Echo Echo Mirror House Music

Happy New year! May 2021 bring us live music again, please!

I was currently supposed to be performing in Annelies Van Parys’ wonderful contemporary adaptation of Wagner’s Tristan Und Isolde at Vlaamse Opera, but the event had to be canceled for obvious reasons… :((

Speaking of Wagner, for those familiar with Anthony Braxton’s epic Trillium-cycle, a jump from Wagner to Braxton is not a wide stretch. Incidentally Trillium also inhabits Braxton’s lesser known recent composition system ‘Echo Echo Mirror House Music’ (EEMHM), which lets the performers interact with a sound collage of Braxton’s entire recorded output. I’ve been working with Carl Testa from Tri-Centric Foundation to bring this unique work back to the stage. Carl developed an online interface that allows performers to engage with EEMHM over the internet and so I brought a small group of local Belgian based musicians together to work on these unique, complex and multilayered compositions. A first try-out was scheduled at Articulate Research Days in november 2020 at the Royal Conservatory in Antwerp, but had to be canceled. Luckily we get a second shot! A new date is fixed on february 01 and will be streamed live.

01/02/2021 Echo Echo Mirror House Music, Anthony Braxton
21h:00 Live stream from Witte Zaal, Royal Conservatory Antwerp

Live Stream Link

performed by:
Kobe Van Cauwenberghe, guitar
Steven Delannoye, saxophone
Niels Van Heertum, euphonium
Hampus Lindwall, piano
Carl Testa, sound collage

For more info on EEMHM check out Carl Testa’s insightful article here.
Here’s a brief excerpt from an online rehearsal in november.

Bernhard Lang - The Mirror Stage with Hyoid Contemporary Voices

The past weeks I’ve had the immense pleasure to work with the fantastic singers of Hyoid Contemporary Voices on the creation of a new work by Austrian composer Bernhard Lang, written for four voices and electric guitar. GAME 245: The Mirror Stage is an ambitious hour-long work using a complex electronic set-up using ambisonics, developed at the famous IRCAM studios in Paris. Rarely will Bernhard Lang’s intense motifs have sounded so intimate and overwhelming.

The premiere will take place at Transit Festival in Leuven on saturday october 24.

singers: Fabienne Seveillac, Els Mondelaers,
Andreas Halling, Tiemo Wang
electric guitar: Kobe Van Cauwenberghe
electronics/ambisonics: IRCAM/ Robin Meier
​sound: IRCAM/Sylvain Cadars
​lights & scenography: Lucas Van Haesbroeck

New Solo Release!

Official release november 5 2020 on All That Dust!

Since 2019 I’ve been exploring the music of American composer Anthony Braxton with a specific focus on his Ghost Trance Music compositions. One of the outcomes of this research was developing a way to explore the full extend of Braxton’s Ghost Trance Music in a solo context, for which I developed an intuitive set-up using loops and live-electronics to have several layers of musical material develop simultaneously and spontaneously.

In january 2020 I spend a week long residency at the GMEA studio in beautiful Albi in the south of France to put this into practice and record three different GTM compositions using the set-up I developed. I’m now incredibly excited to announce the upcoming release of these ‘Ghost Trance Solos’ on the beautifully curated London based label All That Dust! The album will officially drop on november 5 2020 and can be purchased through the All That Dust website or via their bandcamp page.

Being able to spend time immersing myself in Anthony Braxton’s fascinating musical universe has been a great privilege and an incredibly rewarding and challenging experience which has deeply affected my practice as a musician. It is therefore with immense pleasure that I can share this album with the world!

Many thanks to Mark Knoop, Juliet Frasier and Newton Armstrong from All That Dust. Laura Turnbridge for the beautiful liner notes. The people at GMEA in Albi, in particular Didier Aschour for letting me use their studio and Benjamin Maumus for the very skilful recording. And also a special thank you to the Tri-Centric Foundation as well as the Royal Conservatory Antwerp for helping me in making this research and recording project possible. <3 <3 <3

Anthony Braxton's Tri-Centric Thought Unit Construct in Post War Western Art Music.

This month I’m starting a new artistic research project at the Conservatory in Antwerp and the Antwerp University (ARIA). It will be a four-year project leading up to a PhD in the arts. It is an extension of a two-year research project that I started in 2019, focussing on Anthony Braxton’s Ghost Trance Music. For this PhD-project I intend to take a closer look at Braxton’s holistic vision of his entire oeuvre and explore the many different aspects of his work from a performer’s perspective. In doing so I hope to be able to contribute to broadening the canon of post-war western art music, which, still today, fails to recognise the vast and unique body of work Anthony Braxton has created over the past 55 years.

Excerpt from Composition 366 “Falling River Music” (c) Anthony Braxton

I described my intentions in the following research abstract (which can also be found here):

The perception of the canon of post-war western art music today is still strongly determined by a constructed dichotomy which keeps Western art music separate from evolutions and radical experiments in jazz and black American music. The very extensive oeuvre and philosophical body of thought of the American composer Anthony Braxton, what he calls his Tri-Centric Thought Unit Construct (TCTUC), can be seen as the metaphorical elephant in the room. This unique oeuvre has been ignored to this day as part of a larger canon of post-war Western art music and is rarely performed as such. This research project takes Anthony Braxton's TCTUC as a starting point to see how I, as an interpreter of Braxton’s music, can contribute to a broadening of this canon. 

The intention of this research is to approach a wide selection of Braxton’s compositions on their own terms. By putting these works as specific case studies on the agenda of relevant actors such as the conservatory, contemporary music festivals and concert series and through recordings and other media, I hope to make a canon broadening possible through my practice as an interpreter. In addition to this I will address the gaps within the existing discourse on post-war Western art music through Braxton's own writings (Tri-Axium Writings) as well as recent texts by George Lewis, Benjamin Piekut, Georgina Born, a.o.
The results of this research will be presented in the form of concerts, lectures, articles, workshops and recordings.

Ghost Trance Septet

This week I’m playing a first set of concerts with my newly formed Ghost Trance Septet, dedicated to performing Anthony Braxton’s Ghost Trance Music. Here are the dates:

01/02/2020 Post X (in double bill with Frederik Croene), Merelbeke

07/02/2020 Het Kip & De Ei (in double bill with Nadar Ensemble), Madame Fortuna, Antwerp

08/02/2020 Werkplaats Walter (in double bill with Evan Parker), Brussels

Anthony Braxton’s Ghost Trance Music
Balancing between notation and improvisation, Anthony Braxton’s “Ghost Trance Music” represent a unique body of “open works” that challenges traditional roles of composer, score and performer. In “Ghost Trance Music” Braxton’s entire fascinating musical universe comes together. You step into a ritual, guided by a melody without beginning or end, a stream of consciousness that serves as the central track leading you into the unknown. Originally inspired by the Native American practice of the Ghost Dance ritual, where surviving members of Native American tribes would attempt to communicate with their ancestors through transcendental ghost dances, the Ghost Trance Music pieces are specifically designed to function as pathways between Braxton’s different musical systems, between notation and improvisation, between past, present and future. It allows for a plurality of musical practices to join forces, transcending traditional genre boundaries. It creates an arena in which Braxton helps curate intuitive experiences for both performers and listeners.

Ghost Trance Septet:

Kobe Van Cauwenberghe, guitar
Teun Verbruggen, drums
Steven Delannoye, tenor sax, bass clarinet
Elisa Medinila, piano
Anna Jalving, violin
Niels Van Heertum, euphonium, trumpet
Frederik Sakham, double bass