Overview
Act
I
Act II
Act III
Act
IV
Schedule
Partners
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“Improvisation Performance”
This act features famous and accomplished improvisers. Double-bass player Joëlle
Léandre is joined by longtime collaborator William Winant (percussion),
David Wessel (laptop) and David Rosenboom (piano).
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Joëlle
Léandre
Born in 1951, in Aix-en-Provence. Joëlle started playing recorder but quickly
moved to piano. She studied at the Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique
de Paris where she won first prize for double bass. In 1976 she received a scholarship
to the Center for Creative and Performing Arts in Buffalo. This period of time
was to prove particularly influential due to encounters with Morton Feldman,
as well as the music of Earl Brown, John Cage and Giacinto Scelsi. At the same
time, she was able to experience the downtown New York music scene and continue
her involvement in improvisational music. Joëlle has continued her involvement
with classical contemporary music, not only as a member of contemporary music
ensembles such as 2E2M, Itinéraire and l'Ensemble Intercontemporain but
especially through the works of Cage and Scelsi, several of which she has recorded.
After listening to jazz greats including Mingus, Cecil Taylor, Monk, Dolphy,
she quickly got into the free, improvised realm. Joëlle recorded with Bailey
on Les douze sons and on the Company disc "Trios", and has worked with
a wide range of improvisational artists, for example: Maggie Nicols, Lindsay
Cooper, Irène Schweizer, Fred Frith, Evan Parker, Eric Watson, Lol Coxhill,
Peter Kowald, William Parker and Barre Philips. She is a member of the European
Women's Improvising Group (recorded on Intakt 002). She has recorded one of the
strangest records (even by free improvising standards) in Les domestiques with
Jon Rose - a collection of domestic noises set to musical effect - and more recently
has formed The Canvas Trio with long-term associates Rüdiger Carl and Carlos
Zingaro. In 1994, Joëlle was the DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) "artist
in residence" in the city of Berlin; from November 1997 to June 1998 she
took up a residence in Metz, in northeast France, teaching master classes at
academic institutions and playing concerts with a range of improvisers that included
Eric Watson, Lauren Newton, Carlos Zingaro and Paul Lovens. From September to
December 2002 she has been a visiting professor for improvisation and composition
at Mills College, Oakland, California.
David Rosenboom
A composer, performer, conductor, interdisciplinary artist, author
and educator, David is known as a pioneer in American experimental music.
He has explored ideas in his work about the spontaneous evolution of forms,
languages for improvisation, new techniques in scoring for ensembles, cross-cultural
collaborations, performance art, computer music systems, interactive multimedia,
compositional algorithms, and extended musical interface with the human
nervous system since the 1960's. Rosenboom has been Dean of the School
of Music and Conductor of the New Century Players at the California Institute
of the Arts since 1990 and was Co-Director of the Center for Experiments
in Art, Information and Technology from 1990 to 1998. He taught at Mills
College from 1979 to 1990, was Professor of Music, Head of the Music Department,
Director of the Center for Contemporary Music, and held the Darius Milhaud
Chair from 1987 to 1990. He studied at the University of Illinois, where
he was later awarded the prestigious George A. Miller Professorship and
has held positions in the Center for Creative and Performing Arts at the
State University of New York in Buffalo, York University in Toronto, where
he was Professor of Music and Interdisciplinary Studies, and others.
David Wessel
He studied mathematics and experimental psychology at the University of Illinois
and received a doctorate in mathematical psychology from Stanford in 1972. His
work on the perception and compositional control of timbre in the early 70's
at Michigan State University led to a musical research position at IRCAM in Paris
in 1976. In 1979 he began reshaping the Pedagogy Department to link the scientific
and musical sectors of IRCAM. In 1985 he established a new IRCAM department devoted
to the development of interactive musical software for personal computers. In
1988 he began his current position as Professor of Music at the University of
California, Berkeley where he is Director of CNMAT. He is particularly interested
in live-performance computer music where improvisation plays an essential role.
He has collaborated in performance with a variety of improvising composers including
Roscoe Mitchell, Steve Coleman, Ushio Torikai, Thomas Buckner, Vinko Globokar,
Jin Hi Kim, Shafqat Ali Khan, and Laetitia Sonami has performed throughout the
US and Europe.
William Winant
"One of the best avant-garde percussionists working today" according
to Mark Swed of The Los Angeles Times, has collaborated with some of the most
innovative and creative musicians of our time, including John Cage, Iannis Xenakis,
Keith Jarrett, Anthony Braxton, James Tenney, Cecil Taylor, Steve Reich, Jean-Philippe
Collard, Frederic Rzewski, Ursula Oppens, Joan LaBarbara, and the Kronos String
Quartet. He is principal percussionist with the San Francisco Contemporary Music
Players and the John Zorn Chamber Ensemble.
Many important composers have written works for him, including John Cage, Lou
Harrison, John Zorn, Peter Garland, Alvin Curran, Chris Brown, Gordon Mumma,
Alvin Lucier, Terry Riley, Fred Frith, Somei Satoh, and Wadada Leo Smith. Mr.
Winant has performed as a guest artist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under
the direction of Pierre Boulez; the San Francisco Symphony (with the Abel-Steinberg-Winant
Trio); the Berkeley Symphony; the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra; the Ravinia Music
Festival, as well as at many major festivals and recitals throughout the world.
For ten years he was principal percussionist with the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra
(Dennis Russell Davies, director), and timpanist with the Philharmonia Baroque
Orchestra 1985-1989 (Nicholas McGegan, director) He teaches at the University
of California at Berkeley and Santa Cruz, and is Artist-in-Residence at Mills
College with the internationally recognized Abel-Steinberg-Winant Trio, which
has commissioned over twenty-five new works for violin, piano, and percussion.
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