Pianist Ursel Schlicht plays improvised music, jazz, new music, and is a scholar and educator currently teaching Improvisation at the University of Kassel. Fostering intercultural collaboration has been an important focus of her work. She has brought together musicians from Europe, India, Eritrea, Mali, Japan, Afghanistan, Russia, and the USA, notably in her project Ex Tempore. Her compositions interweave notated and improvised material, and she interprets silent film classics Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Faust, and The Adventures of Prince Achmed with an avant-improv approach. Her work as leader or co-leader appears on Nemu, Cadence, CIMP, Hybrid, Konnex, Muse-Eek and Leo Records, with Robert Dick, Hans Tammen, Steve Swell, Lou Grassi, Ken Filiano, Bruce Arnold, Reuben Radding, et al. she is part of Hans Tammen ́s Third Eye Orchestra on innova records; forthcoming is a CD The Galilean Moons with Robert Dick. Ursel Schlicht holds a doctorate in musicology from the University of Hamburg, Germany, and has published a book about the working conditions of women jazz musicians, including Marian McPartland, Carline Ray, Joanne Brackeen, Connie Crothers, Jane Ira Bloom and Myra Melford. She has designed and taught seminars on Music & Gender and Improvisation at Ramapo College of New Jersey, and has taught Masterpieces of Western Music at Columbia University in New York.

Ursel Schlicht delivered this presentation at the vs. Interpretation Festival and Symposium in July 2014.

“SonicExchange took place in the summer of 2012 in the Kassel, Germany, and became a vibrant creative multidisciplinary project. My intent was to counteract the motto-driven cultural climate with open space and time, exchanging ideas through sound, dance, film and related art. Over fifty guests participated, from nine countries. Among them were free improvisers, composers, an Afghan poet and rubab player, dancers, electronic musicians.

“I purposely sought a location not connected with a particular aesthetic and found the Foto-Motel, an artistic guest house with studios for visual artists and a low-key and intimate setting. The first and only musician there, the hosts provided me a small studio and gave me carte blanche to use the adjacent lounge as a performance space, a large yard for performances outside, film screenings, also allowing communication between inside and outside. The flexibitity and simplicity was perfect for spontaneous programming of performances, sessions, talks.

“Dancers performed in the yard, artists showed films with live music in the lounge or projected outside on the wall. Five pianists created an evening of pianism around one piano. Composers spoke about their music and then improvised with other musicians. Five musicians arranged Icelandic songs as a quintet with voice, piano, accordion, violin and electronics. Others interpreted Afghan poetry and tales. As the ongoing avant-art exhibition Documenta(13) in Kassel transformed the entire city with literally hundreds of exhibitions, many of us were also very inspired by the visual arts.

“The name SonicExchange reflects the concept of meeting on equal grounds rather than a hierarchically structured or curated situation. Each participant had to make a conscious choice to be there, I did not invite or select. This led to a mix of local and international encounters. Interestingly, the gender balance was almost equal – unheard of in most festival lineups. Many events were filmed and we produced a two-hour long DVD. The DVD contains an 15-min introductory film about the idea and the process, followed by chapters showing thirteen concert events, and a chapter crediting all participants and supporters. I would like to discuss how improvisation has the power to connect artists from many disciplines across aesthetics, cultural differences, or language barriers, show excerpts of the film, and focus on a few events where borders were crossed in particularly successful ways.”