Czech Radio 3 - Vltava, Live from Prague

On - Air, On - Line, On - Site

Producer: Michal Rataj, Czech Radio, Production Centre, michal.rataj@rozhlas.cz
Broadcaster: Czech Radio 3 - Vltava, EBU
Cooperation: Universal NoD, Mlok Association

live concert / performance: 20:00 - 24:00 CET, Universal space NoD, www.roxy.cz/nod
live Broadcast: Czech Radio 3 - Vltava, 22:00 - 24:00 CET
live audio and video stream: www.rozhlas.cz/radiocustica

Czech Radio has joined international celebrations of the art's birthday and contributed a four-hour live acoustic-art-party, featuring a large number of artists, most of whom participate in the Radioatelier PremEdice programme. Thanks to perfect cooperation with Universal Space NoD (www.roxy.cz/nod) and the association MLOK (www.lemurie.cz), an excellent team was put together that will surely prepare a wonderful gift for the 1 000 043th birthday of the art - in the very heart of Prague, in the Universal Space NoD, on the airwaves of Czech Radio 3 - station Vltava and in a live satellite transmission of the European Broadcasting Union.

20:00 / Cecile Boiffin - multipercussions, voice
20:40 / c8400: radio-acoustic performance / instalation
20:45 / Groupe C - electroacoustic performance
21:20 / Monika Streitova - flute / Sylva Smejkalova, improvisation & live electronic
21:55 / Jiri Adamek, Anna Synkova, Lucie Vackarova - voice performance
22:20 / Pavel Fajt: DrumTrek - drum performance
22:15 / c8400: radio-acoustic performance / instalation
23:10/ Michal Marjanek & Tomas Hruza electronica / live interactive video

20:00 / Cecile Boiffin - percussions

Cécile Boiffin (*1970) studied percussions at Conservatoire de Région de Boulogne-Billancourt, where she received premier prix de percussion in 1991. Then she went on to study at Conservatoire de Région de Paris, where she received the first prize in the Concours Régional d'Ile-de France competition. She furthered her interpretation skills at Musikhochschule Freiburg where she started to collaborate with Institut für Neue Musik Freiburg. Between 1995 and 1997, she was engaged as a percussionist in the Carlsbad Symphony Orchestra. Since 1997, she has played the kettledrum in the Pardubice Chamber Philharmonic. She plays with some of the leading ensembles and premieres compositions of contemporary authors. Lately, she has been a co-author of compositions for the ensemble Cilijen that focuses on improvisation with text as well as composing of original compositions.

The compositionGraffitis by Georgese Aperghise works with the sonic properties of text that is being crushed to individual words, syllables, letters. The composition is based purely on the sound of text irrespective of its semantic meaning. The vocal part is notated precisely and the player has to use the full vocal range. The percussionist plays with his hands but occasionally looks at two drumsticks lying in front of him. He stops playing several times and stares at them as if considering whether to use them or not... The composition dates from 1980.

Vinko Globokar, Toucher. The composition was written in 1973 for percussionist Jean-Pierre Drouet, a musician who made an impact on music theatre with his Le Cercle trio. In this composition, the relation between the text and the percussions part is opposite than in Graffitis - the author explores possibilities of imitating human voice by hitting different objects with fingers. The idea is inspired by traditional Indian tablas play where each type of strike corresponds to a syllable. The composition uses quotes from the French version of "Galileo Galilei", a drama by Bertold Brecht.

20:40, 21:50, 22:15 / c8400:

www.c8400.com
radio-akustická performance/instalace

c8400 is a hexadecimal number. My number. The number that I am... Each of us is given many different names and numbers in our lives. c8400 is derived from the first number I received with my name, the birth number. Different institutions know me by this number, not by my name. So, the birth number is my primary identity in relations with those institutions. For my online identity, I transformed the number into hexadecimal format, which is often used in IT. c8400 clearly says: this is my code in the given system, I am a person connected with this number. The code clearly differentiates this on-line identity as one of my "faces", that reflects something from me but does not represent me as a whole.

c8400 stands against "humanisation" of information technology. The current (and ever present) trend of "humanisation" of technology and presenting it as "natural" causes people to forget the origin and nature of equipment they use. In the same way as a bank's system includes your account number, the "virtual world" is another system that you can join. It is an improvement, an opportunity, but in no case a substitute of physical reality.

c8400 creates compositions using consumer electronics, often on the principle of feedback. Electric impulses mix with recordings of sounds that surround us - earlier recordings of specific moments or spaces, clips from audio media and live snippets of sound from the airwaves.

The sound compositions performed tonight use sounds from the space where the Art's Birthday Party is taking place. The ambience is being transformed by itself in real time - with my active participation. c8400 plays the role of a catalyst in the given space, facilitating changes in the acoustic properties of the environment. The aim of a change in the sound perspective is to provide the audience with a new experience in the given time and place.

20:45 / Skupina C: UnderGrant

elektroakustická performance

MOTTO:
"Get off the couch!" Mike Leigh (Naked)

SKUPINA c (Group C) build upon the premise that people are most interested in food and fun. That is why Group C tries to disturb the audience musically while providing culinary satisfaction. This fundamental contradiction creates a harmony between aggression and pleasant harmonic peculiarity. As the main representative of non-existent central European UnderGrant, they nimbly balance on the verge of tolerability and sensuality aimed at the ear buds of the audience.

Jan Dufek - string dissolution, http://www.33-3.org

Aleš Killian - noise welding
Ladislav Želený - gagbeat cranking
http://www.auvid.net

+guests
Martin Janíček - overdriven silence, http://www.mamapapa.cz
Rudolf Šmíd - gustatory reception, http://www.volny.cz/rudolfsmid

21:20 / Sylva Smejkalová & Monika Štreitová

live performance
Monika Štreitová - flute/Sylva Smejkalová, improvization & live electronic

Layering (Premiere)
eelectroacoustic live improvisation for laptop, keyboard and 4 loudspeakers

Kitchen (2005)

for flutes and live electronics
Laptop, 4 loudspeakers, microphone for instrumentalist (8 minutes)
The composition was premiered at the concerts early reflections in April this year.

Sylva Smejkalová (*1974)

Born in the town of Ostrava, she studied at the local Janacek Conservatory (piano and composition). In 2000, she graduated from the Academy of Performing Arts, Faculty of Music, where she studied composition with professor M. Kopelent, and took a master's degree in music direction. Since 2001, she has been studying electroacoustic composition with professor Dieter Kaufmann. In 2003 she co-founded a civic association called "early reflections" together with composer Michal Trnka.
She has performed her projects both home and abroad, especially in Vienna, Ostrava, Prague, Berlin, Moscow etc. She has also been active as a pianist, performing contemporary and 20th-century music. She has worked as a music director for Czech Radio, the Czech National Symphony Orchestra, the Czech Philharmonic, PP Production, BVA International etc.

Monika Štreitová studied flute at the Ostrava conservatory and at the Academy of Performign Arts in Bratislava, Slovakia, with professor M. Jurkovič, focusing on contemporary music. In 2000, she had a scholarship in interpretation courses in Darmstadt, in a class of professor Carin Levine, and contemporary music courses in Debrecen, Hungary, led by I. Matuz.

Since the beginning of her professional career, she has maintained contacts with leading contemporary composers, whose compositions she has performed at many prestigious festivals of contemporary music, such as MELOS-ÉTHOS, the International Contemporary Music Festival Bratislava, Bratislava Music Festivities, Forfest, Ostrava New Music Days, New Music Evenings Bratislava, Musica Iudaica Prague, Contemporary Music Marathon Prague, Music without Limits Festival - Vienna, Krakow, Budapest', Electronic Spring Vienna, ICA Festival London, Music fuer Rawensbruck, Silesian Festival in Katowice, the International Festival of Contemporary Music in Krakow etc. Besides performing music, Monika Štreitová also lectures in new flute instrumentation techniques.
http://www.cbox.cz/monikast/

21:55 / Jiří Adámek: Rhyming a rhyme

a vocal creation for two actors and two microphones. Voice - sound - syllable - word. opening and closing mouths. inspired by words uttered and written, dominated by The Sign of Power by Jan Zahradníček.

Jiří Adámek (*1977)
studied directing at the Prague Academy of Theatre Arts. He is currently freelancing and studying post-graduate directing course at the same school. In 2005, he had a one-semester scholarship in Paris. He is interested in puppets, non-theatrical spaces, sounds, texts, and his own desires...

+ guests: Anna Synkova, Lucie Vackarova

22:20 / Pavel Fajt: Drum Trek

www.fajt.cz

Pavel Fajt (*1957)
musician, percussionist, performer and teacher
1980-87 engagements in theatres in the city of Brno (e.g. Divadlo Husa na provázku)
since 1983 professional musician (bands Nukleus, Maňana, Ještě jsme se nedohodli)
1983-90 a founding member of Brno-based rock band Dunaj (known as Kolektiv)
since 1985 duo with Iva Bittova
1988 participation in the Mimi Festival in France, playing with guitarist Fred Frith
1989 a project with French guitarist Ferdinand Richard and Iva Bittova
1990 project Joseph Boys with Vladimír Václavek and Marcus Therofal (The Blech)
1991 a tour with The Vogel Europas band and a project with Fred Frith (Music Unlimited 91)
since 1992 duo with American percussionist Jim Meneses (Songs for the Drums)
1994 a project with Anna Homler and Geert Waegeman (Macaronic Sines, Corne de Vache)
since 1993 solo concerts, film and theatre engagements (Ctibor Turba, Christine de Smedt in Belgium)
since 1994 duo with Mikoláš Chadima (Transparent People project)
1995-2001 the band Pluto (1997 Contemporary Music Festival Victoriaville, Canada)
summer 1997 scenic music for the performance Maska (Komedie theatre)
1998-2001 theatre project Hamlet (Nebeský-Prachař-Fajt)
since 1998 duo with Stepanida Borisova (Yakut National Theatre)
2000-2001 The Danubians (Denio, Fajt, Hajnoczy, Kenderesi)
since 2000 duo with Wendy Zulu (Ladakh 5-6-7)
since 2001 solo project DRUM TREK

I have been playing the drum set for many years. I know a lot about it, although I have never made any significant effort to find out more about its historic origins. Nevertheless, a drum set was happily constructed to the needs of jazz music or better to say swing some time between the world wars, surely to save money. Several percussionists were replaced with one who had all the drums and cymbals within reach, sitting comfortably on the stool. He kept the rhythm and remained out of the sight - an ideal solution...

The independence of hands and feet later became the catchphrase for drum sets and was taken to all the way up to the heaven or down to the hell, as you like.

The opposite is true, though, and we have entered another millennium to the sound of the drum set - ill-advised and being persuaded about its importance.

I, too, have been promoting this erratic belief and for years, fully realising the aforementioned, I have been trying to find a way to use the drum set so that irritates me as little as possible. I set up homemade constructions, record the sound and process it electronically to mix the result with more or less classic sound of a perfectly sounding drum set. My aim over the past few years has been to find a "perfect archetypal rhythm", a proto-rhythm of everything, a rhythm "womb". That is my goal. That is my Drum Trek.

23:10/ Tomáš Hrůza & Michal Mariánek: Shadows of songs

electronica /live interactive video

The project "Shadows of songs" is based on live communication between light and sound, combining Michal Mariánek's experience with digital sound processing and Tomáš Hrůza's experience with development of interactive installations. Unlike many standard joint performances of the two artists based on the model musician+visualizer, in the Shadows of Songs, both elements influence each other and create one compact audiovisual instrument. A key ingredient in this experimental project is light that is not a mere visual element but participates directly in the creation of the sound composition.

Michal Mariánek (*1976)
Studied New Media, Environment and Intermedia at the Faculty of Arts of the Brno Technical University, had a fellowship at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, and Faculdade de Belas Artes UL in Lisbon.
Selection from festivals and exhibitions, more information: http://www.muteme.cz/marianek/

Tomáš Hrůza (*1976)
Studied programming of CNC machines. From 1998 to 2004, he studied at the Faculty of Arts of the Brno Technical University, atelier video-multimedia-performance. Since 2004, he has lectured in Interface and Software there. He also lectures in Scenic Video Applications at the Janacek Academy of Arts.

Selection from festivals and exhibitions, more information:
http://www.v2atelier.com/ht/