Keeping in touch

Press reviews at: tokafi (eng), classiquenews (fr), le poisson rêveur (fr), and on these: playground (esp), nowamuzyka (pl), groove (de), spex (de), de:bug (de)
You want to write something about the project or a particular session on your blog? Tell us.

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Here are our links: myspace, facebook, and twitter.
The free excerpts are also compiled on our YouTube channel

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Coming back soon.

V.SESSION#3 - BL!NDMAN pictures & excerpt

The live session with BL!NDMAN sax quartet is now available on-demand at http://theVsessions.com

Click here to watch the excerpt (containing Bach and Sleichim music) of this thrilling moment.

V.SESSION#2 - HERREWEGHE pictures & excerpt

The live session with Philippe Herreweghe and Collegium Vocale Gent is now available on-demand at http://theVsessions.com
Click here to watch the excerpt (Emendemus in melius) of this intimate event.

V.SESSION#1 - FENNESZ pictures & excerpt

The live session with Fennesz went perfect and is now available on-demand at http://theVsessions.com

"Entering the studio was like going on stage, said Fennesz, and I felt so carefree that I transformed my set spontaneously, frequently using totally new material. Great experience."

A trailer playing the first three minutes of Fennesz set can be seen on the Archives page. The same video excerpt is also available in a very compressed version on  youtube or vimeo.

Preparing for the upcoming sessions

To watch The V. Sessions, you will need to install the free Silverlight 2.0 player. It is the most stable software for live webcasting and it allows multicamera shooting.

Once you have installed Silverlight, you should try the video test [or now, the excerpts of the available sessions] to see if everything works fine on your computer. Normally you just need a modern computer with an updated internet browser (Internet Explorer 7, Firefox, Safari...). In some regions of the world, the "buffering" phase at the beginning can take some 10 seconds before playing.

If you are convinced, fill up the registering formula on http://theVsessions.com  

 

Try it, and make your friends try it !

V.SESSION#1 - FENNESZ

This Austrian musician was once a lead guitarist with a post rock band. Then he turned to electronic music and acoustic research. Now he uses all his influences during his performances, alternating solo gigs with collective improvising. You can't easily define the genre of music he plays — good for him, good for everyone. Lately, he presented a show with Mike Patton.

I hate the idea of repeating myself, he said in an interview. I need new perspectives and challenges for each project, and I'm very happy that many people are able to follow me without any problem.

And let's guess some new people, through this challenging project, will be introduced to his world made of noise and melody.

Comment on it here !

V.SESSION#2 - HERREWEGHE

If you like ancient music, you probably heard of Philippe Herreweghe and Collegium Vocale Gent. He recorded one of the most oustanding collection of Bach's cantatas. Very inspired by polyphonic music, he works on vocal music with great care, able to make a choir sing so that you can hear every voice. His tastes favor pure and mineral voices, without vibrato, and above all musical rhetoric, a deep relation between text and music.
For some years now, he chose fantastic and not very well known vocal masterpieces and interpreted them with his own choir in a smaller and intimate formation (10 singers). As one of his choices, he picked up this dark mass from the Spanish Renaissance.
Be ready for the experience !

If you wish to comment the event, do it here !

V.SESSION#3 - BL!NDMAN

I don't know if you already heard these four Belgian guys ; they always bring some madness along with a personal talent for music playing. Yes, they are going to play Bach on saxophones and I am ready to hear purists shouting ! Actually, I do hope purists will like their way of playing, because you may listen to the saxophones like antique instruments ; they sound like an organ sometimes, or like an old oboe d'amore...

Performing contemporary music is their other core activity. They used to work on some special projects (an Arthaud project with Phil Minton) and with people like Terry Riley or Steve Lacy. Here they will play works of John Cage (Five), Steve Reich (New York Counterpoint) and Eric Sleichim (Storm at low tide), who is the Bl!ndman's leader. Usually, the way they organise a concert program is exciting. I hope you will get excited as well !

If you wish to comment, that's here !

Looking for the band >>>>>

Rule #5 >>>>>

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery—celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from—it’s where you take them to.”

Jim Jarmusch about directing (2004)

> Read the other Jarmusch's golden rules here.

Interpretation >>>>>

Rossini v. Beethoven >>>>>

Gustav is a composer. For months he has been carrying on a raging debate with Säure over who is better, Beethoven or Rossini. Säure is for Rossini. “I'm not so much for Beethoven qua Beethoven,” Gustav argues, “but as he represents the German dialectic, the incorporation of more and more notes into the scale, culminating with dodecaphonic democracy, where all notes get an equal hearing, Beethoven was one of the architects of musical freedom—he submitted to the demands of history, despite his deafness. While Rossini was retiring at the age of 36, womanizing and getting fat, Beethoven was living a life filled with tragedy and grandeur.”

“So?” is Säure's customary answer to that one. “Which would you rather do? The point is,” cutting off Gustav's usually indignant scream, “a person feels good listening to Rossini. All you feel like listening to Beethoven is going out and invading Poland. Ode to Joy indeed. The man didn't even have a sense of humor. I tell you,” shaking his skinny old fist, “there is more of the Sublime in the snare-drum part to La Gazza Ladra than in the whole Ninth Symphony. With Rossini, the whole point is that lovers always get together, isolation is overcome, and like it or not that is the one great contripetal movement of the World. Through the machieries of greed, pettiness, and the abuse of power, love occurs. All the shit is transmuted to gold. The walls are breached, the balconies are scaled—listen!” (…)

“What's wrong with Rossini?” hollers Säure, lighting up. “Eh?”

“Ugh,” screams Gustav, “ugh, ugh, ugh, Rossini,” and they're at it again, “you wretched antique. Why doesn't anybody go to concerts any more? You think it's because of the war? Oh no, I'll tell you why, old man—because the halls are full of people like you! Stuffed full! Half asleep, nodding and smiling, farting through their dentures, hawking and spitting into paper bags, dreaming up ever more ingenious plots against their children—not just their own, but other people's children too! Just sitting around, at the concert with all these other snow-topped old rascals, just a nice background murmur of wheezing, belching, intestinal gurgles, scratching, sucking, croacking, an entire opera house crammed full of them right up to standing room, they're doddering in the aisles, hanging off the tops of the highest balconies, and you know what they're all listening to, Säure? Eh? The're all listening ro Rossini! Sitting there drooling away to some medley of predictable little tunes, leaning forward elbows on knees muttering, 'C'mon, c'mon then Rossini, let's get all this pretentious fanfare stuff out of the way, let's get on to the real good tunes!” Behavior as shameless as eating a whole jar of peanut butter at one sitting. On comes the sprightly Tancredi tarantella, and they stamp their feet in delight, they pop their teeth and pound their canes—'Ah, ah! that's more like it!' ”

“It's a great tune,” yells Säure back. “Smoke another one of these and I'll just play it for you here on the Bosendorfer.”

Thomas Pynchon, in Gravity's Rainbow

(L'Arc-en-ciel de la Gravité)

Vintage, 1973, p.440