SONIC ACTS XII : The Cinematic Experience
21 - 24 Feb 2008

Acousmonium II feat. Eliane Radigue/Kasper T Toeplitz
Live Performance at Paradiso, Amsterdam (NL)

Elemental II Eliane Radigue, performed by Kasper Toeplitz (50 min)

Bass player Kasper Toeplitz convinced the composer Eliane Radigue to write Elemental II for him. In this piece the bass is plugged directly into the computer, running a MaxMSP patch.

Kasper T Toeplitz (D) is a composer, electric bass player and musician who has developed his work in the no man's land between academic composition (orchestra, ensembles, opera) and electronic new music or noise music. He has integrated the computer into the very heart of his work, as a tool of thought and composition, and as a live instrument, hybridising more traditional instruments if necessary, or working on sheer electronic noise.

Eliane Radigue (F) studied electro-acoustic music under Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry. Around 1970, she created her first synthesizer-based music on a Buchla synthesizer. Her goal by that point was to create a slow, purposeful unfolding of sound, which she felt to be closer to the minimal composers of New York than to the French musique concrete composers. In 1975, Radigue became a disciple of Tibetan Buddhism, after which she composed a large-scale cycle of works based on the life of the Tibetan master Milarepa. She dedicated much of the 1980s to a three-hour work, the Trilogie de la Mort, which was as influenced by the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Notoriously slow and painstaking in her work, Radigue has produced in the last decades on average one major work every three years. Very recently, in response to the demands of musicians worldwide, she has begun creating works for specific performers and instruments together with electronics.