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A special triple bill of FatCat artists, all of whom are opening up very different pathways through the new musical zone where post-classical, electronica, ambient and song meet.
Johann Johannsson was born in Iceland but currently lives in Copenhagen, Denmark. His first solo record - Englabörn - combined the influence of Baroque music, Erik Satie, Bernard Herrmann, Moondog and the electronic music of labels like Mille Plateaux and Mego, and it became a defining document of an emerging new sound. Subsequent releases likeVirthulegu Forsetar (for brass ensemble, pipe organ, electronic drones and percussion) and IBM 1401 - A User's Manual(2006) (for 60-piece string orchestra) expanded both his musical vision and his influence. His most recent record The Miners' Hymns was a collaboration with the film-maker Bill Morrison, originally commissioned by the Brass Durham International Festival. For this show, Johann will perform with film projections and a string ensemble.
Hauschka is the alias of German pianist / composer Volker Bertelmann, who currently resides in Dusseldorf. He studied classical piano for ten years, but his work as Hauschka is based upon a playful exploration of the possibilities of the 'prepared' piano - a playfully disruptive intervention into the preconceived idea of the piano as a pure-toned, perfected instrument waiting for a gifted virtuoso to play on it. With the aid of his interventions, the piano becomes as much a machine for generating rhythms as it does for melody. His pieces are small rhythmic sound-vignettes inspired by East Asian harmonies, the minimalism of Reich, Glass and Nyman, and also by in Satie and Ravel. He is joined for this performance by Samuli Kosminen of Mum, which whom he toured successfully in 2011.
Dustin O'Halloran - born in Los Angeles but based in Berlin - is a pianist and composer of languid and contemplative melodies. A pair of solo piano recordings (made in 2005 and 2006) opened up a route away from Devics (the band he formed with Sarah Lov back in the 1990s) and towards a new voice. Since then, he has written soundtracks for Sofia Coppola and William Olsen and explored ever more expansive arrangements, bringing sighing strings, wistful harps and warm woodwind to recent records like Lumiere and Vorleben (both 2011).
Though having debuted the combination of all three artists at a packed, bar-setting performance in Reykjavik's oldest wooden church Frikirkjan for 2011's Iceland Airwaves festival, the Transcendentalists tour will mark the first time Dustin O'Halloran, Jóhann Jóhannsson and Hauschka have hit the road together. A set of artists connected not only by complementary approaches to composition and performance (or, incidentally, by sharing a label), but also by the philosophical ideals found in Transcendentalism: a sense of self-reliance in their respective dual roles as composer and performer, and a rejection of the rigidity of convention and institution, leaving purity, individualism, intuition, invention and community.
130701 Records
Formed on July 13 2001 (hence the superficially cryptic name),FatCat's 130701 imprint was initially intended as a home for Montreal's Set Fire To Flames and their non-traditionalist, drone / field recording-laced take on classical instrumentation and 'post-classical' compositions.
Since those first releases, via critically acclaimed albums from Parisian minimalist composer Sylvain Chauveau and the much-celebrated Max Richter, 130701 has come to represent a fine stable of some of the most recognisable names in the field. The imprint has, more recently, delivered records from the three artists undertaking the Transcendentalists tour:Hauschka's jaw-dropping classical / techno crossover Salon des Amateurs, a wholly unique and original take on dance music, written for prepared piano, orchestral instruments and drumkit; the elegant and hushed beauty of Dustin O'Halloran's studio LP for piano, electronics and strings entitled Lumiere,and Vorleben, a follow-up live album for solo piano; andJóhann Jóhannsson's The Miners' Hymns, released in May 2011 - the powerful soundtrack to Bill Morrison's found-footage documentary on the mining communities of Northeast England and their tragic end, recorded live in the Durham Cathedral (a focal point of the film) by a 16-piece brass ensemble.
johannjohannsson.com
dustinohalloran.com
hauschka-net.deShow 8pm
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Sunday 20th May
The Sugar Club, Dublin
Tickets 20 Euro including booking fee from tickets.ie and ticketmaster.ie or 0818 719 300 (Ticketmaster), telephone and internet bookings subject to a maximum 12.5% service charge, agents €2.
