Kiezsalon special w/ Matana Roberts and Rayon at Musikbrauerei / Friday, 16.10.2015

From April until October 2015 the Kiezsalon offers a forum for innovative musical activity beyond genre boundaries and is a meeting point for friends as well as loners, conversations and party, lovers and those who are just curious.

As an interface between pop music and avantgarde the series presents compact performances by artists from diverse genres, origin and popularity – initiated by Digital in Berlin and taking place at one of the last authentic locations in Prenzlauer Berg, the 120 year old Schneider Brewery.

Matana Roberts is an internationally renowned composer, band leader, saxophonist, sound experimentalist and mixed-media practitioner. Roberts works in many contexts and mediums, including improvisation, dance, poetry, and theater.

She made two records as a core member of the Sticks And Stones quartet in the early 2000s and has gone on to release a diverse body of solo and ensemble work under her own name on Constellation and Central Control over the past decade.

She is perhaps best known for her acclaimed Coin Coin project, a multi-chapter work of “panoramic sound quilting” that aims to expose the mystical roots and channel the intuitive spirit-raising traditions of American creative expression while maintaining a deep and substantive engagement with narrativity, history, community and political expression within improvisatory musical structures. Constellation began documenting the Coin Coin project in 2011 and has released the first three of a projected twelve album-length chapters to date.

Instead of taking the short cut and roaring south from Weilheim via the Brenner Pass, Markus Acher prefers to visit and approach foreign places in a different, more cautious way: Whenever he finds the time between his collective work with The Notwist and Lali Puna, he sets out to record film soundtracks under his solo moniker Rayon. This time it’s Eleonora Danco’s recently released film “N-capace” that inspired 10 cinematic, instrumental sketches, which see Rayon not only heading south – but also into the past.

Based on loops that loom, take shape and change colors, only to vanish an instant later, Acher’s understated tracks, comprised of both electronic and acoustic layers, can do without titles – “Collo Collana” 1-10 is perfectly sufficient – because, ultimately, they’re one entity anyway: After all, it’s Danco’s film, influenced by Fellini, Buñuel, and Beckett, that triggered these interpretations and set the tone for his latest Rayon release.

RAYON = Markus Acher: harmonium, Orgel, Percussion
+ Cico Beck: Marimbaphon, Percussion
+ Karl Ivar Refseth: Vibraphon, Percussion
+ Sachiko Hara: Piano
+ Anton Kaun: Elektronik

Matana Roberts (US) (Constellation/Central Control)
Rayon (DE) (Alien transistor/Morr Music)

+ DJ Falko Teichmann (DE)
Friday, 16th October 2015 | 20:00 CET
Musikbrauerei | Greifswalder Strasse 23a | 10407 Berlin/Prenzaluer Berg

matanaroberts.com | alientransistor.de

Picture by Roland Owsnitzki
The Kiezsalon is curated by Michael Rosen and funded by Musicboard Berlin.