Newsletter 7
Spring 2000
- Holland festival
- Sh-sh-shortcutsWe had some great tours
earlier this year (France, Germany, Poland), and are now heading for a
full on busy summer. A project with an extended Ex for the Holland
Festival, side-projects, rehearsals, new songs, tour preparations for the
autumn (South-Italy and the USA), and slowly starting to think about a new
CD.
Big-band at the Holland
festival
Invited by the Holland Festival The Ex has put together a special big
band, the "Ex Orchestra". They are composing and arranging songs
for the big line-up at the moment. Dutch writer and ex-professional
soccer-player Jan Mulder wandered all over Holland in order to supply them
with comments and texts for the occasion and may even appear on stage with
them.
Next to the Ex-members
Andy, Luc, Terrie, GW Sok and Katrin, the band will feature the following
musicians: on trombones, Wolter Wierbos, from the Instant Composers Pool
(ICP), Joost Buis and De Kift-frontman Ferrie Heyne. On saxophone and
clarinet Michael Moore (Available Jelly, ICP). Felicity Provan on
Australian trumpette, and from Sicily, trumpet-player Roy Paci from
punk/jazz/impro quartet Zu, Manu Chao and Sicilian traditional brassband
Passione. In the rhythm-section we have ex-Dog Faced Hermans drummer and
multi-instrumentalist Wilf Plum and Michael Vatcher (4Walls and Magpie
Dance Co). On double-bass Wilbert De Joode (Ab Baars Trio), Ernst Glerum
(ICP) and Gert-Jan Blom (BeauHunks, Boulevard of Broken Dreams, The Izzies),
who most likely will be playing singing saw, bassharmonica and other
cranky instruments. On vocals we have sound-poet Jaap Blonk, singer Han
Buhrs (a.o. Sumbur, Schismatics) and probably also Jan Mulder.
At the recommendation of
Gert-Jan Blom, Ex-fan from the very beginning and experienced big band
arranger, the band will be kept in check by conductor Hamish McKeich of
the New Zealand Opera. In 1992 Hamish played the fagot in the Dutch
Philharmonic Orchestra for four years which he now plays electrified. He
had never heard of The Ex when we approached him, and vice versa. So this
may result in an exciting musical cross-pollination.
Shortcuts
+++ Iva Bittova invited Katrin to join her for two duo-concerts ... a
"try-out" on one of those jazz Tuesdays at Zaal 100 in
Amsterdam, and a sold out gig in the Lantaren in Rotterdam ... among the
totally enthusiastic audience, it was rumoured, were a couple of Egyptians
who fancied organising an Egyptian tour for them ... We'll see! +++ The
8th issue of the Ethiopiques CD-series is called "Swinging
Addis" and featuring festive swing/soul music from 1969-1975. James
Brown influenced, with those characteristic Ethiopian melodies ... in the
USA, on Ethio-Sound label, Ethiopians have also started re-releasing the
enormous amount of fantastic musical material from this period. Including
Thilahoun Gessesse and Buzunesh Bekele with the Imperial Bodyguard Band
... the label's address is: Ethio-Sound, 2409, 18th Street, NW, Washington
DC 20009, USA (tel. 202-2320076). +++ We made a short soundtrack for the
dance-movie "Men Of Good Fortune", which will be broadcasted
soon on televison by both BBC England and NPS Holland ... the movie was
directed by Dick Hauser, and the dancers were Job Cornelissen and Sassan
Saghar Yaghmai, the latter two with whom we had already collaborated a
couple of years ago in a project of Amsterdam's Danswerkplaats, called
"It's All Too Beautiful". +++ Terp released two CDs last month,
two duos featuring Terrie; the first one with drummer Han Bennink, called
"The Laughing Owl", the other with saxophone-/clarinet-player Ab
Baars, called "Hef" ... both are distributed by Konkurrent BV
and BV Haast. +++ The next release, also planned for this year, will be a
re-release of recordings from 1983, containing material of Kat's very
first band, "Die Drei Musketiere" (The Three Musketeers),
featuring her mother on violin and a girlfriend on bass ... absolutely
original stuff with typical Kat drum-rhythms in a very early stage. +++
This summer will also see the start of Terp-recordings with Eritrean
singer Tsehaytu Beraki. +++ Andy will play some more concerts with Kaffe
Matthews in the autumn ... between October 11 and 15 ... cities will
include Brussels (Nova Cinema), Paris (Instant Chavirés, Poitiers (Confort
Moderne), Nantes (Pannonica) ... they plan to release a CD in the next few
months... with music they've been recording over the last year. +++ Kletka
Red will do a small tour in Eastern France around the first week of
September. +++ Andy recently did a one-off improvised concert with John
Butcher (reeds) and Thomas Lehn (analogue synth) in Brussels in Recyclart,
an old abandoned train station Gare Bruxelles Chapelle ... as a part of a
series of concerts called "Electric City".the trio became a
quartet every three or four minutes as the sound of thundering trains
passed over shaking the whole venue ... Look out for more. +++ Andy will
be working with Image Reduction, a dance performance put together by
Angela Kohnlein ... Composer Yanni Kyriakides will also take part and 6 or
7 dancers (including members of the "Bloody Body" dance group)
and video projections... there will be a performance on May 14 in the Film
Akademie Overtoom 301, Amsterdam. +++ We've joined the ranks of the
unfortunate. No Means no, Zeni Geva, Sonic Youth ... we too got our van
stolen! ... what a downer... luckily we had left all our gear at the club
in Krakow (Poland), so we managed to finish our tour with quickly rented
vans ... Anyway, if you bump into a red Mercedes Sprinter having a
"Taxi Erven Jan De Boer" sticker, that's the one! +++ Wax N Gold
Club, set up to put on our favourite music from time to time in the
theatre space of Zaal 100, Amsterdam ... future gigs include and evening
of Eritrean Music, Mongolian music and a night of Krar music (ethiopian
harp). +++ Kraakgeluiden In De Binnenstad ... great new live music evening
set up by Ann La Berge, David Dramm, Cor Fuhler and Steve Heather ... a
kind of laboratory for electronic orientated musicians to try out new
combinations ... with other electronic types or more traditional
instruments ... in the Kalenderpanden at Entrepotdok 98, Amsterdam on
Wednesdays nights ... +++ Every Tuesday evening in Zaal 100, De
Wittenstraat 100, Amsterdam: Jazz Café ... concerts and improvisaton
sessions, entrance 5 guilders only. +++ For more information about
Entrepotdok's and Zaal 100's programme, check out the website of
Podiumpost at http://www.desk.nl/podiumpost. +++ Also check out BIOTOOM
cinema in the squatted former Film Akademie at Overtoom 301 in Amsterdam
... great new cinema with a very wide selection of films ... very open
programming and only 5 guilders to get in ... +++ At the same Film
Akademie, Andy will play, together with Paquito Bolino and Steve Heather a
live+improvised soundtrack to the Hopital Brut movie. +++ And what about
our singles-compilation? Sok now says: October, and this time he seems to
mean it! But can we believe him? +++ Former sales-queen Yoke gave birth to
a beautiful baby. She and Donkey-man Ajay are the proud parents of a son
called Arun. +++ Grrrt, our new sales-king, the walking talking
punkrocking encyclopedia of modern music ... Name that tune and he'll sing
the whole goddamn song! +++ 4Walls, the project featuring Luc, Phil
Minton, Michael Vatcher and Veryan Weston is recording an album on Red
Note in early May. +++ We tried to get some concerts at the South-African
festival in Grahamestown next year ... no luck this time, but be sure
we'll try again. +++ That's all for now. +++ Newsletter 8 arrives in
October 2000. +++ Till then. +++
Andy, Terrie, Luc, Sok,
Katrin, Colin, Grrrt.
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