Biography
photo by Nikolaus Neuser
Joshua Weitzel
" Somewhere in-between John Cage, Helmut Lachenmann and British guitarist Derek Bailey (Georg Pepl, HNA 2016)" Joshua Weitzel is a musician and curator, born in 1989.
As a guitarist and shamisen player he is working predominantly in the field of experimental music (written and improvised), contemporary jazz, and the grey areas in-between. His music is mainly concerned with exploration of contrast, abstract harmony and dynamics and employs a wide array of extended playing techniques. He is founder of Contemporary Shamisen Duo together with shamisen Master Ryota Saito and Ensemble for Experimental Chamber Music Kassel/Interrogation Quartet, which debuted at the Tage Neuer Musik in Weimar festival in 2018. He has performed with many musicians from the contemporary experimental and improvised music scene, including Eddie Prévost, Yumiko Tanaka, Rudi Mahall, Ken Ikeda, Toshimaru Nakamura, Tetuzi Akiyama, Haco, Alfred 23 Harth, Robert Dick, Adachi Tomomi, Liping Ting and many more. He is a currently PhD student at the Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh, where he writes about sound in the context of the history of documenta-exhibitions. Joshua Weitzel is also very active as an organiser and curator of concerts, exhibitions and performances in Kassel. |
Antti Virtaranta
Antti Virtaranta is a Finnish bassist and composer. He began his music journey at 17 years old focusing on Jazz music, attending University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Quickly he was introduced to free jazz and experimental electronic music, and this changed everything. He moved to Berlin to join the vibrant scene of improvisers, starting projects with many musicians and developing his own sound. Currently he is focused on expressing his voice in music and sound through composition and improvisation. Using his influences from jazz and rock music and self-taught contemporary music, his musical language is formed. Nowadays, his focus is on concepts and compositions for solo bass and solo electronics, and using non-conventional notations. These ideas develop and are imposed into the small groups (duos and trios) and larger ensembles that he is involved with to create instant composition in his varying projects, which include collaborations with dancers and visual artists, on top of the numerous musicians he works with.
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Rieko Okuda
Rieko Okuda is a pianist and a composer from Japan. She began to play Classical music at the age of 3. In her young age, she attended to Kaizuka city Piano Competition in Osaka, and got the first prize. She also studied Music Therapy at Doshisha Women's College. Music Therapy led her into Contemporary music, Improvised music, and Jazz. After her study in the college, she moved to USA to study Jazz music. She fell right into the Jazz scene in USA, performing with some of the great American Jazz musicians (Bob Mintzer, Jon Faddis, John Fedchock etc) at several jazz festivals such as North Texas Jazz Festival, Nortredam Jazz Festival to name a few. A couple of years later, she got interested in Free Jazz and Improvised music while she was in Phliladelphia. She performed with the great improvisers includes Marshall Allen (from San Ra Orchestra), Elliott Levine (recorded with Cecil Taylor), and Calvin Weston (recorded with Ornette Coleman). Her interests in Improvised music led her to move to Berlin. She performs with various musicians in Berlin ex. Tobias Delius, Ignaz Schick, Axel Dörner, Els Vendaweyer, and Linda Frederickson, ect. Also, she collaborates with contemporary dancers such as Akemi Nagao, Jenny Ocampo, and Annapaola Leso (from Sasha Waltz.) She performs at several experimental festivals: A'Larme Festival, JOE Festival Essen, Brda Contemporary Music Festival, Sound Disobiedience, XChange Festival, Experymental Festival, Flux Festival, and Soundance Festival to name a few.
In 2017 and 2018, she got the residency in Elektronik Music Studio (EMS) in Stockholm, Sweden. This residency experiences inspired her to Electro-Acoustic field, and she started to invite the electronics to her piano solo pieces. Her first Electro-Acoustic solo album "Paranorm" was released from Japanese record lable, Athor Harmonics, on Feburary 2018. "Paranorm" was performed at Koncertkirken Blagards Plads (DK), Ausland (DE), FLUX Festival (DE), and Vardklockans Församling (SE). In 2020, she has be granted by Swedish Arts Grants Committee for the residency in Visby International Centere for Composers (VICC) to extend her experience, and find more possibilities to create various sounds and composition techniques. |