Residency Meudon (FR) summer 2025 - 4
musical encounters
In august I visited Sylvain Kassap at his place in Montreuil. Meudon -> Montreuil is quite a trip with different metro’s so I decided to take just one clarinet with me (basset horn as you can see). Sylvain had his bass clarinet, his small chalumeau and the contrabass clarinet. The combination of those two as in the picture worked great, maybe because both clarinets have something gentle..? We talked about music, which contemporary clarinet music we practiced in our lives, collaborations with composers, exchange of music we didn’t know yet. He is mostly know as an improviser, but for inspiration, and to learn new techniques, he studied a lot of contemporary works for different clarinets. Maybe that is an interesting way of seeing it: always in search to step out of your comfortzone and develop yourself in that way. Sylvain has written quite a bunch of pieces for (bass) clarinet ensembles, let’s see if I can take it into the loop of my performances.
Saxophonist/flutist Sophie Hassfurther visited me for some days, we had fun, we went to Paris and we jammed in the atelier. We vaguely knew eachother from the time Sophie studied in Amsterdam a long time ago. We met again at Jazzahead in Bremen - of all places.. and we performed in May 2024 in her hometown Vienna (Porgy & Bess). We decided to continue our collaboration and this can be witnessed coming autumn!
Picture © Jean-Michel Bale
We will perform together in Basklarinet Festijn:
14 September 15:00 LantarenVenster Rotterdam tickets
21 November 20:30 Moers (DE)
23 November 16:00 Salon de IJzerstaven Amsterdam tickets
Here you can hear us in trio with Frank Gratkowski: Rumoer 6
In the last two days Katharina Gross joined me in Van Doesburghuis, this was special for both of us, she has also been resident! We worked on Hollow Wood by and with the Parisian composer Jérôme Combier. I saw a snippet of this trio for 2 (bass) clarinets and cello on a friends’ Instagram-feed and decided to contact him. Coming autumn this version (the cello part can be performed solo too) will have a first performance in front of real audience (the other performance was a live stream in corona-time by members of Ensemble Intercontemporain).
We will perform Jérôme’s trio together with Chris Watt (on bcl 2):
12 September 21:30 Vondelkerk (Muze van Zuid) Amsterdam tickets
13 September 18:45 TivoliVredenburg (Gaudeamus) Utrecht tickets
12 October 16:00 Cultbee Beetsterzwaag tickets
Kerwin Rolland, soundartist, I met a while ago in Paris and we decided to do a session and now we prepared for our first concert. The music is a mix of prepared sound landscapes often with use of fieldrecordings and live electronics in combination we me improvising on different clarinets.
The concert:
17 October 20:15 Korzo, Den Haag tickets
This we recorded in September 2024: a forest (under the sea)
I was in July & August 2025 in/near Meudon.
Coming up: https://fieschouten.nl/agenda/