KOCHER-BADRUTT duo
Both Swiss musicians have collaborated for years in different improvisational groups (examples include work with Hans Koch, Bertrand Gauguet, Olivier Toulemonde, and Michel Doneda). As a duo their work develops subtly, exploring the relations between the electronic sounds of the accordion and the instrumental potential of the electronic. They create a tense, fragmented sound universe, always open to the present and capitalizing on accidents.
Accordion player and composer Jonas Kocher studied with Teodoro Anzellotti, Pierre Sublet and Georges Aperghis. He collaborates regularly as accordionist in improvised and conceptual contexts with musicians such Michel Doneda, Christian Wolfarth, Olivier Toulemonde, Alfredo Costa Monteiro, Luca Venitucci, Burkhard Beins, duo Diatribes, Jacques Demierre, Christian Kesten, Gaudenz Badrutt, Chris Heenan, and others. Kocher's work explores the relationship between tone, noise and silence and the processus of listening. As a composer, he creates projects situated between composed theater, installation and concert pieces. His compositions have been played at Biennale Bern 2010, Theater Basel, Zentrum Paul Klee, Festival Encuentros Buenos Aires, KlangKunstBühne Berlin, Centre Dürrenmatt Neuchâtel, Festival Concentus Moravie, and the Zagreb Biennale. He also composes for hörspiel, dance and theater. Kocher also organizes different events in Switzerland and runs the label flexion records.
Gaudenz Badrutt performs with electronics. He studied piano, and, until 2003, he has played piano recitals of 20th century music. Since 1999, Badrutt's work as an electronic musician and improviser has become more prevalent, particularly as a member of the electroacoustic duo strøm. His instrument is a combination of acoustic soundsources and live sampling. Various projects, sound and video installations, music for theatre, as well as strøm and concerts (also as collaborations with Hans Koch, Michel Doneda, Norbert Moeslang, FM Einheit, Alexandre Babel, Bertrand Denzler, Burkhard Beins, Clayton Thomas, among others).
The evening willl start with a solo by Tomás Gris. About his own work he says, "my interest in the last year's focus on free improvisation using objects and acoustic instruments, and I decided to develop a sound language that approaches the artistic concepts of Dadaism, art brut, CoBrA Movement, etc. The sound, the silence, the noise, the 'discourse' beyond the meaning and their structure, discourse and ideology, the nonsense, and many others elements relating to contemporary art and philosophy are the reference horizons when I do my work. And all of this is always wrapped in the shade of philosophical meditation, with special interest in the question of ontological drifts from the irruption of 'modernity', ontological concepts from the mechanicism, the question about nihilism, postmodernism, etc."
The concert of Gaudenz Badrutt and Jonas Kocher is kindly supported by Pro Helvetia - swiss arts council and the Canton of Bern
