ONE-TWO-THREE-GO!
Concert #9
Sunday, February 3, 2002 at 4:30 PM===================================================================================
LUKAS LIGETI & MAÏ LINGANI + GUESTS:
Music for Voices and ElectronicsLukas Ligeti: Electronic Percussion, Computer
Maï Lingani: Vocals
Abdoulaye Diabaté: Electric Guitar, Vocals
Dafna Naphtali: Computer Processing, Vocals===================================================================================
1. Drama
2. Entrons dans la danse
3. Song 8
4. Zaida's Images
5. Zagala
6. Koulounkoura
7. Great Circle's Tune Part 1
8. Maleka
===================================================================================
The following are some notes about my electronic percussion music in general and on today's performance. I'm very happy to be able to expand my electronic repertoire to include collaborative pieces, and to work with Maï, Dafna, and Abdoulaye.
For some years now, I've been working on a way of playing drums based on choreographical patterns of movement. This method, derived from ideas in Amadinda xylophone music of the Kingdom of Buganda, long lost in what is now Uganda, enables me to play extremely complex polymetric structures that take a very long time until they repeat. Using my DrumKAT electronic percussion controller, I have almost no limits in expanding and developing this technique: soon, I was able to play a pattern that would run, as I have calculated, for 75000 years before the first repetition. Don't worry, I won't play this piece -- but I will play a segment of one that would take 33 years! I use a sampler as my main sound source, playing sonic snapshots that I've collected during my extensive travels in Africa and elsewhere. The influence of African musics, such as the aforementioned music of Buganda as well as Mandé music from West Africa and other traditions, is especially strong, but elements of Asian, European, and American traditions are also present. The sounds you will hear are not at all limited to percussive ones; melody is in fact one of my main concerns, and the music is metrically oriented although the grooves and meters can be very sTRANGE, seeming to collapse at any moment but still somehow managing to stay alive...or not.
Compositions are by Lukas Ligeti unless otherwise indicated.
DRAMA Using percussion and microtonal piano sounds only, this piece
walks the fine line between rhythmic simplicity and controlled chaos.ENTRONS DANS LA DANSE Composed by Maï Lingani and Sylvain Dando Paré and sung in the Bissa language, this is a fusion of disco music and Burkinabè traditions. I've arranged this piece for vocals and electronics; a full band version is on Maï's eponymously titled album.
SONG 8 An improvisation featuring violins, Egyptian voices, the walls of an office building in Austria, funeral music of Zimbabwe, and some guitars; the 33-year-long piece makes a brief appearance.
ZAIDA'S IMAGES Dafna processes sounds from me including wild drum
machines, disfigured jazz, music from Moçambique and startlingly similar music from Austria, and other unpredictable elements.ZAGALA An expanded version of my solo piece Great Circle's Tune Part 2 is combined with a mysterious song with vocals by Maï in the Moré language.
KOULOUNKOURA A West African standard, composed by Sekouba Bambino of Guinea, is played here with new lyrics by Abdoulaye Diabaté in Dioula.
GREAT CIRCLE'S TUNE PART 1 Even though this piece, consisting mainly of samples of myself playing instruments I can't play, such as the cello, is dizzyingly complex, it's also melodic - so much so that you will whistle it on your way home.
MALEKA A quartet with vocals in Moré, Dioula, and French, traces of music of the Mandé and Akan peoples, and all kinds of exotic tunings stirred together into a wild mixture.
Lukas Ligeti - NYC
===================================================================================
LUKAS LIGETI is an eclectic, innovative musician active in a wide variety of areas. Born in Vienna, Austria, he studied composition and jazz drums at the Vienna Music Academy; from 1994 until 1996 he was a visiting scholar at Stanford University's computer music research center. He has lived in New York City since 1998. Lukas has composed for groups such as the Kronos Quartet, Ensemble Modern, and Icebreaker; his music has also been performed by the London Sinfonietta, Orchestre National de Lyon, and many others at festivals worldwide. As a drummer, he has worked with Henry Kaiser, Elliott Sharp, Michael Manring, Wadada Leo Smith, John Tchicai, George Lewis, Pyrolator Kurt Dahlke, Bruce Eisenbeil, Thurston Moore, Jim O'Rourke, Mari Kimura, Benoît Delbecq, Pamela Z, Gianni Gebbia, and many other excellent improvisors and jazz musicians. He frequently performs solo on electronic percussion.
Another important part of Lukas's work is cultural exchange. Commissioned by the Goethe Institute, he first traveled to Côte d'Ivoire in 1994; this led to the founding of the cross-cultural experimental ensemble Beta Foly, which has since performed widely in West Africa and Europe. In 1997, he participated in a project involving the Batonka, a little-known people from Zimbabwe, and in 1999, he collaborated with the Nubian percussion ensemble Al Tubul, performing at the Cairo Opera. In 2000, he produced Maï Lingani's debut album in Burkina Faso, and was commissioned by the American Composers Forum's Continental Harmony project to compose a piece for an ensemble of Caribbean musicians in Miami. Other recent activities include a contribution to Starkland Records' audio-DVD Immersion and a chamber orchestra piece for Austrian Radio. Currently, he is working on a composition for the Amadinda Percussion Ensemble, commissioned by the Vienna Festwochen, and on a piece for pianist Kathleen Supové.
MAÏ LINGANI was born in Koudougou, Burkina Faso and moved to Côte d'Ivoire at a young age. She started singing as a teenager and studied theater and dance at the Institut National de l'Art et de l'Action Culturel in Abidjan. Around the same time, she worked with several well-known bands in Côte d'Ivoire, touring nationally. In 1996, she joined Beta Foly, the ensemble founded by Lukas Ligeti and musicians resident in Abidjan, and participated in the recording of their album Lukas Ligeti & Beta Foly. Thereafter, she relocated to Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, where she quickly established herself as one of the most talented singers of her country. In 1998, she was awarded the Prix National de la Chanson Moderne Burkinabè, Catégorie Vedettes, the most important music award in Burkina Faso. She has performed and recorded with Burkina's best-known artists and is widely known there due to her frequent television appearances, both as a soloist and as a backup singer. In 1999, she toured Europe with Beta Foly and recorded with A Certain Frank, a well-known electronica group from Germany, and in 2000, Lukas Ligeti produced the first recording of her own music, Entrons dans la danse, which has met with considerable success in Burkina Faso (it is so far available only in that country). Currently, Maï is in residence in New York City as a guest of the Exploding Music collective to collaborate with Lukas Ligeti and other New York artists.
ABDOULAYE DIABATÉ, also known as Buru Djoss, was born in in 1956 in Kela, Mali. Raised in the heart of the Mandé tradition from a long line of djelis (griots), he has also spent some twenty years performing contemporary and popular music, and his musical career has led him to a fusion of these styles. In 1973, he joined Tenetemba Jazz in Bamako, Mali. Then, he became the lead singer of the Koulé Star Band of Koutiala. In 1975, he moved to Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire where he formed his own twelve-piece band, Super Mandé. In this band some of the greatest luminaries of West African music circulated as members: Salif Keita, Mory Kanté, Kanté Manfila, Ousmane Kouyaté and others. In 1978, Super Mande released its first recording: Wahabia-Ke Daschi; the album was banned from airplay because the title song criticized certain marabouts (religious leaders). In 1992, Abdoulaye joined Les Ballets Koteba, led by Souleymane Koli, as a singer and guitarist . He performed one of the main character roles in the African opera Waramba at the Atlanta Olympic games in 1996. He also toured the world with Les Go de Koteba in the mid-nineties. Since coming to America he has been an active member of the East Coast African music scene as a free-lance singer/guitarist, with his group Super Mandé, as well as with Source and other ensembles.
Singer, sound artist/improvsior and composer DAFNA NAPHTALI was born and raised in New York City. She has performed an eclectic mix of music since she began singing and playing guitar as a teenager -- folk, gospel, rock, and jazz -- in Europe, the U.S., Israel and Russia. She studied bel canto voice and has performed, recorded or otherwise collaborated with José Halac, Joshua Fried, Lisa Karrer/David Simons, Lynn Book, Kathleen Supové and sarodist Stephen James, and co-leads the digital chamber punk ensemble What is it Like to be a Bat? with Kitty Brazelton. She often performs and composes using her own custom software for sound processing of voice and other instruments in venues and festivals in NY, Germany, Canada and Holland with Bat and with her improvised projects {kaleid-o-phone} and Mechanique(s). She has received commisions and awards from NYFA, NYSCA, Meet the Composer, American Composers Forum and STEIM, gives workshops at various universities, and teaches and consults at Harvestworks and at New York University, where she earned her BM (voice) and MM (Music Technology.
===================================================================================
sTRANGEqUOTE:
"There is something about mUSIC that keeps its distance even at the moment that it engulfs us. It is at the same time outside and away from us and inside and part of us. In one sense it dwarfs us, and in another we master it. We are led on and on, and yet in some sTRANGE way we never lose control."
Aaron Copland
MUSIC AND IMAGINATION (1952)
Harvard University Press