130701 Transcendentalists European Tour

On sale to Red & Orange Members - Mon 21 Nov 10am
On sale to the general public - Tue 22 Nov 10am

A special triple bill of Fat Cat artists, all of whom are opening up very different pathways through the new musical zone where post-classical, electronica, ambient and song meet.

Johann Johannsson was born in Iceland but currently lives in Copenhagen, Denmark. His first solo record - Englabörn - combined the influence of Baroque music, Erik Satie, Bernard Herrmann, Moondog and the electronic music of labels like Mille Plateaux and Mego, and it became a defining document of an emerging new sound. Subsequent releases like Virthulegu Forsetar (for brass ensemble, pipe organ, electronic drones and percussion) and IBM 1401 - A User's Manual (2006) (for 60-piece string orchestra) expanded both his musical vision and his influence. His most recent record The Miners' Hymns was a collaboration with the film-maker Bill Morrison, originally commissioned by the Brass Durham International Festival. For this show, Johann will perform with film projections and a string ensemble.

Hauschka is the alias of German pianist / composer Volker Bertelmann, who currently resides in Dusseldorf. He studied classical piano for ten years, but his work as Hauschka is based upon a playful exploration of the possibilities of the 'prepared' piano - a playfully disruptive intervention into the preconceived idea of the piano as a pure-toned, perfected instrument waiting for a gifted virtuoso to play on it. With the aid of his interventions, the piano becomes as much a machine for generating rhythms as it does for melody. His pieces are small rhythmic sound-vignettes inspired by East Asian harmonies, the minimalism of Reich, Glass and Nyman, and also by in Satie and Ravel. He is joined for this performance by Samuli Kosminen of Mum, which whom he toured successfully in 2011.

Dustin O'Halloran - born in Los Angeles but based in Berlin - is a pianist and composer of languid and contemplative melodies. A pair of solo piano recordings (made in 2005 and 2006) opened up a route away from Devics (the band he formed with Sarah Lov back in the 1990s) and towards a new voice. Since then, he has written soundtracks for Sofia Coppola and William Olsen and explored ever more expansive arrangements, bringing sighing strings, wistful harps and warm woodwind to recent records like Lumiere and Vorleben (both 2011). For this show, Dustin will perform with a string quartet.