Jaap Blonk in TEXAS

[epistrophy arts]

San Antonio and Austin

.:. the creative music workshop presents .:.

Legendary Dutch Avant-Vocalist

JAAP BLONK

performing SOLO and in TRIO with:

Chris Cogburn (percussion)

+

Kurt Newman (amplified guitar)

* in a rare and intimate house concert * Saturday, December 3rd 8pm

709 Rio Grande

(@ the corner of 8th and Rio Grande)

$8 to $15 admission at the door

wine, beer, champagne available by donation

for more information:

www.jaapblonk.com

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The Creative Music Workshop is proud to present a rare U.S. performance from acclaimed Dutch avant-vocalist JAAP BLONK. Jaap comes to Austin to perform SOLO and in TRIO with Austin improvisors Chris Cogburn and Kurt Newman.

Known around the world as the premiere performer of Dada-based sound poetry, Jaap Blonk brings with him a powerful stage presence and a remarkable childlike freedom in improvisation. Jaap will be performing a set of classic sound text and performance works by artists such as Georges Aperghis, Hugo Ball, Kurt Schwitters, Tristan Tzara and Robert Wilson. These pieces will be followed by a set of his own works, drawn from the last 20 years, based on texts by Antonin Artaud, Robert Wilson and Dick Higgins.

The program, to be performed earlier this month at the Fort Worth Museum of Modern Art, will be presented in an intimate Austin house concert setting...

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Jaap Blonk/Chris Cogburn/Kurt Newman

will also be performing in:

San Antonio

Friday, December 2nd

at the Wiggle Room

(2301 S. Presa)

@ 8.3o pm

$10 admission at the door

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- a r t i s t b i o s -

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Jaap Blonk (holland)

voice, electronics

www.jaapblonk.com

Jaap Blonk (born 1953 in Woerden, Holland) is a self-taught composer, voice performer and sound poet. His unfinished studies in physics, mathematics and musicology mainly created a penchant for activities in a Dada vein, as did several unsuccessful jobs in offices and other well-organized systems.

In the late 1970s he took up saxophone and started to compose music, and a few years later a real breakthrough occurred: he discovered the power and flexibility of his voice.

At present, he has developed into a prolific writer/composer and a specialist in the performance of sound poetry, supported by a powerful stage presence and an almost childlike freedom in improvisation. He has performed in many European countries, as well as in the U.S., Canada, Indonesia, South Africa and Latin America.

Besides working as a soloist, he has collaborated with many musicians and ensembles in the field of contemporary and improvised music, including Paul Lytton, Mats Gustafsson, Michael Zerang, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Melvyn Poore, Paul Dutton, Nicolas Collins, the Netherlands Wind Ensemble and the Ebony Band. He has performed several compositions by the German composer Carola Bauckholt, including a piece for voice and orchestra. A solo voice piece was commissioned by the Donaueschinger Musiktage 2002.

Blonk is the founder and leader of Splinks, a 15-piece orchestra playing his compositions, and BRAAXTAAL, an avant-rock trio with synthesizer and drums.

He also has his own record label, Kontrans.

His work for radio and television includes several commissioned radio plays.

He also makes larger-scale drawings of his scores, which have been exhibited.

Blonk is an energetic workshop leader too, who has taught in many different countries, including a lot of work with children.

A recent development is his involvement with electronics, in the form of work created by sampling and processing the sounds of his voice.

Jaap Blonk keeps on searching the rich common ground between poetry and music. He is always after new sounds and combinations of sounds, without abandoning completely the semantics of language. His live performances are music, poetry and performance art all at the same time.

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Chris Cogburn (austin)

percussion

Drummer Chris Cogburn is an active performer, educator and organizer within an expansive community of creative artists. Chris has performed around the US and Canada with musicians from across North America, Europe, Mexico and Japan, including John Butcher (London), Dave Dove (Houston), Joelle Leandre (France), Tatsuya Nakatani (Japan) Joe McPhee (New York) and avant-rock outsider Jandek. Cogburn has been increasingly active within various dance/movement communities, having recently participated in the Movement Research Festival in NYC, performing with NYC-based dancers/choreographers Jennifer Monson and Margit Galanter.

He has led workshops on creative music making around North America, working in contexts as diverse as inner city community centers, homeless shelters, battered women's shelters, public and private high schools, dance studios, a church and Pauline Oliveros' Deep Listening Space - as part of a residency in the fall of 2002. In the summer of 2005 Cogburn held a month long residency through Seattle Improvised Music, enabling him to lead numerous workshops throughout the Northwest.

As an organizer, Cogburn has previously hosted Austin performances by International improvisors, always in direct collaboration with local artists. Beginning in the summer of 2003, Cogburn’s Creative Music Workshop has hosted an annual festival of improvised music - the No Idea Festival - showcasing a handful of Texas' premiere creative musicians in collaboration with improvisors from around the U.S., Europe, Japan, Mexico and Canada.

Regarded as “one of the finest creative improvised music festivals in the world” (Joe Milazzo, Paris Transatlantic) NIF aspires to connect creative musicians and to provide the space and time where new (and old) relationships can flourish, leading towards new (and old) areas and approaches in the music.

A 2-CD set documenting last year's No Idea Festival (2004) was released in November 2004 on Cogburn's own ten pounds to the sound record/dvd label.

This limited-edition double CD document has received wide acclaim across the US and Europe as “one of the principal documents of late 20th Century / early 21st Century new music from Texas.” (Joe Milazzo, One Final Note magazine, US). Reviews have also recognized the festival’s role as a beacon for the future direction of creative music - “It's a great set, and one that anyone interested in trying to chart the future course of improvised music – on either side of the Atlantic or for that matter the Pacific – should check out at the earliest opportunity.” (Dan Warburton, Paris Transatlantic magazine, Paris, France)

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KURT NEWMAN (austin)

amplified guitar

Guitarist Kurt Newman has been playing improvised music for over a decade. A native of Toronto, he came of age musically during his stint in Montreal in his late teens, where he played slide guitar with avant-country band Sackville, which included a number of folks (Harris Newman, Genevieve Heistek, Eric Craven, Ian Ilavsky) who would go on to create the storied Montreal underground music scene.

Moving back to Toronto in 1996, Newman formed the intense guitar-drums duo Wrist Error with Mike Gennaro in the late 1990s. This group played many gigs in Toronto and the USA, and released the acclaimed CD "Tempo Tempo" in 2000.

They also served as the house band and bookers for the Ulterior Music Series. The acclaimed series ran for several seasons at the Victory Cafe in Toronto.

At the same time, Newman was involved in a variety of other projects Throughout Canada, including collaborating with John Oswald, Michael Snow, Allison Cameron, Eric Chenaux, Martin Arnold, Ryan Driver, Aimee Dawn Robinson, Sam Shalabi and Alexandre St-Onge. In London, Ontario, Newman performed at the Nihilist Spasm Band's No Music Festival and is featured on the "No Music 2" box set (Entarte Kunst).

In 2000, Gennaro and Newman recorded a trio CD, "Port Huron Picnic" (Spool) with Swedish reeds master Mats Gustafsson in Chicago. This CD has earned rave reviews from a number of publications, including the most recent edition of the Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD. Newman has performed numerous times in the Windy City, making connections with musicians such as Kevin Drumm, Michael Colligan, and Fred Lonberg-Holm.During this period, Newman also had the opportunity to play gigs with European improvisors John Butcher, Roger Turner and Thomas Lehn. It is also at this time that Newman formed his relationship with US avant-legend Eugene Chadbourne.

After moving to Austin, Texas in 2002, Newman initiated a number of fertile creative partnerships. Currently, Newman's main musical priorities are a minimalist/shred project with Nick Hennies, The Long Telegram, a trio with Hennies and Cogburn, Vic Firth and The Lutherans, and the completion and release of a number of solo recordings.

Press: "From a hollow bodied electric, Kurt Newman coaxes a variety of sounds in hammering, stroking, rubbing, fingerings and placements, creating a contrapuntal deluge of simultaneous musical noise, harmonics, and sound events. One of the most interesting new stylists I've heard in a long time."

LaDonna Smith, The Improvisor

[Kalo]

Saw him in Boston last year appearing with locally-based Dutch saxophonist Joritt Dijkstra.

I'd reccommend checking him out as long as you keep in mind that he's a dada sound-poet and not a jazz guy as such.

I love the way that his name sounds just like what he does! Gutteral utterances galore.

[7/4]

http://www.jaapblonk.com/Organ/blonkorgan.html