Spotlight on Sound Out – Part 2
This post is a companion to Spotlight on SOUND OUT - Part 1 (published 25 April 2022), and contains information about the artists who participated in the inaugural edition of SOUND OUT– a professional development for musicians who defy categorisation.
Although the inaugural edition of SOUND OUT was severely disrupted by the pandemic, the artists did not stop their forward momentum, and we are delighted to share this second update about the careers of the four remaining the SOUND OUT artists: Morris Kliphuis (NL), Inge Thomson (UK), Benedikt Wieland (CH) and RESINA – the alias of Karolina Rec (PL).
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MORRIS KLIPHUIS
French horn virtuoso Morris Kliphuis is an iconoclastic and boundary breaking instrumentalist who has developed a varied career as a dynamic performer and an in-demand composer, working with innovative ensembles like s t a r g a z e and Metropole Orkest, among others.
He described SOUND OUT as: ‘…an enormous boost in all kinds of ways…. [bringing] a wider perspective of the international music scene/business…[and] Learn[ing] how to plan my career better and make choices that will bring more focus to my working life.’
SOUND OUT introduced Morris and pianist Joanna Duda (PL) where they bonded over their love of free improvisation, obscure electronics, and a shared background in classical music. Across the pandemic, via a series of residencies in Katowice (PL), Berlin (DE) and The Hague (NL), they created Wake The Dead – a project exploring the intersection between their shared musical world, full of hypnotic, soft textures and restless ostinatos, and the distinctive sound of Baroque instruments.
Drawing from the old as well as the new and allowing the listener to experience time and history from a refreshing, non-chronological point of view, Wake the Dead is a 75-minute performance that features Morris, Joanna and viola da gamba player Liam Byrne, and will premiere at the WoNDeRFeeL Festival on 15 July, will perform at the BIMHUIS in Amsterdam on 14 October, and is available worldwide for performance and residency opportunities.
Across the pandemic, Morris also wrote a song-cycle with Lucky Fonz III called High Dive. A blend of modern jazz, neoclassical and indie pop, it features Pitou and s t a r g a z e and has just been released on Zennez Records.
See Morris’s website for more information.
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INGE THOMSON
Originally from Fair Isle, Inge Thomson is an extraordinarily versatile musician who composes, produces, sings, plays many instruments, including the accordion, and collaborates widely. She is interested in her community and the environment and often creates beautiful, bespoke works that combine the two.
Inge says: ’SOUND OUT came at a perfect time for me, it has given me the opportunity to hone my production and engineering skills, which has been a game changer for me in the last two years.’
Lockdown and the year that followed were productive for Inge, who has taken full advantage of the break from constant touring to broaden her skill sets and produce some remarkable new works.
Her output has been plentiful and includes: a short soundtrack commission for CBC (Canada), a BBC Radio 3 slow radio commission, as well as Wild Edges, a 12 minute composition that earned a BBC Alba Na Trads award nomination in Original Work of the Year 2021 category; TimeSquint, an experimental sound piece nominated for New Music for Media 2021, Hare Spell, a soundtrack for Alternative Stories and Fake Realities podcast, and Hen Hoose, a collaborative partnership writing and production for live sync briefs which resulted in an album release, several successful syncs, and is currently returning for a second round of works.
See Inge’s website for more information.
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BENEDIKT WIELAND
Benedikt Wieland is a Berlin-based Swiss-German bass experimentalist, improviser, and composer. He is the band leader of Kaos Protokoll, a Swiss progressive jazz outfit with whom he released three albums and toured what he describes as, ‘a big chunk of this spinning, blue rock.’
As part of SOUND OUT, which he says, ‘…was the trigger I needed’, Benedikt was mentored by Norwegian composer, performer, and producer Jan Bang, and used the enforced down time to create Medicine - the first of a series of solo concept EPs. Medicine is the culmination of a three-year research process into the notion of subverting traditional approaches and sound aesthetics associated with the electric bass (point of departure: jazz) and is based on a language that was specifically developed for the instrument, where, in the words of the artist: ‘the bass guitar becomes an orchestra and is no longer bound to its traditional role as the foundation for harmony and rhythm.’
Medicine is an acutely personal work – a document that captures the moment of an artist’s quantum leap into a new understanding of himself, his art, and the world around him – rendered in granular detail. It will be released on 10 September 2022.
See Benedikt’s website for more information.
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RESINA, alias of Karolina Rec
Arch-experimentalist Resina has an active career as a composer-performer-collaborator, and as a creator of soundtracks for games and film. She releases records with FatCat, is published by MUTE SONG , and is part of the roster of hip Berlin-based agency, Folk Wisdom.
Of her SOUND OUT experience, she says: ‘…I've never had such a long and devoted to music/music business time which was not just a regular composing time - it was an amazing luxury which helped me to clarify some important ideas... [giving me] encouragement and support to try new challenging things…[and] some very practical knowledge. I believe the network which we created will last for long because apart from brilliant musicians, we just simply had a group of really nice people.’
Resina has been developing all aspects of her career through the pandemic and has written her first video game soundtrack, based on cult RPG Vampire The Masquerade: Shadows of New York, which was released on the Polish label Coastline Northern Cuts and was nominated for several awards.
In 2021, her latest album Speechless was released on FatCat Records. Recorded by Michał Kupicz and produced by Daniel Reimer (Ben Frost, Foals, among others), Speechless combines voice & choir, cello, percussion, flute, field recordings and electronics and evolves around the idea of exploring experimental, primitive ways of making sound with the voice, the tension between the physical/biological and the electronic, as well as thinking about those denied the right to speak. The album has been described as ‘extraordinary’ by The Line of Best Fit, with Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza saying that it ‘…combine[s] the imagination of a young Penderecki, the brutality and passion of the noise-rock, avant-garde, and the visionary work worthy of the masters of film music.’
Live, Speechless showcases Resina on cello, Mateusz Rychlicki on drums, and the 441 Hz choir. Stripped of their classical contexts, Speechless an amalgamation of noise, rock, ambient and choral elements, moving from delicate beauty to incandescent danger, from pulsating minimalism to unbridled explosions. The work premiered at Szczecin Philharmonic, with further performances in Warsaw and Gdańsk, and is available worldwide.
Other work during the pandemic includes Weavings, a performance and album curated and led by Nicolas Jaar for the online 2020 and live 2021 editions of Unsound, which involved a durational improvisation involving an amazing ensemble of artists including Resina, Aho Ssan, Ka Baird, Angel Bat Dawid, Ellen Fullman, Dirar Kalash, Księżyc, Laraaji, Paweł Szamburski, Juliana Huxtable, Rolando Hernández Guzmán, and Wukir Suryadi and Rully Shabara of Senyawa. A review in Pitchfork said: ‘…For all its restraint, Weavings feels determined and even celebratory, a declaration of defiance in the face of a microbe that tried to bring the world to a halt.’
See Resina’s INSTAGRAM for more information.
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SOUND OUT is an initiative of the Europe Jazz Network under the Artistic Exchange Platform and is supported by: Pro Helvetia (Switzerland), Buma Cultuur (The Netherlands), Australian Art Orchestra, Australian Music Centre, Jazz from Scotland, Creative Scotland, the National Forum of Music/Jazztopad (Poland) and organised with the In Situ Foundation (Sokołowsko), and in co-operation with the Adam Mickiewicz Institute as part of POLSKA 100, the international cultural programme accompanying the centenary of Poland regaining independence. Financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland as part of the multi-annual programme NIEPODLEGŁA 2017–2022.