Renowned composer and musician Carl Stone takes the stage with Japanese singer Akaihirume and local chamber music group Artsblooming Ensemble (藝綻室內樂團) on Sunday at Taipei’s Venue (濕地). This will be the first stop of their three-day Taiwan Birds Singing in the Universe (宇宙聲音像鳥的合唱) tour.
Since the 1980’s, Stone has been pushing the frontiers of experimental electronic music with his enigmatic compositions and live performances. Hailed as The King of Sampling by the Village Voice, Stone manipulates recordings of sounds and speech to create labyrinths of shifting sonic textures.
“Whether it’s working with turntables, tape recorders, samplers, synthesizers or laptops, I’ve always been interested in extending beyond what humans can do,” Stone says.
Photo Courtesy of Samantha Gore
Stone describes his music as almost cybernetic, enabled by electronic devices and adapting to new technological advancements over the years.
“I do 99 percent of my work with my laptop,” he says. “I like the compactness of it. I used to bring a tape recorder for live sampling but now the laptop can do all that.”
TAIWAN ANGLE
Artsblooming Art Director Ryan Chen (陳名涵), who is responsible of organizing the tour, says the tour’s title was inspired by “my impression of Stone’s work,” he tells the Taipei Times.
Chen met Stone last year through a mutual friend while co-organizing the first edition of Cochlea International Experimental Music Festival (耳蝸國際實驗音樂節), a Kaohsiung-based music event.
As a classically trained violinist, Chen was first unfamiliar with the electronic music guru but was immediately taken by his music. “I understood him as a composer that uses many living sounds from this world,” Chen says.
Chen is excited about cross-disciplinary collaborations and looks forward to developing more diverse repertoire for his ensemble. For the upcoming program, Artsblooming will be represented by Chen on violin, Lin Chieh-yu (林倢?) on viola, Liao Hai-ting (廖海廷) on percussions and Li Li-chin (李俐錦) on the sheng (笙), a kind of pan flute.
Over the last two decades, the Japan-based Stone has collaborated with a number of local musicians, including Akaihirume, whom he has partnered with for the past three years.
“Akaihirume has a very flexible and fluid working format,” Stone says, “I sometimes sample her voice live in our improvisations.”
The duo has performed together in Japan, New York, Los Angeles and Singapore and continues their world tour this time through Taiwan. Stone and Akaihirume have also been working in the studio and will be putting out a record together later this year.
■ Sunday at 7:30pm, Sunday at 7:30pm at Venue (濕地) 10, Ln 107, Linsen N Rd, Taipei City (台北市林森北路107巷10號)
■ Tickets are NT$400, available online at www.ticket.com.tw
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