Bass Clarinet, Soprano saxophone, Mixers- Saxophone feedback, Sruti Box
hipereter@yahoo.com
"[...] The subject is not in those hands that strangle; it's somewhere else, in those currents flowing. At this moment, objects are — and this is quite odd — much more important than characters. That terrace up there, this wall, this black, the sound of a train are more important than what is happening. Objects and noises are then, in a mystical sense if you want, in intimate communion with man, and it's much more serious, much more important than hands strangling a sentinel."
Robert Bresson. Cahiers du Cinéma, no. 75, October 1957
“Lo que nos ocupa es esa abuela, la conciencia que regula el mundo”
Luis Alberto Spinetta- 1974
Musician born in Argentina based in Berlin since 2004. He plays bass clarinet, soprano saxophone, and Sruti Box.
He plays mainly self composed and improvised music, focusing in the time experience and the perception experience as main subjects.
He works time in the research of constructing no narrative music (no start- no ending- no developments), and perception working sound in it’s most granular characteristics and it´s extremes.
Capece finished academic studies as a classical guitar player and studied the John Coltrane´s approach to saxophone playing, and classical and contemporary music in the bass clarinet, in Argentina. ( Carlos Lastra, Martin Moore, Quique Sinesi, Gustavo Alsberg were some of his teachers)
He played in Argentina for more than 10 years with the ensemble Avion Negro, relating composition and improvisation. He was part of the group as a performer and composer.
He studied his instruments also in Lyon, France in 1997 with Louis Sclavis and stayed for 9 months in New York in 2000, meeting several musicians related to improvisation and new music, and the ides of Julius Hemphill and Anthony Braxton ( Tim Berne, Hank Roberts, Marilyn Crispell, Gerry Hemingway, Jim Black, Gene Coleman)
He moved to Europe in 2002 establishing himself in Berlin in 2004. Since then he has been active in the improvised music scene, playing in Europe and Argentina. Releasing also several Cd´s.
In terms of instrumental playing Capece uses his own extensions and preparations. He prepares his saxophone with everyday objects (ping pong balls, water, different kinds of paper, tubes, pieces of metal, plastic bottles, bows, etc) as well as a raw feedback set where the saxophone is amplified and combined with mixers.
In the Bass Clarinet he uses mainly self created specific extended techniques, as well as a set of cardboard tubes,bows, and different kind of vibrating surfaces. His instruments are somehow “corrupted” by everyday objects, found objects. The idea is not only to create interesting sounds with them but to research in the creative possibilities that everyday life provides. To consider the spaces where we live as main performers of the music.
The Sruti Box is a beautiful small Indian organ. He uses it searching in the hidden reactions of permanent sounding pitched sounds.
The different set of instruments fascinates him in terms of finding “noises” in the pitched combinations, and the pitched sounds hidden in “noises”, in the so called “concrete” material. Creating then simple polyphonies combining concrete and pitched sounds.
He considers everyday sounds as a main influence, as well as artists from other disciplines, like Robert Bresson and László Moholy- Nagy.
Capece directed in 2007 a sound- Lights- acusmatic project at the Bauhaus Archive, in Berlin, performing with the “Light-Space Modulator”, the legendary kinetic sculpture built by László Moholy- Nagy in 1922-1930.
He plays mainly in the context of long term working groups.
Capece shares projects with Mika Vainio, Radu Malfatti, Christian Kesten, Toshimaru Nakamura, Axel Dorner, Kevin Drumm, Robin Hayward, Rhodri Davies, Burkhard Beins, Vladislav Delay, Lorenzo Brusci, Mattin, Julia Eckhardt, Sergio Merce, Werner Dafeldecker, releasing Cd’s with several of them.
He played and shared several projects with several lovely improvisers, and was part of projects, as a performer, with Phill Niblock, Christian Wolff and Pauline Oliveros, with the Q-O2 Ensemble.
Capece worked with the dancer Ayara Hernandez (composing music for her solo piece “Blurry”).
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current projects
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Mika Vainio- Lucio Capece duo.
The Argentinian Lucio Capece (AR, 1968), who currently resides in Berlin, plays soprano saxophone, bass clarinet and a no-input mixer, which he uses to manipulate feedback with. His work draws inspiration from the visual arts and cinema and always arises in an improvisational context, focusing mainly on the experience of time and perception.
Recently he started a new project with Mika Vainio (FI, 1963), best known as one half of Pan Sonic. Both in this project and in his solo work, published under his own name or pseudonyms like Ø or Teknovil, influences from techno, industrial and minimalism converge in an analogous twilight zone, an organic sound universe submerged in anxious spheres and thrifty pulses.
Vainio and Capece first work comes out in march 2009, released by the prestigious label Mego.
They played as a duo at Argos Festival in October 2007.
http://www.argosarts.org/articles.do?id=382
They have been working together with Kevin Drumm and Axel Dörner as a quartet ( residency and tour in may 2008) and with Vladislav Delay ( quartet with Derek Shirley, live at All My Favourite Things Festival, Berlin, april 2008).
Photo: Argos Festival
http://argos.xio.be/blog/?cat=4
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Christian Kesten (voice)- Lucio Capece duo.
Christian Kesten is a unique performer, singer and conceptual composer.
His background comes from working in Music Theater with Dieter Schenebel for 10 years, working as a member of the performance collective Die Maulwerker among several other rich experiences.
Kesten work is clearly not related to the improvised music singing language, what makes his approach to the voice unique in the improvisational context. His sounds touch the sounds of the city, internal sounds almost impossible to hear, alternating with pure melody in a bright and delicious color. This together with a strong presence on stage based in a work with the body and it´s presence as an instrument. Kesten uses words, a few objects that take the concert situation slightly outside, going out and coming back to the music .
Kesten and Capece met several times, playing concerts in Berlin.
A video recording of a concert at legendary Labor Sonor is available as a DVD. The duo has worked in a larger group together with Radu Malfatti, Julia Eckhardt, Taku Sugimoto and Toshimaru Nakamura in may 2007 at Vooruit, Gent, Belgium. Material to be released in July 2008 at Cathnor Records label from England.
www.christiankesten.de
-Video documenattion of a live performance at Labor Sonor, Berlin, in 2006, can be seen here;
http://searchservice.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=sitesearch.results&type=MySpaceTV&qry=Lucio+Capece-+Christian+Kesten+&submit=Suche
-A DVD video documentation of a concert offered at Kulturfabrik, Berlin, in august 2008, can be sent under request.
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EXTENDED MODULTOR PROJECT
Premiered at Bauhaus Archive, Berlin. 24th of october 2007
Lucio Capece ( Soprano saxophone, Bass clarinet, Composition, Project)
Axel Dörner (Trumpet, Composition)
Robin Hayward (Tuba, Composition)
Ana Maria Rodriguez (Sound Difussion)
Michael Vorfeld ( Lights installation and Performance)
Steffi Weismann (Camera, Video edition, Projection)
"Licht- Raum Modulator"- (1922- 1930) László Moholy- Nagy.
László Moholy- Nagy built the “Light- Space Modulator” between 1922 and 1930, assisted by a team consisting of an architect and a mechanic, with additional support from the German electrical company AEG .
It is a mechanic asssemblage, made up of an electrical structure of synthetic material and metal grills, together with mirrors and lamps. Three articulated movements take place simultaneously in three sectors of the kinetic sculpure.
The three sectors move at different velocities in a 2 minutes cycle, producing endless combinations each time the Modulator is turned on.
Moholy Nagy apparently built the “Light- Space Modulator” with the intention of using it
in the sixth part of his experimental film «‹Lichtspiel, schwarz-weiß-grau.”
The first five parts were supposed to show and work with different forms of light.
But only the sixth part was filmed , consisting of carefully composed combinations of lights, shadows, reflections, movement and filming techniques based on edited shots of the sculpture in action.
The kinetic sculpture , also called “ Light Prop for an electric stage” was therefore built for the sole purpose of this film. Over the years it has however become an imporant work of art in its own right, of primary influence as one of the great pioneering kinetic sculptures of the last century.
Moholy Nagy used the sculpture in different ways through the years, even planning to use it as part of an avant-garde theatrical performance.
This should come as no surprise bearing in mind his ideas about art :
“Art educates the receptive faculties and it revitalizes the creative abilities”
(“Vision in Motion” p. 28).
“ We must therefore replace the static principle of classical art with the dynamic principle of universal life, Stated practically: instead of static material construction (material and form relations), dynamic construction (vital constructivism and force relations) must evolve, in which the material is employed only as the carrier of forces”.
(“ Vision in Motion” p. 238)
It is not the intention of this project to make music “for” Moholy Nagy’s work, but to work with the creative potential of the object he created, adding the dimension of sound, using the possibilities offered by recent technologies, along with recent musical developments. This involves rethinking the approach towards sound performance, relating it to movement, light and the space through and together with the “Light Space Modulator”.
PROGRAM
1- Ein Lichtspiel Schwarz- Weiss- Grau” (7 Minutes)
Video Projection of ‘ Ein Lichtspiel Schwarz- Weiss- Grau’. 16 mm film created by László Moholy Nagy in 1932.
Acoustic Version with sound diffusion.
“ The film demonstrates the refined values of the black- white- gray gradations of the photogram (the camera less photography ) in continuous motion. At the same time it uses all possible means of the film technique such us superimpositions, at places seven times, prisms, mirroring and moving light. Through systematic use of light and shadow in motion it tries to conquer the peculiar dimension of the film, the dimension of space-time. The ‘Space Light Modulator’ kinetic sculpture is used as a subject’
(Laszlo Moholy Nagy “‘Vision in Motion’ p. 288)
Film Script by Láslo Moholy- Nagy (Vision in Motion p. 289)
The shadow of the rotating Light Prop
The superimposition of metal details with the shadows.; The
shadow revolving ,slowly the shadow of a ball surrounded by
strong light, moving up and down over the original shadow.
The light Prop turns; it is seen from above, below, frontwards,
backwards, in normal, accelerated, retarded, reversed motion.
Close-up of details-
A big black shinny ball rolls from left to right. From right to
left. Over again.
Positive, negative pictures, fades, prisms; dissolving.
Movements, queerly shifting grills.
“Drunken” screen, lattices.
Views through small openings; through automatically changing
diaphragms.
Distortion of reflections. Pendulum.
Blinding moving light flashes. Revolving spiral, reappearing,,
again and again. Rotation increases; all concrete shapes dissolve in light.
2- Kinetic Sound Sculpture (16 Minutes)
Artists perform together with the kinetic sculpture which also functions as a musical score.The musicians play their instruments choosing one or more elements from the sculpture, following its movements carefully. Pitched or non-pitched sounds (‘”noises’’) are played, depending on the characteristics of the chosen element.
Each musician choses elements from one of the three axes of the sculpture.
Specific extended instrumental techniques, created and developed by the musicians themselves, make it possible to follow one or several elements at the same time.
3- Ein Lichtspiel Schwarz- Weiss- Grau” (7 Minutes)
Video Projection of ‘ Ein Lichtspiel Schwarz- Weiss- Grau’. 16 mm film created by László Moholy Nagy in 1932.
Electronic version composed by Axel Dörner.
4- Colour-Pitch-Intensity-Time (20 Minutes)
“The “Light Prop” was exhibited at the exposition of the Werkbund in Paris in 1930.
It was driven by motor and equipped with 128 electric bulbs in different colors operated by a drum switch “
(László Moholy Nagy ‘’ Vision in Motion’’)
Colour-Pitch-Instensity-Time is a microtonal piece that uses the Moholy Nagy’s lighting instructions as a music score, relating light and sound to each other following precise and mathematical criteria.
A reduced creative version of the light installation designed by Moholy Nagy has been built by lights artist and musician Michael Vorfeld. This uses 13 bulbs ( 10 times less than the original version). The musicians play a 20 minutes sound version of the lights score created by Moholy-Nagy (10 times longer than the original version.)
The amount of bulbs specified by Moholy Nagy are used to determine levels of intensity, according to techniques reminscent of the total serialist composition school. (10 bulbs as a maximum, 1 bulb as a minimum)
Fades in and out, as well as intensities, are performed manually by the artist.
The sounds are pitched according to a special tuning, related to the colors used by Moholy Nagy in the sculpture’s installation. The spectral frequencies of the colours red, yellow, green and blue have been transposed down, bringing them in to the audible frequency range of 430 to 670 Htz. These frequencies are played on the 3 instruments in various octave transpositions. The “colour” white is represented through imitating white noise on the instruments.
PROJECT SUPPORTED BY INM
Thanks to Hattula Moholy- Nagy, INM, Conny Maiwald and Bauhaus Archive, especially to Mr Klaus Weber and Mrs Bärbel Mees.
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-SLW
Burkhard Beins: selected percussion and objects.
Lucio Capece: Bass clarinet, soprano saxophone, preparations.
Rhodri Davies: Harp, electro acoustic device.
Toshimaru Nakamura: No-input mixing board
After working together in different combinations, these four musicians met in October 2006 at Les Halles, Belgium and made a residence that included a recording session and a live concert with 8 speakers and 1 sub woofer. The audience was placed in the centre of the room, and a sound artist joined the group working in the spacialisation of the music.
The whole space should be considered as a swimmimng pool, a space where each part of it is covered by sound. Water gives an idea of permanence but at the same time of total contact. Invites to develop a music based in a particular perception experience, of not ending or starting time, and material in it´s most granular way, in the context of a non stop intensity perceived by our body as a whole.
First CD released on Formed Records. May 2008. Upcoming CD in september 2009.
Reviews below in the reviews section of this blog.
www.burkhardbeins.com
www.japanimprov.com/tnakamura/
www.rhodridavies.co.uk/
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Mika Vainio- Kevin Drumm- Axel Dörner- Lucio Capece Quartet.
Mika Vainio: Analog and digital electronic devices
Kevin Drumm: Analog and digital electronic devices.
Axel Dörner: Trumpet. Computer.
Lucio Capece: Soprano Saxophone, Bass Clarinet, Preparations.
The idea of this project is to allow musicians from different scenes but with common ideas to work together.
It can be seen quite often musicians from different languages being put together, trying to push the artists to develop unexpected works.
Vainio, Drumm, Dörner and Capece have mainly strong points in common, that have being worked in different contexts. The music map is generally divided into categories that are determined by it’s most evident and often banal elements : if it has beats or not, if it is quite or loud, if is has raw material or carefully worked one.
This four musicians have been working using all the previous elements. But this elements did not determine the music, they were used at the service of deeper ideas related to time and perception. How the sound of our environment can become music, how can music be attractive without telling a story, the work of sound in it’s extremes: noise, granular and delicate, digital, electronic, instrumental extended techniques, preparations.
Kevin Drumm and Axel Dörner started working together in the late 90’s as part of a trio with Paul Lovens. As a duo they released an influential album on Erstwhile Records.
Vainio and Drumm met in 2005 in Australia, both as part of the touring festival What is Music?.
Capece has released a duo CD at L’Innomable label with Axel Dörner and a trio one with Dörner and tubist Robin Hayward on Azul Discográfica label from New York. Dörner and Capece worked in several projects together, including a residence with Keith Rowe working on “ Treatise” by Cornelius Cardew.
Mika Vainio and Lucio Capece have finished recording and mixing a duo album. They have been working on it since 2006.
This quartet is a possibility to go beyond the personal language histories in an attempt to put in touch and develop new ways of genuine expression.
Residency and tour 3rd- 14th may 2008. Photo Gent- 8th may 2008
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Toshimaru Nakamura- Lucio Capece Duo
Toshimaru Nakamura: No-input mixing board.
Lucio Capece. Bass Clarinet- Soprano saxophone.
Toshimaru Nakamura is unique in using a mixing console as a live, interactive musical instrument. He plays the 'no-input mixing board', connecting the input of the board to the output, then manipulating the resultant audio feedback.
Nakamura and Capece played together as a duo in Berlin and in Amsterdam, and as a part of Sound Like Water in Brussels. They made together a recording at Steim Studios released by the label Formed Records, under the name of "IJ".
www.japanimprov.com/tnakamura
Photo DNK Amsterdam.
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-Sergio Merce- Lucio Capece duo.
Sergio Merce: portastudio ‘s prepared head
Lucio Capece: bass clarinet, soprano saxophone.Shruti box, effects.
Merce and Capece have been playing music together for more than ten years in Argentina.
In the Avion Negro quintet and the Hipereter quartet (two drums and two reeds) they have been sharing are search movement from the interaction between composition and improvisation from a post free jazz language towards the free improvisation and the composition based in the physic characteristics of sound.
Sergio Merce has created his own electronic instrumental set, starting from elements not prepared originally for this. He plays a portastudio without tape.Touching the head of the portastudio with different kind of objects as needles, cutters, etc. he produces sounds that he processes with a very simple effects and equalization set.
Lucio Capece and Sergio Merce think that electronics in music but also in everyday life have changed our perception capacity and our idea of sound, giving us a new space for sound elaboration , in the electronic instruments,in the self created instruments, and maybe even more in the traditional acoustic instruments.
This new interaction space and it exciting conditions for real time playing are the point of departure for this two musicians creative meeting.
www.mercecapece.8k.com
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Vladislav Delay Quartet
The Vladislav Delay Quartet includes Mika Vainio on electronics, Derek Shirley on double bass, Lucio Capece on saxophones & bass clarinet and Vladislav Delay on drums. It is one of Vladislav Delays’ latest group performances with him on drums.
The debut performance by ‘The Vladislav Delay Quartet’ happened on April the 11th 2008 as part of the 2008 ‘My Favourite Thing’ Festival at Radialsystem, Berlin. The event has been curated by Hanno Leichtmann (Static, Vulva String Quartet tec.).
The group played in Poznan, Prague, Belgrade in october and november 2009, recording it´s first album at the Radio Belgrade Studios, in Serbia.
Dis-Patch festival. Belgrade-. 7th November 2007. Photo courtesy Dis-Patch, Residentadvisory.
http://www.vladislavdelay.com/
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Lorenzo Brusci. Lucio Capece
Lucio Capece: soprano saxophone, bass clarinet, preparations, Sruti Box. Objects.
Lorenzo Brusci: Self designed speakers- Sound difussion .
Brusci and Capece met by the first time in 1990 in Montevarchi, Toscana, Italy. They have been sharing and enjoying friendship and sound since then.
Installed nowadays in Berlin, Germany, Capece and Brusci work together in a project that sees Capece playing a solo set with prepared curved soprano saxophone, bass clarinet and Sruti Box, that is diffused by Lorenzo Brusci in his unique self made speakers set, placed in unusual and unexpected sectors of the performance space. The speakers qualities ( made in materials like Terracotta, acrylic, porcelain, etc) allow to give different degrees of direction to the sound, as well as filter the material, aspects that are worked with particular acknowledge by Brusci.
They can be placed hanging from the ceiling or hidden behind a bar, as well as inside or behind any possible object of the room, or even under earth when the conditions allow the idea ( for example in open air gardens). The interest is focused in creating different sound areas in the performance space, giving privilege to certain frequencies and materials or not, according to decisions taken paying special attention to the particular characteristics of the place.
http://www.soundexperiencedesign.com
http://www.giardinosonoro.com/
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-NMM . (No More Music- at the Service of Capital).
www.mattin.org/NMM.html
Mattin-Lucio Capece
Mattin: computer feedback
Lucio Capece: mixer saxophone feedback
-CDr released on Why not? Editions: No More Music at the service of capital. Live Recording in Berlin. (http://www.geocities.com/whynotltd/)
Re-released (August 2006) No Seso (Argentina)
-CD released in october 2006.Colaboration between three labels. Ideal Recordings (Sweden), 8mm (Italy), Absurd (Greece). Edited and recomposed material taken from concerts in Oslo, Strasbourg and Brussels.
www.idealrecordings.com
www.8mmrecs.com
www.dualplover.com
Info about Mattin:www.mattin.org
www.mattin.org/nmm.html
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-Amber.
Rhodri Davies( harp)
Julia Eckhardt ( viola)
Robin Hayward (tuba)
Lucio Capece ( Bass Clarinet, soprano saxophone).
There is in the improvised music scene a strong debate around new tendencies (so called, in a reduced way “reductionism”). About what happened “before” and “during” and may come “after” the appearance of this approach , that works giving special attention to silence, and specific ideas about the material and the energy . The debate wanders what can be the way, not to be fixed in an already established language an esthetic , but not be taken by tendencies, developing music in a creative way. Giving something and at the same time not being depending on giving the “new thing” without a real content.
The music of this quartet, called “Amber”, expresses that color between red and green in a red light. This debate. This questions.
The music of this group is not in the middle of something. Intends to be this moment. A present enjoyed by the richness of a powerful established idea and the wish and need of alive sounds and new explorations.
A CD has been released on the label Creative Sources (Portugal).
Information about the cd and the label at:
http://www.creativesourcesrec.com/catalog/catalog_031.html
Reviews on this cd at:
http://www.creativesourcesrec.com/reviews/reviews_031.html
http://www.bagatellen.com/archives/features/000915.html
Davies: www.rhodridavies.co.uk
Hayward: www.robinhayward.de
Eckhardt: http://q-o2.vgc.be/db/index.asp
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Solo.
Im currently playing the piece "Marfa" (Info rolling up in the News section).
Information about previous solo sets and the noise set.
Prepared curved soprano saxophone, mixers-saxophone feedback, preapared bass clarinet, Sruti Box solos.
- Prepared Curved soprano saxophone acoustic solo set.
The soprano solo set is based in the characteristics of the curved soprano saxophone that allows to put objects in its bell. With an special technique that keeps one of the hands free and permanent air production through circular breathing technique Capece creates a sort of middle pitch long sounds that evolve in different directions, building with different layers of noises a sort of noises/notes simple polyphonic music. These long sounds are cut with silences that are fundamental in the process of perception of music, allowing at the same time the change of preparations and modifying the instrument.
Objects like ping pong balls, pieces of plastic bottles, stuff, water, violin small bow and others are used as preparations.
-Mixers- Saxophone feedback
The mixers are settled in feedback connecting inputs to outputs .These feedbacks are modified by another feedback produced by two small microphones introduced into the bell of the saxophone. The microphones feedback is modified changing the fingering in the saxophone ,but not blowing, modifying parameters in the mixer, and by the sound waves in the space going inside the instruments through all it openings.
The sound waves taken by the microphone inside the saxophone modify the feedback produced by the microphone itself, and this one the feedback produced by the mixer generating new sounds that once in the air continue de feedback cycle. Two additional volume pedals , one self made mini speaker and a small violin bow are additional parts of the set.
The result is a raw texture of noise mixed with pitches created in the saxophone. The music evolves slowly with abrupt interruptions that cut the narrative .
All the sounds and the modifications are played in real time, there are no recordings or effects.
- Prepared Bass Clarinet solo set.
The work with the bass clarinet is mainly based in the idea of simultaneity. Simultaneity of simple elements, carefully choosen. Low frequencies, harmonics, multiphonics, vibrating objects. Several cardboard tubes of different dimensions are added to the instrument, allowing to go to sub low frequencies, several vibrating objects are placed on the tubes producing different kinds of reactions, specially in the are of harmonics, combined with the sub low frequencies. A violin Bow produces harmonics in some metal objects placed on the cardboard tubes.
- Sruti Box solo set.
The Sruti Box is a beautiful Indian instrument , similar to an Harmonium, but smaller and without keyboard. As simple as it looks the instrument can provide immense results in the area of harmonics. I try to develop this aspect helped by an electronic filter and an analog eq.
Is static music, based in flexible pitched sounds, expressive and lightfull.
Video DVD showing solo concerts in Berlin and Buenos Aires available.
I have played solo sets in Berlin (Ausland, Joint Ventures, Kule, Club Der Polnischer Versager), Happy New Ears Festival (Belgium), Netwerk (Aalst, Belgium), No Spaghetti Festival (From Norway in Buenos Aires), Minton´s CD store in Buenos Aires, Raum (Bologna), Malacarne (Verona). Metz, France (sharing a solos evening with Franz Hautzinger, Erik M, Arnaud Riviere, and others), Festival NPAI Parthenay, France, El Umbral Art Center in Merlo, Argentina, etc
Gent- May 2008.
