On Thursday 19th November a duo from Brazil will spread out the contents of their suitcases on the floor. Bizarre, common, colourful and joyous objects will be animated and start playing songs that make your bratwurst taste better. I wondered how this strange kind of music had come to their part of the world, to Brazil, a country where dancing and playing football seem to be the same kind of thing… mmm, let’s see, I used to be good at this: I mean, how would their sound relate to Brazilian football? In short, I would say, the audience move to the rhythms all masses move to, and that is easily digestible beats. The Brazilian football, full of tricks and unexpected moments, with its short cuts and long runs, its dribbling and through passes can’t be written down and translated to music in one long score that you could hand over to Gilberto Gil:” sing this, please.” It is way more complex and diverse. It is more close to the carnival of sounds that you can expect from Koll Witz’s performance.  

Along side Koll Witz, a young Italian duo will play. You have to listen to the samples for yourself. One part of them has chosen the name: “Mornings,” a moment of the day filled with splendour and mystery, a great name in fact, simple and yet so full of expectation. Just come, wait for the silence, and then hear what will happen. Together they are Bloodythings/Mornings.

Friday 20th November’s concert, one part of it, is a direct result of the day that thirteen Berlin based improvisers scared our neighbours, and proved that they could not play individually alone together. They looked for each others company in order to conduct some pagan ritual. Or maybe they answered to an unwritten improv law which says, we are here together with our instruments, so now we must make some noise together just for the sake of it. Claudia Risch was there because she thought she would hear something unheard before, because there were such good musicians. ‘Such good musicians’ don’t guarantee you get ‘such good music’ when they come together. Those were my words. From experience I also know that if you put Berlin Improv musicians together you get music for a very few who are able to distinguish the subtleties. Those listeners and players are like scholars who studied the same text over and over again, only to find out variations to interpretations that don’t differ too much from the interpretations of the variations heard before. Yes, I am not a fan. And that is why I am glad that Ignaz Schick, who follows different ways to decode our beloved cataclysms, and his guest, Japanese percussionist Seijiro Murayama share the evening with Claudia Risch’s improv/new music trio. I don’t expect a battle of tastes. I do expect diversities firmly rooted in sincerity. Experiencing the performances will be like travelling from one city to another. On a rather cheap ticket…

The arrival of Alexei Borisov and Olga Nosova on Saturday 21st November brings images and desires of days long gone. These days the computer screen has replaced the face of a bad tempered boss. It is impossible to leave the room without permission. Boredom no longer lures in the soon to be forgotten hours of the day. Laziness is a feeling, not a state of mind; it can materialize itself in a horizontal position on a couch as soft as a lover. The book title says ‘ The Gift.’ The novel is as heavy as a brick, describes the life of Russian immigrants in Berlin Charlottenburg in the nineteen twenties. Now hear a Russian voice. Now hear sounds. Time flies. “Yes, we come and we will do something poetic,” Alexei wrote to me. I have heard some of his works. I should have heard it coming out of an open window, when I walked Rue Morgue in Paris on the day I’d heard Tarkovsky had died.

In a possible world the Russian film maker would have left the remains of a set in the faraway corner of Bavarian territory: a little cabin close to the Czechoslovakian border. Albert Plank found this shelter. The air was still full of cold war signals back then; He built transmitters and receivers. It took him years. In the end the hut looked like the setting of a new film by Tarkovsky, but by then the Soviet Union didn’t exist anymore, the air was filled with different noises, and the film maker had died. Nowadays Albert’s studio is transportable. He will set it up at our space. And then he will receive and transmit.

19. November start 20.45, Koll Witz, + Bloodythings&Mornings

20. November start 20.30, Alexander Frangenheim db, Thorsten Bloedhorn g, Claudia Risch sax, fl + Ignaz Schick/Seijiro Murayama

21. November start 20.39, Albert Plank Road Show, Alexei Borisov+Olga Nosova

staalplaat working space

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