5 Days In May: DAY 1

15.05.2024 / 19:00 – 22:00
With Elaine Mitchener

and Audrey Chen, Nick Dunston, Cedrik Fermont & Nina Guo

On the first night of her five-day series, Elaine Mitchener will gather Berlin based musicians Audrey Chen, Nick Dunston, Cedrik Fermont, and Nina Guo. Together, they will improvise in various group constellations.

As a second generation Taiwanese-Chinese American (born 1976) living in Berlin, Audrey Chen`s work has long dealt with and continues to explore the displacement of story and history due to the migration and integration processes, loss and adoption of language, untold stories, and how the past can be accessed and traced through inherited and lived experience. Her practice is deeply intertwined with this act of invocation, calling upon the physical body to remember beyond the limitations of its own memory, beyond its lifetime into generations past, simultaneously echoing into the present and forwards.Through extreme and unprocessed hyperextensions of her voice, she invokes a highly amplified joint resonant body/space transforming itself in a feedback loop of imagination, touch, vibration, sound and aural sensation.

Nick Dunston is an acoustic and electroacoustic composer, improviser, and multi-instrumentalist. Called an “indispensable player on the New York avant-garde” (New York Times), his performances have spanned a variety of venues and festivals across North America and Europe. His work explores notions of ancestral memory, materiality, embodiment, decolonization, and Afro-surrealism. As a collaborator he has worked with artists such as Marc Ribot, Ches Smith, Vijay Iyer, Mary Halvorson, Tyshawn Sorey, Moor Mother, JACK Quartet, Son Lux, Ingrid Laubrock, Wet Ink Ensemble, Craig Taborn, Dave Douglas, Allison Miller, Wendy Eisenberg, Lotte Anker, Darius Jones, Mette Rasmussen, Elliott Sharp, Sofia Jernberg, Jim Black, Achim Kaufmann, Lucrecia Dalt, Joy Guidry, Imani Uzuri, Anna Webber, and Amirtha Kidambi. In addition to seven albums released under his name, as a composer Dunston has been commissioned by artists and organizations such as Wet Ink Ensemble, Bang on a Can, JACK Quartet, A L’ARME! Festival, Ex-Aequo, Bass Players for Black Composers, Tenth Intervention, Johnny Gandelsman, T R O M P O, Gaudeamus Festival, PULSE String Quartet, and Ekmeles.

Born in Lubumbashi in 1972, Cedrik Fermont is an musician, composer, author and independent researcher of Belgian, Congolese and Greek descent based in Berlin. He studied declamation, theatre improvisation, and electroacoustic music in Belgium. Since 1989, he has been actively involved in the realms of noise, electronic, and experimental music as a composer, musician, mastering engineer, author, radio host, concert organiser, independent researcher, and label manager at Syrphe, a platform founded in 2002, mostly but not exclusively dedicated to electronic, experimental and free improvised music from Asia, Africa and Latin America as well as his compositions and projects. His extensive touring has taken him across Eurasia, Africa, and the Americas. Noteworthy collaborations include works with renowned artists such as Robyn Orlin, the Guangdong Modern Dance Company (GMDC), and Đào Anh Khánh. He has also ventured into the realm of audiovisual installations, partnering with Jia Jen Lin and Chun-Li Wang.

Soprano Nina Guo is interested in the sounds of recent and ongoing times, and her performance practice includes interpreting notated music, improvising, and collaborating on interdisciplinary projects. As a concert soloist, she has made appearances with the London Sinfonietta, ICTUS, Contrechamps, Ensemble Modern, Decoder, and others. She recently made her Symphony Hall debut, performing Aventures & Nouvelles Aventures (Ligeti). She specializes in experimental opera, working with groups such as Neuköllner Oper, Guerilla Opera, ECCE, and Opera Lab Berlin. Her upcoming projects include releasing a new recording of Morton Feldman’s Three Voices, and performing the music of experimental composers Robert Ashley and Jennifer Walshe. Nina hosts, writes, and performs a live radio show, The Entertainment, on Cashmere Radio (Berlin). The Entertainment is a comedy variety show presenting experimental and contemporary music.

daadgalerie
free admission

Photos: Eunice Maurice