Space is the Place: Jaap Blonk + Jean D.L. & Sandrine Verstraete

Friday, November 6, 20:30, entrance € 8

JEAN D.L. & SANDRINE VERSTRAETE
Jean D.L. and Sandrine Verstraete found each other while each was pursuing their own solitary artistic course. Guitar for one, poetry and audio tapes for the other. Their encounter was deepened as well by their interest for experimental cinema and dark universes of melancholic introspection. While they found each other for other reasons as well, who make of them not only a duo, but a couple as well, from their common universe emerges principally a shared sensibility for opaque perspectives and a certain claustrophilia: their music comes from the inside, it’s introspective, but listening to it, it surrounds and envelopes the listener in a con- dition of blurriness or anguish that will be experienced as disturbing by some and reassuring (because also an outlet or contemplatively )by others. Because for those who can simply appreciate, this music evokes a bright spell, it gives access to horizons and opens perspectives, the soothing silence at the end of things. But before all of that, you have to face the discordant darkness of a reverbe- rant guitar, faraway or nearby, direct, clear or distorted, and the malaise of words. A desolate climate, a deconstruction as a condition for the depicted landscape. It is a research composed by guitar, tapes and field recordings, noisy and poetic, some- times minimalist, where most of the time the voice keeps silent. Images occasionally join the atmosphere strictly composed by sound: movies, of which the universe is not less dim. Their music gives the impression of being the trace or expression of a night, urban and anxious, melancholic, experienced fully till dawn, without any sleep. And for which the only alternative would be evasion, a silent breathing.

– Joke Lanz (Sudden Infant)

Jean D.L. – Guitar
Sandrine Verstraete – Voice, tape manipulation

JAAP BLONK
Jaap Blonk (born 1953 in Woerden, Holland) is a self-taught composer, performer and poet. He went to university for mathematics and musicology but did not finish those studies.

In the late 1970s he took up saxophone and started to compose music. A few years later he discovered his potential as a vocal performer, at first in reciting poetry and later on in improvisations and his own compositions. For almost two decades the voice was his main means for the discovery and development of new sounds.

From around the year 2000 on Blonk started work with electronics, at first using samples of his own voice, then extending the field to include pure sound synthesis as well. He took a year off of performing in 2006. As a result, his renewed interest in mathematics made him start a research of the possibilities of algorithmic composition for the creation of music, visual animation and poetry.

As a vocalist, Jaap Blonk is unique for his powerful stage presence and almost childlike freedom in improvisation, combined with a keen grasp of structure. He has performed around the world, on all continents. With the use of live electronics the scope and range of his concerts has acquired a considerable extension.

Besides working as a soloist, he collaborated with many musicians and ensembles in the field of contemporary and improvised music, like Maja Ratkje, Mats Gustafsson, Joan La Barbara, The Ex, the Netherlands Wind Ensemble and the Ebony Band. He premiered several compositions by the German composer Carola Bauckholt, including a piece for voice and orchestra. A solo voice piece was commissioned by the Donaueschinger Musiktage 2002. On several occasions he collaborated with visual computer artist Golan Levin.

Jaap Blonk – Voice