SPIIC+ LECTURE CONCERT No. 19

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Joëlle Léandre (FR) & Mark Nauseef (USA) in conversation and concert with Vlatko Kučan (DE)

For the nineteenth SPIIC+ Lecture Concert, we welcome two extraordinary figures in the art of improvisation —French double bassist Joëlle Léandre and American percussionist Mark Nauseef—for a joint discussion and concert with the evening’s host, saxophonist and clarinetist Vlatko Kučan (Artistic Research Lab). The theme of the evening will be improvisation and artistic intelligence in the age of AI. What value does the human factor still hold, and what insights from the experience of artistic co-creation can be applied to other areas of social and public life? The three musicians will explore these questions through every means and facet of their art.

Joëlle Léandre is a renowned French double bassist, singer, and composer, known for her pioneering work in free improvisation and contemporary classical music. After completing her studies in Paris, she received a scholarship to the Center for Creative and Performing Arts in Buffalo, New York, where she met the composers John Cage and Giacinto Scelsi, both of whom wrote works specifically for her. Léandre has collaborated extensively with leading figures in jazz and avant-garde music, including Derek Bailey, Anthony Braxton, Merce Cunningham, and Pierre Boulez. She is a founding member of the feminist improvisation trio Les Diaboliques (with Irène Schweizer and Maggie Nicols) and a member of the European Women’s Improvising Group (EWIG). She has released numerous albums on labels such as Leo, FMP, and RogueArt. She held the Darius Milhaud Chair in Composition and Improvisation at Mills College in Oakland, California, in 2002, 2004, and 2006. She is a recipient of the Villa Medici “fuori-i-muri” award (1981), the DAAD Berlin grant (1990), and the Villa Kujoyama residency in Kyoto (1998). Joëlle Léandre was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2023 Vision Festival in New York City, an event celebrating the first fifty years of her international career.

Percussionist Mark Nauseef has been performing and/or recording for over fifty years in an exceptionally wide variety of musical contexts with many leading musicians of diverse genres from around the world, including Jack Bruce, Evan Parker, Ikue Mori, L. Shankar, Hamza El Din, Lou Harrison, Bill Laswell, The Velvet Underground, Kyai Kunbul (Javanese gamelan), Joachim Kühn, John Zorn, the Ladzekpo Brothers (Ghanaian music and dance), the Gamelan Orchestra of Saba (Balinese gamelan), and Kudsi Erguner. Nauseef attended the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), where he studied Javanese gamelan with K.R.T. Wasitodiningrat, Balinese gamelan with I. Nyoman Wenten, North Indian pakhawaj drumming with Pandit Taranath Rao, North Indian music theory with Pandit Amiya Dasgupta, Ghanaian drumming and dance with Kobla and Alfred Ladzekpo, Dzidzorgbe Lawluvi, and C.K. Ganyo, as well as 20th-century Western percussion techniques and hand drumming with John Bergamo. Mark also studied frame drum techniques from the Middle East, India, and the Caucasus with Glen Velez. Nauseef also worked as a producer. In addition to his own recordings, he produced numerous albums spanning a wide variety of musical genres, including both modern experimental and traditional forms.

Vlatko Kučan is a musician, improviser, composer, music therapist, producer, curator, researcher, and director of the SPIIC+ project. He explores the possibilities of artistic expression and social interaction through the art of improvisation in the transdisciplinary field of critical improvisation studies. His artistic productions challenge traditional boundaries between composition, improvisation, and performance, blending genres such as contemporary music, jazz, improvised music, dance, theater, and literature. He has collaborated with leading figures in contemporary jazz (including Carla Bley, Lester Bowie, Anthony Braxton, Marion Brown, Bill Elgart, Dieter Glawischnig, Howard Johnson, Jay Oliver, Barre Phillips, Tomasz Stańko, Steve Swallow, and Kenny Wollesen) and in the field of improvised music (including Derek Bailey, Malcolm Goldstein, Barry Guy, Aleksander Kolkowski, Jim Menesses, Rajesh Mehta, Lauren Newton, Maggie Nichols, and Mia Zabelka), and has shared the stage with them. His theater collaborations include work with directors Karin Beier, Michael Bogdanov, Herbert Fritsch, Brian Michaels, and Robert Wilson, as well as musicians Tom Waits, Lester Bowie, and Giora Feidman. He has created numerous works that combine literature, philosophy, and music, and occasionally works as a director for audiobooks.

In addition to his work at the ligeti zentrum, he also teaches improvisation at the Hamburg University of Music and Drama (HfMT) in the Jazz BA/MA programs, the MA program in Multimedia Composition, and the international MA program in Contemporary Performance and Composition (CoPeCo).

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Registration is required and can be completed via [Pretix] (https://pretix.eu/ligetizentrum/spiic/).