out of the loop of personal biases. When nothing is certain, anything is possible. There is no clear objective truth; just a subjective hallucination of the interpretation of our own realities.
The concert is co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union, as part of Re-Imagine Europe project.