Anne La Berge (flute, electronics)Anne La Berge is a pioneer flutist/composer, working since the late 70's with interactive computer systems, microtonality, improvisation and as a leading interpreter of contemporary chamber music. Anne La Berge grew up in Minnesota, USA and has lived since 1989 in Amsterdam. She currently performs in numerous improvisation and chamber music projects in Europe and the US. She can be heard in a range of settings from modern ballet music in the music theaters of Holland to improvised electronic music in the local squat buildings. From1999 through 2006 she co-founded and ran the series "kraakgeluiden" for weekly electro-acoustic improvisation sessions in Amsterdam. This series gained an international reputation for it¹s adventuresome programming and received financial support on the local and national level. A compilation CD of the sessions was released by Unsounds in August 2003.
In addition to creating her own work, the latest being a commission from the Dutch radio VPRO for 40 minute electronic composition entitled Inkage, she regulary commissions artists, the most recent being Marko Ciciliani, to compose solo works for her with interactive/improvised music and video. She has performed her own works, which always use interactive electronics, The Freaks went to sea, Cross, Prairie Gears, and Drive and Toss at festivals in Europe and the US. The current versions of these pieces are built in LiSa and junXion, computer programs and hardware developed by STEIM in Amsterdam.
A listing of current performances, CD releases and activities can be found at: www.annelaberge.com.
Marko Ciciliani (no-input mixer)
³Hyperindividual² (Volkskrant 1998), ³music, that does not follow the usual aesthetic rules and practices of accepted taste² (Y.Kyriakides 2005) are just a few statements describing the unique voice of Marko Ciciliani¹s music.
Born in 1970 in Croatia, Marko Ciciliani received his musical training as a composer, music theorist and electronic musician in New York, Hamburg and The Hague. Already during his studies he has collected extensive experience not only in the fields of ³academic² composition, but also in free improvisation. He has written for a variety of settings, including orchestra, ensembles, solo works and sound installations, often including live-electronics or other media like light, video or cartoons. Since 1996 he lives in Amsterdam/Netherlands. Ciciliani¹s music is performed by ensembles such as ASKO, ensemble Intégrales, Zeitkratzer, MAE, Orkest de Volharding, Slagwerkgroep Den Haag, QO-2 and Interzone Perceptible. It has been played all over Europe, the Americas and Asia and is present at festivals such as Wien Modern, Bregenzer Festspiele, Zagreb Biennale, ISCM World Music Days 2005, Gaudeamus, Novembermusic, Open Systems, Proms in Paradiso/Amsterdam, Roaring Hooves Mongolia, Das Neue Werk NDR Hamburg, Música a Metrònom/Barcelona and elsewhere.
Matt Ostrowski (laptop)
A New York City native, Matthew Ostrowski has been using electronics since the early 1980s, working in improvised music, multimedia music- theater, and audio installations, with a continuing interest in density of microevents, rapid chanes, and using technology to stretch the functions of human perception. He studied electronic music and composition at the Oberlin Conservatory and the Institute on Sonology in the Hague. Active as an improvisor in New York in the Œ80s, he spent most of the Œ90s living in Holland, concentrating more on music- theater and semi-composed solo works, and serving as composer-in- residence for the Streb/Ringside dance company. He returned to New York in 2000, working intensely in audio installations and improvisation. His work has been seen or performed on five continents, including the Wien Modern Festival, the Kraków Audio Art Festival, Sonic Acts in Amsterdam, PS 1 and The Kitchen in New York , the Melbourne Festival, and Unyazi, the first festival of electronic music on the African continent. He has shared the stage with everyone from David Behrman and John Zorn to the Flying Karamazov Brothers. He has appeared on over a dozen recordings, and has received numerous grants and awards, including a 2001 NYFA fellowship in Computer Arts, and a nomination for the prestigious Alpert award in the Arts in 2005.
Zbigniew Karkowski was born in 1958 in Krakow, Poland. He studied composition at the State College of Music in Gothenburg, Sweden, aesthetics of modern music at the University of Gothenburg's Department of Musicology, and computer music at the Chalmers University of Technology. After completing his studies in Sweden, he studied sonology for a year at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Den Haag, Netherlands. During his education, he also attended many summer composition master courses arranged by Centre Acanthes in Avignon and Aix-en-Provence, France, studying with Iannis Xenakis, Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez, and Georges Aperghis, among others. He works actively as a composer of both acoustic and electroacoustic music. He has written pieces for large orchestra (commissioned and performed by the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra), plus an opera and several chamber music pieces that were performed by professional ensembles in Sweden, Poland, and Germany. He is a founding member of the electroacoustic music performance trio "Sensorband." Zbigniew has lived and worked in Tokyo, Japan for the past eight years, and is active in the underground noise scene there.