26/08/2021 – 15:00
De Studio
For the first edition of the two day Summer Bummer Festival with an audience since 2019 we return once again to the fantastic premises of DE Studio. Besides the diverse and adventurous festival programme – presented by Guy Peters (Enola, JazzLab) – there’s a free of entrance area on both days with a record fair, an expo, films and a food stand with delicious homemade slow food. Until September Covid Safe Tickets are only for outdoor events with more than 1500 visitors so do NOT apply for indoor events like Summer Bummer. Indoor events like before have to follow the pandemic rules: distance, bubbles and mouth masks.
Scroll down to check the programme of day 2, for day 1 click here !
The last couple of years piano player Seppe Gebruers concentrates on playing two piano’s tuned with just a quarter note difference allowing him to improvise on an innovating microtonal level – listen to The Room: Time & Space in trio with drummer Paul Lovens and bass player Hugo Antunes. But Gebruers takes his quarter tone piano’s to another level by looking for interaction with the jazz heritage with bass player Nils Vermeulen and, for this occasion, drummer and improvised music pioneer Paul Lytton. Jazz standards get dissected on a microtonal level, familiar melodies fade and divert and are re-introduced in a bigger story. This new abstraction proofs to be a very welcome and fresh approach of the jazz idiom and the so called ‘free’ improvised music. Gebruers, Vermeulen and Lytton rather play with the pieces of music than just play them, hence the very appropriate name Playing with Standards Trio.
Though roots in Greece (Sofia Kakouri), France (Audrey Lauro) and Cuba (Lázara Rosell Albear) it’s their Brussels residence and a common interest in adventurous music, performance and art that binds these three gifted artists, highlighted by their participation in The Art Ensemble of Brussels where Lauro (altsax), Kakouri (performance, pocket trumpet) and Albear (drums, pocket trumpet) are united with Pierre Michel Zaleski, Jan Pillaert, Guillaume Maupin, Peter Jacquemyn, Irina Lavrinovic, Marijs Boulogne, Jan Dekeyser and Johan Vandermaelen. For Summer Bummer Lauro, Kakouri and Albear now create a resonant, sensitive and poetic sound space continuously crossing the line between performative arts and improvised music.
Sitka (Ben Van Houdt) released two tapes on Taping Policies, Tape Cuts I and II. Van Houdt will start out solo as Sitka and will be joined by Jef Mertens to finish the set as a new duo both playing guitar and/or Korg.
Drummer, composer Frank Rosaly’s Ruidoscuro. is profound research into his native Puerto Rican, central and south American roots in concert with his rich background as an improviser, composer and jazz musician. The resulting music illustrates complex metaphors of pre-Columbus indigenous musical languages and their integration into the developing musical diaspora from Africa to The Andes. Using electronics alongside acoustic, and employing strict sequential patterns against free improvisation to inhabit ritualistic musical movement, the music tells a dark, haunting narrative in a richly layered context of spinning polyrhythms, bi-tonal melodic material and pivoting harmonic structures. Rosaly explicitely wrote the material of Ruidoscuro. for the combination of Andy Moor (guitar), Joachim Badenhorst (bass clarinet, tenor sax), Marta Warelis (piano, synthesizers), Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti (electronics, voice, synthesizers), Ingebrigt Haker Flaten (bass, electronics) acclaimed international talent with an unclassifiable approach to sound and improvisation and the ability to be at once featured and indistinguishable.
In 2019 Terrie Hessels (The Ex, Lean Left), Paal Nilssen-Love (Large Unit), Hanne De Backer (g a b b r o) and Signe Emmeluth (Emmeluth’s Amoeba) crossed paths in Antwerp on many occasions. At the Summer Bummer Festival in 2019 De Backer and Nilssen-Love played a frantic duo concert, Emmeluth floored the audience with her hard hitting Amoeba quartet and De Backer and Emmeluth joined Angel Bat Dawid for what turned out to be one of the best performances of the festival. Shortly after that both musicians where invited to join Nilssen-Love’s Large Unit on their European tour. At the first Visitations event Hessels was a very attentive spectator during the Marker residence with Farida Amadou, Stan Maris, Audrey Lauro and De Backer. Again De Backer made her mark and got an invitation tot join the festive tour of The Ex celebrating their 40th birthday in 2019. Hessels and Nilssen-Love at their turn forged many exciting collaborations over the years so the new band Mudskipper seemed bound to happen. Their first appearance in the Oorstof series in February 2020 already proved a serious sonic slap around the ears, so more than time for the big stage at Summer Bummer … Due to the slow vaccination programme in Norway Paal Nilssen-Love can not make it to Belgium. De Backer, Emmeluth and Hessels therefore invited the Belgian, Brooklyn resident, drummer Raf Vertessen to complete this unique quartet !
In order to enhance his sonic possibilities even further Yves De Mey teamed up with cello player Gino Coomans (Sheldon Siegel) and drummer/percussionist Louis Evrard (Ottla) for a unique live performance at the Summer Bummer Festival 2019. On their next move the same trio – dubbed Grid Ravage in the meantime – amazed with some scorching live shows at Het Bos and AB during The Sound of The Belgian Underground. In the fall of 2020 they recorded the Grid Ravage debut album at Trix Studio, scheduled for release on Dropa Disc this fall. At the Summer Bummer Rebound Festival, while still at work in the Trix Studio they already gave us a glimps of their new material and now set out to draw you further in their captivating sonic universe.
The Summer Bummer Festival presents 3 films by Bob Burnett and Alan F. Jones on the highly influential sound manipulator and improvisor Keith Rowe. Film #1 Sandy Ewen: Keith Rowe’s Influence and Guitar Improvisation, Film #2 Oren Ambarchi: Keith Rowe and the Belgian première of Film #3 What Is Man and What Is Guitar? Keith Rowe. In order to allow as many people as possible to see this short film series, the 35 minute film programme will run in loop throughout the duration of the festival at the cinema of the free of entrance area at De Studio.
“I have come to realize that Keith Rowe is one of the most profound painters we have among us these days. It just so happens that his medium is sound rather than the canvas.” Steve Smith – Senior Editor, Arts (NPR)
Keith Rowe has spent a lifetime delving into the relationship between sound and physical objects through what he loosely describes as the guitar. What Is Man And What Is Guitar? Keith Rowe is a short film that explores the thinking of Keith Rowe and functions as a unique evaluation of agency from an influential artist who happens to be an aging person in the world. The film documents passages of Rowe’s ongoing journey, from playing jazz through early years of poverty in Britain, to exploring the unexplored with the ensemble AMM, to his groundbreaking solo, duo and ensemble work from beneath the small umbrella of fringe music. Across six decades, Rowe’s body of work has functioned as a signal for the parameters, signposts, and permissions for the unorthodox in improvised music.
Bob Burnett has received more than 150 film festival and industry awards for his past work as Creative Director for GVI and as an independent producer/director. His short films, The Art of Richard Thompson and Edward Hopper & Marshall’s House screened in film festivals worldwide. His 2020 film The City Behind Us: The Story of the Elmora Troopers screened in film festivals and appears on MLB.com. It won an EMMY from the National Capitol Chesapeake Bay Chapter.
Alan F. Jonesis a professional musician and mastering engineer. He has spent collective years underwater analyzing, studying and monitoring the acoustic environment of the world’s oceans. He has engineered audio and advised for numerous regional and international musicians and performing ensembles as Chief Mastering Engineer at Laminal Audio, in addition to sound design and post audio for film. He also runs the Marginal Frequency performance series and record label of the same name.
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