Well, 2010LAB.TV asked several people what they think about it. See the answers in this short cut (in german)

The supporting actors are critical to any good film, and this year’s fringe programme is Oscar-worthy in itself: diverse, creative and with the potential to keep you up all night (if you so desire). Boris Graue is the curator of the fringe programme in Bollwerk. We asked him all about it.

How long have you been running Bollwerk and what has changed in that time?

Bollwerk, which in full is actually called Bollwerk107, opened last year on 27 November, though the night sessions of last year’s moers festival were held here prior to that in what was then an authentic building site setting! The only fixed features were the roof and a wall or two, everything else was mobile and improvised, from the light and sound system to the catering tent and the portable toilets. The audiences seemed to like it though, which was partly down to the impressive performances by the artists and partly down to the fantastic weather. Things have changed drastically since then: Bollwerk is now finished and is one of the most modern and coolest locations in the region. We have a very contemporary café area which is open daily, and attractive events from across the entire cultural spectrum are held here on a regular basis. Just as importantly, we now have a full and experienced team. If you haven’t been to Bollwerk since last year’s night sessions, you’ll hardly recognize it =)

How well do the moers festival and Bollwerk go together?

If you’re into modern, authentic, and sometimes off the wall and weird musical and artistic acts, the moers festival is the place for you - and so is Bollwerk! We continue to be fairly uninterested in the mainstream – we offer a setting for new forms of expression that are experimental and come straight out of the many different grassroots cultural scenes. "Expect the unexpected" applies perfectly to both the moers festival and to us, don’t you think? At the same time we never forget that the whole thing has to be fun – thinking and dancing don’t have to be antithetical – everything always hinges on enthusiasm. It’s OK to enjoy yourself in the process! As such, I think that we fit perfectly into the overall framework of the moers festival. What I find interesting is that in recent years the gap between the performances – and above all the audiences –in the festival tent and here has been getting smaller and smaller – “strange encounters” between our regulars and those of the festival are not so strange any more, the whole thing is becoming more homogenous, it’s overlapping more and more and is becoming a huge, unforgettable event for many people. And that’s brilliant!



How did you choose the Bollwerk programme for this year?

There’s an incredible amount going on at the moment in the enormous field of electronic art, and by that I mean not just music but visual arts, performances, installations and things that don’t even have a name yet. Surprising collaborations are springing up between established artists that you might know from the documenta and DJs or other DIY sound freaks that you’d normally encounter in back yards in Hamburg or Berlin. Often, the result is totally cool works of art and some amazing events. The night sessions reflect this arc pretty impressively: the Friday, under the heading “sight and sound”, seems a bit “intellectual” at first, but is going to be a load of fun. The region’s most innovative (in my opinion) visual artists will create installations using their current output and new material which will exist just for that very moment, and we have sound freaks of all kinds who are set to perform – live of course. Saturday is the time to dance and party as we finally get to welcome the amazing Beat Plantation. As a longtime fan of this event I really cannot wait! It’s going to be a kind of “festival in a festival” with eight (!) areas featuring not only electronic dance music of all kinds, from drum and bass to minimal techno and oriental beats, but also loads to look at. We’ll then move into Sunday almost without a break, when again there will be dancing – with temperatures ranging from experimental to downright strange.
We do realise that some people are wondering where punk rock has got to this year, but I can honestly say it will be everywhere, in unexpected forms. No one has complained yet, I hastened to add – even the colourful hair faction is looking forward to the nights in Bollwerk. And so are we!


night session@Bollwerk 2009

Click here for all informations about the night sessions@Bollwerk

Siya Makuzeni

The 24 year-old Siya Makuzeni (trombone/ vocals) is one of the most recent discoveries on the South African scene. She grew up in East London in the Eastern Cape, took part in Stirling High School’s jazz programme and was selected for the National Schools’ Jazz Band, with which she toured southern Africa and Europe. She also performed with the Eastern Cape Big Band and in 1999 with Zim Ngqawana. From Rhodes University in Grahamstown, where she studied drama and theatre, she moved to South Africa’s oldest institutionalised jazz school, Pretoria Technikon. Her dynamics as a singer and her free expressive improvisation on the trombone are incredible!

Siya Makuzeni appears regularly with the Marcus Wyatt quintet, Tumi and the Volume, Feya Faku and is going to come to Moers with Carlo Mombelli’s Prisoners of Strange. I am excited about another interesting female artist.

Read here the full article from Benjamin Moshatama on wordpress.com

And see her perform with "Prisoners of Strange"

Toshi Reagon with her amazing energy and an infectious enjoyment is not coming to Moers only by herself. She will be accompanied by BIGLovely.

This band did its first performance as BIGLovely in September of 1996.
We were doing a residency at The Fez in NYC. My girlfriend wrote me a loveletter and addressed it “To My BIGLovely.” That’s how we came up with the name. The band is like an allstar NYC band. Everyone in the band has their own band or plays with a lot of other people.

Let´s take a look at the musicians from BIGLovely.


Adam Widoff: Electric Guitar
Adam is a multi-instrumentalist who lives in Woodstock, NY. Starting with piano at age five, he has since haphazardly studied several instruments and musical traditions including Balinese Gamelan orchestra with Nyoman Astita and North Indian classical music with Ali Akbar Khan and Jamaluddin Bhartiya. Widoff has recorded and performed with Lenny Kravitz, Toshi Reagon, David Torn, Kate Pierson and others. Current projects include Drugs: The Prescription for Miss America and Chicken & the Superstars.


Fred Cash, Jr.: Bass
Native of Chicago, Fred has been touring with Toshi Reagon’s BIGLovely since 1998. Cash attended the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago. He has worked with such artists as Jean-Paul Bourelly, India Arie, Jerry Butler.


Robert “Chicken” Burke: Drums
Native of Brooklyn, he received his first drum kit when he was 13 years old. He has been member of Toshi Reagon’s BIGLovely band for five years. He is a self-taught musician, whose talents include writing, arranging and producing. His debut album, titled Drugs: The Prescription for Miss America, features Hall of Fame members of George Clinton’s Parliament Funkadelic. He is currently working on his next release, titled Chicken & the Superstars.

toshireagon.com/biglovely

See Toshi Reagon and BIGLovely play live in NYC.

Toshi Reagon & BIGLovely kill Resistance, Anywhere I Can. from j. bob alotta on Vimeo.

Super Seaweed Sex Scandal are associated with John Zorn’s legendary venue The Stone. For those of you who don’t fly to New York on a regular basis to attend improvisation concerts there, here’s some information about it.
The Stone is a not-for-profit performance space dedicated to the Experimental and Avantgarde whose artistic director is John Zorn. The Stone is located at the corner of Avenue C and 2nd Street and music can be heard from Tuesday to Sunday – the place is closed on Mondays. All expenses are paid for by the Music itself - through the online sale of special Limited Edition CDs released yearly on the Tzadik label. Each month a different musician is responsible for curating the programs, with 100% of the nightly revenue going directly to the musicians.

To get back to the Stone offshoot Super Seaweed Sex Scandal, Nate Dorr, writing in Impose Magazine, has the following to say:

“Extending a lineage of jazz-honed ferocity perhaps running from John Zorn to Little Women, the just-months-old sextet Super Seaweed Sex Scandal is already a dynamo of dissonant horns, crashing guitar notes, and thundering percussion.”

Click here for the full article on imposemagazine.com

Super Seaweed Sex Scandal are young and full of energy. Here’s a video of them playing at The Stone (where else?):

Super Seaweed Sex Scandal at The Stone!! 09.08.09 from Live Footage on Vimeo.

Super Seaweed Sex Scandal will be playing on Saturday 22 May at the moers festival.

Although guitar player Fred Frith is coming to Moers with his Band "Cosa Brava", he is involved in several projects as well as an active solo artist too. Thinking of prepared instruments, it is the prepared piano what comes up in my mind first. But Fred Frith shows that a guitar can be prepared and that it is exciting. See Fred Frith on concert in the year 2006 on youtube:

Fred Frith on youtube

Asked by jazzbreak.com what he thinks about music referring to a quotation from photographer 'Cartier-Bresson': "...it is a scream and a way of life...", he says:

"I think, in a way, that all creative activity is in a sense a way of defying death. I think we are defined in our lives by the fact that we know we are going to die. And that artistict activity is a way of saying "I'm not going to die". So shouting is also very much about showing that you're alive and I very much like the quotation.
Since we're talking about quotations, Jean Durand, the saxophone player from Quebec, was asked about wheither he considered his music to be new or wheither he was interested in new music and he said - and I agree with him - that he didn't really care very much wheither the music was new or not but what was important to him was that it was alive.
And I think that's a very good way of looking at it."

And asked, what he thinks about the music scene today, and in particular the rock scene and the improvised music scene, he answers:

"Again I think there is no such thing as one kind of music anymore.
There are rock musicians who improvise, there are improvising musicians who do things with ethnic musicians, there are all kinds of hybrids going on all the time, and there's a quote I really like, talking about how what we have now is hybrids of hybrids to the point where we don't even remember what the original was anymore. And I think it kind of describes the way the music scene is.
It's like everything is available so you can refer to anything, you can access anything, you can mix anything with anything else and so it's no longer possible, even though the record stores try - to classify anything.
When you walk in a record store, everything is subdivided and subdivided... and they are only responding to consumers. They don't invent those categories, the people who listen to the music invent them.
So in the end they are always behind the listeners and the record compagnies are even further behind and the institutions are even further behind than that !
That's why I found interesting that actually it's the listener who is determining what's going on and what's interesting."

Read the full interview on jazzbreak.com

The minute Dobet Gnahoré steps onto the stage, it is obvious she is something special. She exudes an inner strength and commanding presence that draws you in, even before she has opened her mouth to sing. Once Dobet does begin to sing, her voice is filled with emotion and range. She moves from heartfelt ballads to funky, danceable songs with ease, and is comfortable performing in a wide range of African styles.
Eventually, Dobet begins to dance, and the true depth of her talent shines through. She jumps across the stage like an acrobat, a soulful tornado of movement who astounds the audience with her moves. Just 24 years old, Dobet Gnahoré has got an exceptional voice, amazing dance skills and the engaging aura reserved for artistic greats.

The Boston Herald wrote about her US-Tour:

“One of the new-generation African artists who are rewriting the rules about respecting musical tradition, the charismatic Gnahore…was as much cultural ambassador as scintillating performer. Veteran Afropop queen Angelique Kidjo would have been proud.”

And if you would like to see Dobets dancing skills, follow this link>>

This is what the New York Times says about his album "Travail, "Transformation and Flow":

The tension between structure and spontaneity has long been a core preoccupation for this expressly future-minded alto saxophonist and composer. “Travail, Transformation and Flow” (Pi Rec.), [...] takes that tension to heady extremes. Mr. Lehman composed most of the music on the album with clinical attention to frequency and overtone: his harmonies were devised with the help of spectrum analysis and programming software. So in one sense this is computer music, though it’s also the product of a nimbly improvising octet. (On Monday the group will play at Le Poisson Rouge; lepoissonrouge.com.) Some of the album’s eight tracks — notably “Alloy,” the longest and most immediately gripping — summon the ghosts of a knockabout post-bop avant-garde. Others, like “Echoes,” suggest the tolling of temple bells as remixed by a dance-music collagist. And Mr. Lehman closes with a meaningful nod, covering “Living in the World Today” by GZA of the Wu-Tang Clan. It’s a perfectly ultramodern gesture, and the swagger fits

.

And here you see (and listen) to what Steve Lehman says (and plays!)



Steve Lehman will be playing on Saturday 22 May at the moers festival.

Once again, moers will give you the chance to hear instruments you don’t exactly come across every day, including the electric harp, played here by the harp pioneer Zeena Parkins. Parkins is responsible for a whole new approach to the harp, which she fits with pickups and plays using nails, screwdrivers, glasses, felt and other things to draw out an extraordinary palette of tones and sound.

Since her arrival in New York in the 1980s, Parkins has been an important member of the avant-garde scene. She has worked with John Zorn (how often will that name come up again in this blog?...) and, in the mid-eighties, joined Fred Frith and Tom Cora in the band “Skeleton Crew”. She has also worked repeatedly with Elliott Sharp, appearing in 2003, for instance, in the play “Sex Machine”, based on Werner Fritsch’s “Jenseits”. Her projects include collaboration with Björk on the Verspertine Album (and two tours), cooperation with Yoko Ono on Blueprint for a Sunrise and a trio which she shares with the Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo and drummer William Hooker. Since March 2008 she has been a member of the band “Cosa Brava” and in this context will appear in the final concert of the moers festival on Monday 24 May.

Here’s an interesting interview with Zeena Parkins by the music critic Steve Dollar

Arto Lindsay on his "Envy" Cover

It’s always fun to read the biographies of the artists appearing at the moers festival because you inevitably stumble upon the names of musicians who have already played here, and others who are more than likely to do so in the future.

Precisely this happened with the American guitarist, singer, music producer and sound artist Arto Lindsay. Born in 1953 in Brazil as the son of US missionaries, he grew up in the heyday of the electronic tropicália movement of the 1960s. In the seventies he went to New York, witnessed firsthand the development of the punk rock movement and founded the band DANN. He then played in various constellations with Bill Frisell (guitarist and one of North America’s greatest improvisers, coming to Moers this very year to play with Arve Henriksen, Eyvind Kang and Rudy Royston), Fred Frith (aha! Cosa Brava, Fred Frith’s latest diabolical venture, can be experienced on Monday in the main tent), and last but not least John Zorn (whose most recent appearance in Moers was in 2008). In fact, although John Zorn might not be appearing this year in person, you could almost say that he’s sending his protégés instead: Super Seaweed Sex Scandal are closely associated with The Stone, the small but highly renowned venue backed by John Zorn.

Anyway, Arto Lindsay: in the nineties he rediscovered his Brazilian roots and returned to his native country to work as a producer on recordings by Caetano Veloso, Vinicius Cantuária, Gal Costa and Carlinhos Brown, among others, and earned a Latin Grammy for “Best Brazilian Contemporary Pop Album” for his production work on the platinum-selling Marisa Monte album “Memórias, Crônicas e Declarações de Amor”.

An interesting life, then, and this is only some of it. If you want to get an idea of Arto Lindsay’s true versatility, listen to these two recordings.





Arto Lindsay will be playing on Monday 24 May at the moers festival.

From now on we’re going to run regular features on the artists appearing this year. To start with, here’s one of the artists who is already living in Moers: Improviser in Residence Sanne van Hek. Read here what she says about Moers, living in a house and her next plans.


Sanne van Hek by Helmut Berns

How have you been welcomed in Moers?

It was a very warm welcome, the house is fantastic, I play and work whenever I want. Sometimes I practice technique excersises at 4 o´clock in the morning and nobody complains I have been invited to a dinner, I walked in the park and went to the market, the people in the shops are kind too. Plus I liked the "Gesprächskonzert" last week, there was a good vibe.

(editors note: you can watch the "Gesprächskonzert" on youtube, see the short part below)

What do you think is most special about Moers, or even weird?

Most weird is probably me. Sometimes the mothers who pick up their kids look at me strange when I come outside, dressed the way I am. When I say hello they turn away, they're very uncomfortable, haha... And special of course it's this project! That this residency exists, and on top in a place like moers is truelly unique!

How do you feel to live in house now for the next 9 month, as you have always been traveling?

Being in the house is one of the best things about it. The first 2 weeks I spent completely locked in. I went to the "Edeka" once, and for the rest I was working 18 hours a day, without one moment of being bored. I still travel, I went to Poland, the south of France and the next months I'll be in france, Belgium, Netherlands and Africa. But then it's even nicer to have such a place to come back to!

What are your next plans?

Next plans: A visit in the kindergarten next door next tuesday, a concert and workshop with the "Black Napkins" 14th and 15th of March. A trio concert with saxophone and accordion in the beginning of April, little pieces I'm writing now. Then the moers festival is coming very soon, so we start rehearsing for that this month. I'm developing ideas for other projcets, making a lot of phonecalls and emailing. a possible small theatre piece in the summer, finding out when the "Blechbläser Tage" are in Moers to see if I can do something with that.. etc etc

What can we expect from you for the moers festival?

A great band with my favorite musicians, nice electronics. More abstract, working with ideas and concepts that I've been working on. No popcorn tunes...

Thank you!

On 14th/15th March, the “Black Napkins” will be in Moers and the trio is running workshops and coachings for local musicians and bands. If you’re interested or want more information, send an e-mail to info@n1mm.de.



Want to see more? Then follow the link: Youtube - Sanne van Hek

The main programme is out since March 4th. It’s been a secret for long enough, and it’s a relief not to keep having to tell journalists “no, not until March 4th, sorry!”

I recommend everyone who was not there to watch the video of the press conference, it was my first and I liked it!

The moers festival poster was created by the graphic artist Il-Jin ATEM Choi, who was born in Moers in 1981 and who is now based in Frankfurt am Main. The motif consists of various anagrams of the words moers festival applied with spray paint onto 9 removal boxes, which we used to make a little video teaser. Now it´s time we thought, to ask Il-Jin ATEM Choi about his opinions regarding graffiti art.

Il-Jin, When I think of graffiti artists I think of quick effects. How long did the moers festival poster take you? Do you work quickly or do you plan things for a long time?

It depends on the objectives and the artistic intention of the project. I try to make room for both the classic graffiti approach, which is characterised by speed and spontaneity, and for the “slow painting” way of elaborating a picture, which requires a lot of research and conceptualisation in advance. My piece for the moers festival was a relatively long time in the planning (e.g. with regard to how the words should be arranged on the boxes and which anagrams I should use). Actually producing the work with the spray can took more like two days than two weeks.

Do you think that graffiti should have a different cultural status than it currently does? How do you feel about the way this art form is perceived?

As the second question rightly suggests, graffiti is, globally speaking, indeed an art form. Like with any art, the quality of each individual work can only be judged on a case by case basis. Lots of curators, gallery owners and collectors are now doing precisely this, despite all the prejudices surrounding graffiti, and regard a lot of stuff as good and valuable, while other “keepers of the Grail” still dismiss anything related to graffiti as “irrelevant juvenile rubbish” from the outset.
Those works of graffiti which could be deemed to be unrequested, unwanted and which were illegally created in a public space are difficult to judge. They fall into a kind of grey zone, both aesthetically and morally/legally speaking. If a psychologist had to analyse the way graffiti was perceived by society, they’d be sure to diagnose a split personality. Even people who have no idea about art know, for example, that there are extremely artistic works of graffiti being created in the public space (e.g. in Berlin) which are often the result of legally organised art projects. However, there is also a lot of less good beginner’s art out there, which is partly because illegal graffiti in particular is an art form in which the artist gets to exhibit to the public without institutionalised barriers to entry in the shape of curators and gallery owners (Mieke Bal has formulated similar thoughts on this “self-exposure” in the form of graffiti). In this sense, this kind of graffiti is something very democratic, despite its illegality. It all gets artistically interesting when non-beginners produce work in the style of beginners, in an attempt to consciously re-evoke the naive, the raw and the untamed power of what Jean Baudrillard called “empty signifiers”.

Are you working on a project at the moment? If so, what is it?

Generally speaking I’m always working on refining and improving the essence of graffiti writing by finding new and abstract ways of writing my name ATEM. I also have various special projects and ideas for exhibitions that I’m constantly working on. One of them is to spray the entire Declaration of Human Rights onto a wall where the public can see it. If you want to find out more about current projects and exhibitions, I do have a website (which is in urgent need of an overhaul and has been for years), a blog on MySpace, and a facebook page as Il-Jin ATEM Choi (when the opportunity is there, why not use it...). A virtual visit to any of those sites would make me very happy!



E-mail: atem@atemmeta.de

Visit Il-Jin: ATEMMETA.DE or www.myspace.com/atemmeta

Simon Rummel under great light in the Church in Moers opening his farewell concert by Helmut Berns.

Simon Rummel, who lived and worked in Moers for almost a year now, was succeeded at the beginning of February by new improviser in residence Sanne van Hek. At the end of his year as improviser in residence we asked Simon Rummel to take a little retrospective look on what he experienced. To read the full interview please follow the link to the website of the Netzwerk Improvisierte Musik Moers (network for improvised music Moers) n1mm.
(the interview is in german)

Interview with Simon Rummel>>

As we’ve already announced on various social networks, on 4th March we’re due to announce the main programme of this year’s moers festival. Or to put it another way, Reiner Michalke, artistic director of the festival, will be presenting the results of a year of work (his job, after all, consists in large part of selecting and inviting the most interesting artists the scene has to offer). We can’t wait to find out what’s in store for this year’s festival. Will there be any familiar faces returning? Who knows...

What I will say is: don’t miss the press conference, which will be streamed live from the Bollwerk in Moers, starting at 12.00 (noon) on March 4th.

If you want to see the festival team live, come back to the site on March 4th!

Until then, for all those of you who celebrate it, enjoy the Carnival season!