KSS: Kaufmann/Schick/Schulkowsky · Alexander Babikov & Michael Moser

KSS: Kaufmann_Schick_Schulkowsky

Achim Kaufmann (Klavier) / Ignaz Schick (Turntables, Sampler) / Robin Schulkowsky (Schlagwerk)

This trio comprises three different renowned international improvisors from three different generations. Each of them has developed his/her own and unique style on their individual instruments (piano, turntable, percussion) and all of them collaborated with a huge array of distinguished sonic artists. The resulting music is electro-acoustic, crisp, texturous and playful at the same time, full of detail and organic flow. The concert at Echoraum will be the premiere of this trio to perform live.

Achim Kaufmann has been active as a pianist and composer since the early 1980s.The improvising trio Kaufmann/Gratkowski/de Joode, a duo with the Amsterdam-based reed player Michael Moore, and the piano trio grünen (with Christian Lillinger and Robert Landfermann) are among his most enduring projects. Together with the poet and visual artist Gabriele Guenther, he conceived the multi-disciplinary Trokaan Project which combines aspects of improvised chamber music, poetry and text fragments with electro-acoustic textures. He regularly performs in duo settings with Ignaz Schick, Yorgos Dimitriadis and Kalle Kalima, SKEIN (with Frank Gratkowski, Wilbert de Joode, Liz Allbee, Richard Barrett, Kazuhisa Uchihashi and Tony Buck), Sestetto Internazionale and M0VE (both with Harri Sjöström), and in a newly founded trio with Nick Dunston and Mariá Portugal. Further collaborations include Han Bennink, George Lewis, Jim Black, Paul Lovens, Tomász Stanko, Mark Dresser, Ingrid Laubrock, Tom Rainey, Shelley Hirsch, Okkyung Lee, Axel Dörner, Gerry Hemingway, Thomas Lehn, Steve Swallow, Al Foster and many others. In 2001, Achim received the SWR jazz award and the renowned Albert Mangelsdorff award in 2015. Since 2018, he has held a professorship for piano and ensemble at the Weimar Conservatory of Music. www.achimkaufmann.com

Ignaz Schick (*1972) is a Berlin based sound artist, composer & visual artist. He also performs as an instrumentalist on turntables, objects, live-electronics, alto/baritone saxophone & flutes. In his youth he studied the saxophone and performed in free jazz and avant rock bands. At the same time he was getting obsessed with multitrack tape machines, record players and effect boxes and he started experimenting with many different instruments and sound making devices. After college he briefly studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and worked for several years as an assistant for contemporary composer Josef Anton Riedl. Since 1995 he lives & works in Berlin where he became an active and integral force of the so-called „Berlin Nouvelle Vague“ and the blossoming „experimental“ music scene. He has been also prolific as curator (Festival für Andere Musik, Erase & Reset, Time Shifts, TITO, Echtzeitmusiktage 2010, Flux Festival 2018, Fuchsfest 2021, REFLUX Festival of contemporary electroacoustic Music 2022, …) and runs the experimental music label Zarek. Schick has toured worldwide solo or with groups like Perlonex, Phosphor, Berlin Sound Connective, Nighthawk Kitchen, Tree People, Splitter Orchestra or ILOG. He has released music on several labels like Absinth, Astral Spirits, Charhizmha, Irrah, Le Petit Mignon, Mikroton, Non Visual Objects, Potlatch, Staalplaat and his own imprint Zarek and collaborated worldwide with more than a hundred international sonic artists – amongst others with such greats as Mwata Bowden, John Butcher, Don Cherry, Douglas Ewart, Limpe Fuchs, Sven- Ake Johansson, George Lewis, Toshimaru Nakamura, Charlemagne Palestine, Andrea Parkins, Keith Rowe, Matthias Spahlinger or Martin Tetreault.
Since 2012 he mainly focusses on conceptual composition and experimental radio pieces. In parallel he has started several new projects with a younger generation of Berlin experimentalists (Yemen Breakfast, Radio Nightmares, Hawking, Overdue, KUDU, Ilog, …). He also frequently collaborates with Nick Dunston, Achim Kaufmann, Christian Lillinger, Rieko Okuda or Harri Sjöström and has founded the 12-piece workshop ensemble Circuit Training which focusses on the realization of conceptual graphic & verbally instructed scores.
He has received various composition, travel & research stipends/grants for Paris, South-East-Asia, Los Angeles & Istanbul for writing new pieces and researching the local scenes. Amongst others he received the prestigious composition fellowships at Villa Aurora (2017) & Kulturakademie Tarabya Istanbul (2018). Schick took part in several exhibitions and showed a larger selection of his audio/visual works in a solo exhibition at Schauraum K3 in Bavaria (2019) and at the Berlin based project space Liebig12 in 2021. In 2022 besides several festival appearances he had a two month sound art residency at Sonoscopia Porto, organized & co- curated REFLUX Festival of Contemporary Electro-Acoustic Music in Berlin and focussed on the large scale research project „City Sound Kolkata“ in collaboration with Goethe Institue Kolkata/India which involved a month of research in April followed by a month of production and workshop in November finally resulting in a four and a half hour durational concert installation in January 2023 involving 7 local musicians from different sonic scenes. Since February 2023 Schick is traveling all around India researching and collaborating with different experimental musicians and sound artists in Goa, Kochi, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune and Delhi to name a few cities.
http://www.zarekberlin.bandcamp.com
http://www.zangimusic,wordpress.com

Robyn Schulkowsky has dedicated herself, her time, and her energies to revealing the wonders of percussion to people around the world. Her continuous exploration of sound potential and new sound dimensions leads her in creating and developing new and unusual instruments. The “marimbon” was featured as a live Sonic Sculpture for Grand Central Station in NYC. She recently created a “foley” instrument with the visual artist Doris Dziersk, and is currently working with Ingo Froelich on a permanent sonic installation for a public school in Berlin.
Robyn moved to Germany during the heyday of experimental and adventurous artistic exchanges, and stayed for the inspiring dialogue going on then between composition and performance. She has premiered/recorded some of the most important solo percussion works of the 20th and 21st centuries, working with composers Karlheinz Stockhausen, Iannis Xenakis, John Cage, Morton Feldman, presenting their works on tours through Africa, India, Asia, Australia, South and North America and Mexico. She premiered Sofia Gubaidulina “Glorious Percussion” with Gustavo Dudamel. Concerto performances with works by John Cage, Georg Friedrich Haas, Helmuth Lachenmann, and Olga Neuwirth, have been presented at festivals, like Muskiest Berlin, Holland Festival, BBC Proms, Salzburg Festival to name a few. Her adventurous nature connects her with exceptional duo partners in diverse and alternative performance spaces—collaborating with legendary African Drummer Kofi Ghanaba, visual artist Guenther Uecker, film makers Herbert Achternbusch and Manon de Boer, author Roland Schimmelpfennig, drummer Joey Baron, choreographers Merce Cunningham and Sasha Waltz, or data scientist Nilam Ram. She composed site-specific works for the Mexico City metro, the Bundesgarteschau (DE) , SpreePark, Berlin, Grand Central Station, NYC, and train stations, ships and bus stops all over Europe and the Americas. Since 1998 as founder of RhythmLab, she has taken percussion workshops to countless cities, involving students, professionals and aficionados alike in rhythm workshops and concerts of original music for percussion. Conceived for children, often conducted specifically for adults or teens, the experience focuses on the immediacy of sonic discovery and tactile intensity of music – in rhythm, sound and movement.
Schulkowsky’s virtuosity has been captured numerous recordings, including productions with trumpeters Nils Petter Molvaer and Reinhold Friedrich, drummer Joey Baron (Now You Hear Me—INTAKT), electronic duo Gebrueder Teichmann (Time Bends, 2022) and seminal recordings of music by Morton Feldman (Crippled Symmetry, 1994) and Christian Wolff, with whom she has collaborated for over 30 years (Percussionist Songs, 8 Duos, 10 Exercises). Since the early 80’s, Robyn has been composing for film and theater, with a special focus on Euripides and the poet Psappho. Most of these compositions feature drums and other instruments of percussion as solo instruments, often in combination with voice. Her large-scale percussion composition “Armadillo” is available in a version for percussion trio on New World Records. Her chamber opera, “das Kind der Seehundfrau” will have yet another showing in Saarbruecken (DE) in the spring.

Alexander Babikov (E-Gitarre, Elektronik) & Michael Moser (Cello, Elektronik)

Alexander Babikov in Wien lebender Komponist, Klangkuenstler und Improvisationsmusiker, Laptop-Musiker und Multi-Instrumentalist. Komposition, Konzeptualismus, Installation und Improvisation. Diverse aesthetisch differenzierte Projekte und Ensembles, ortsspezifische Arbeiten, interdisziplinaere Performances und spontane improvisatorische Formationen. Zahlreiche Live-Auftritte in und ausserhalb Wiens. Teil der Monday Improvisers Session.

Michael Moser *Graz, lebt in Wien. Studium der Architektur an der TU Wien und Konzertfach Violoncello an den Musikuniversitäten Graz / Wien. Bereits während des Studiums intensive Beschäftigung mit verschiedensten Formen zeitgenössischer Musik/Kunst. 1993, gemeinsam mit Werner Dafeldecker, Gründung des Ensembles Polwechsel. Auf seine Anregung entstanden zahlreiche Kompositionen für Violoncello solo. Zusammenarbeit mit Komponisten wie Bernhard Lang, Peter Ablinger, Alvin Lucier, Klaus Lang, Peter Jakober. Trio Amos, gemeinsam mit Vera Fischer, Flöte und Krassimir Sterev, Akkordeon. Seit 2000 gewinnt der Raum, der orts-spezifische Aspekt in der Musik, zunehmend an Bedeutung. 2008 Klanginstallation Resonant Cuts für die singuhr-hoergalerie Berlin. Entwicklung von Flächenobjekten aus Glas und Stahl die sich, mit Körperschallwandlern bestückt in klingende Objekte verwandeln. 2011 Klanginstallation Antiphon Stein für den Klangraum Krems. 2018 Klanginstallation Membranes Only im Rahmen von wien modern in der Galerie FOX (gemeinsam mit Nik Hummer). Aber wie man bei Cello solo Abenden im Rahmen von wien modern 2018 oder den Klangspuren 2019 erleben konnte ist auch das Cello immer noch ein wesentlicher Teil seines Denktagebuches.