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Li-Ping Ting, dance, voice, performance [Taiwan]
Michel Doneda, soprano saxophone [F]
David Chiesa, bass [F]
not in the picture: Christophe Cardoen, light installation [F]
Photos: © Agata Majcherowicz
The four artists involved have already collaborated on various projects and are artistically well acquainted with one another.
What unites them is a poetic engagement with space and time – a place where sound, light, and movement meet and unfold in their own individuality, guided only by intense listening.
In each of us, this activates the vortex of our perceptions – that raw animality in which our reptilian brain experiences its first sensations. A glimpse of SIGHTINGS can be found on YouTube (live at Petersburg Art Space 22/11/2018, filmed by Oleg Tailakov).
While Michel Doneda and David Chiesa have previously appeared as guests of Offene Ohren e.V. – Michel Doneda most recently in April 2021 with Natacha Muslera, and David Chiesa in February 2016 in a duo with Sophie Agnel – we now welcome Li-Ping Ting and Christophe Cardoen to MUG for the first time.
Li-Ping Ting (dance) is an interdisciplinary artist born in Taiwan. Her artistic work is based on an exchange with the people on-site and revolves around themes such as interpersonal relationships, the questioning of the body, and the transformation of the mind. Her stay in Europe is supported by the National Culture and Arts Foundation (NCAF) Taiwan.
Michel Doneda(soprano saxophone) has developed one of the most multifaceted musical vocabularies in free improvisation. His music, marked by the highest level of instrumental expressiveness, is the pure manifestation of his being.
David Chiesa (double bass) has been a prominent figure in the international improvisation scene for decades. His work as an improviser is in close dialogue with other art forms such as dance, poetry, experimental film, light art, visual arts, and theater.
Christophe Cardoen (light installation) is a self-taught artist who has been creating machines and installations for over twenty years. His works emerge in a wide variety of locations: in theaters, squatted houses, galleries, museums, schools, abandoned buildings, gardens, or basements – always operating in the dynamic interplay of light, space, and perception.
Location: MUG – Munich Underground at Einstein Kultur
Entrance fee: 15 Euro, members of Offene Ohren e.V. 12 Euro, free admission up to 21 years (inclusive)
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Florian Stoffner, guitar [CH]
John Butcher, soprano / tenor saxophone [GB]
Chris Corsano, drums [USA]
Photo: © H. Schneider [Nickelsdorf 2024]
This trio is more than capable of lifting off the stage roof — if they so desired. But each of the three also had always an inherent instinct for subtlety, for the overtones that emerge at the moment of attack, and for the spaces between the notes.
The Austrian magazine freiStil [#115 Sept/Oct 2024, translated] writes about their trio concert at the Nickelsdorf Konfrontationen 2024: „(Butcher), the great stylist among saxophonists, conjures up sound figures of extraordinary beauty, usually at a lowered tempo, both on the soprano and tenor saxophone. Corsano – as always – drums with sovereign ease, and Stoffner consistently impresses with original guitar interventions. A masterclass in poetry and beautifully controlled microtonal mechanics."
John Butcher is a master of subtle overtones and seemingly random resonance oscillations – which, of course, he controls with precision. These vibrations surround the notes and return from the walls and the audience.
Chris Corsano's rhythms – especially, and even more so when he plays freely – are like spiderwebs on a misty morning.
Flo Stoffner possesses the same precision of touch and the same keen sense for absolute detail. The guitar has long been the instrument of choice for those who, with a few simple chords and strumming, could feign expertise. But it is also an instrument of extraordinary refinement, loaded with secret sounds: sighs, music box-like tinkling, or the theatricality of powerful chords.
„Quiet is the new loud“ – this evening promises music for concentrated listening and the musicians’ readiness for a collective musical tightrope walk – a wonderful challenge!
This concert is made possible also by the Federal Culture Prize Applaus, which Offene Ohren e.V. was awarded in autumn 2024.
Location: MUG – Munich Underground at Einstein Kultur
Entrance fee: 15 Euro, members of Offene Ohren e.V. 12 Euro, free admission up to 21 years (inclusive)
Audrey Lauro, alto saxophone [B]
Éric Normand, e-bass [CND]
Xavier Charles, clarinet [F]
Photo: www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4iar6Sec2s [Concert Les Bourd'off/51, April 2024, aboard L'Armande ASBL, Liège (Belgium)]
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Peter Orins, drums [F]
Photo: © Michel Laborde
Limules, or horseshoe crabs, have lived almost unchanged on Earth since the Mesozoic era – for approximately 250 million years – likely thanks to their already highly optimised morphology. Their blue blood coagulates immediately upon contact with harmful bacteria.
Éric Normand, a chamber-punk-jazz musician from northeastern Canada, has named his new ensemble of Belgian and French improvisers after this ancient arachnid – inspired by its parallels to the world's oldest musical form, improvisation. Like the Limules, improvisation has demonstrated remarkable stability over millennia, yet remains constantly under latent threat posed by current social developments.
The line-up of Limules varies: around the core collaboration between Belgian saxophonist Audrey Lauro and French clarinettist Xavier Charles, pianists such as Sophie Agnel or Barbara Dang are occasionally featured. Our concert at the MUG will be completed by French percussionist Peter Orins.
This concert is made possible also by the Federal Culture Prize Applaus, which Offene Ohren e.V. was awarded in autumn 2024.
Location: MUG – Munich Underground at Einstein Kultur
Entrance fee: 15 Euro, members of Offene Ohren e.V. 12 Euro, free admission up to 21 years (inclusive)
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Casey Moir, voice [AUS/S]
Elisabeth Coudoux, cello [D]
The music of this duo reveals the purity of both voice and cello, presenting a rich intuition that transcends the boundaries of predefined structures. It is a fusion of professional craftsmanship and an intimate familiarity with their respective instruments. Textures and tensions emerge, contrasts dissolve, subtleties unfold, and surprising twists are ever-present.
Casey Moir (b. 1984) is a vocalist, improviser and composer of experimental music, born in Australia and now based in Stockholm, Sweden.
Her artistic practice focuses on exploring the extended possibilities of the voice. She enjoys testing and pushing conventional boundaries, investigating how vowels and consonants can be shaped, distorted and manipulated, and how sounds can be created and sculpted using the tongue, lips, glottis and hands.
She combines these somewhat unconventional aspects with other musical elements such as form, direction, overall shape, structure and movement. She is also deeply interested in the concept of space and room, and how these dimensions can be explored through performance, improvisation and composition. This interest has led her to compose larger-scale works that utilise the entire room as a stage, where musicians and/or audience members are ambulatory, altering their directions, trajectories and proximities to objects, sounds and one another.
Elisabeth Coudoux (b. 1985) is a German cellist working at the crossroads of different musical genres: free improvisation, experimental music, new contemporary music and jazz. Building on her classical training, she graduated with a degree in jazz under Frank Gratkowski and Professor Dieter Manderscheid at the Cologne University of Music and Dance.
Alongside her own projects – such as Emißatett, for which she also composes and which was featured on the Offene Ohren e.V. concert stage in November 2016 – she is a member of numerous ensembles and participates in interdisciplinary projects with dancers, visual artists, poets and performers. Elisabeth Coudoux is also a member of IMPAKT, a collective for free improvisation based in Cologne.
Location: MUG – Munich Underground at Einstein Kultur
Entrance fee: 15 Euro, members of Offene Ohren e.V. 12 Euro, free admission up to 21 years (inclusive)
The friends of improvised music of the Offene Ohren e.V. would like to thank the Kulturreferat München for its continuous help allowing to present improvised music in Munich.