SUN APR 9

Embodying the radiance of R&B vocalists, the immaculateness of church hymns, and the soul-stirring power of devotional music, musician Ana Roxanne makes incredibly intimate pieces of music that combine meditative drone, calming ambient soundscapes, and angelic vocals. Being both enamoured with the sacredness of choral music and the divinity of classical Hindustani singing, and obsessed with the brilliance of R&B and pop divas, Roxanne channels all these inspirations into her emotionally expressive, vulnerable work. Her debut album ~~~ (2019) was created during her last years residing in the Bay Area, where Roxanne attended the experimental Mills College, and functions as a tribute to the formative musicians and musical styles that inspired her. Follow-up Because of a Flower (2020) is a heartbreaking, poetic meditation on notions of gender identity, beauty, and cruelty. Roxanne describes her process as beginning with “a drone element and a mood,” then she incrementally intuits melody, syllables, and lyrics, like sacred shapes materialising from mist.

Andrews & Matt Davies

Channelling the rhythmically diverse MIDI experimentations of Mark Fell or Autechre and soaking them in bright synthesiser sound design, Church Andrews & Matt Davies have found a unique approach to their compositions and performances of electronic music, in which Andrews’s synth sounds and Davies’s drum performances act in response to one another. As heard on recent debut album Axis, the results are a series of sonic organisms — semi-mechanical ecosystems that click and whirr with subtle, shifting focuses. On a compositional level, the British duo often work with alternate tunings, employing just intonation or observed tunings derived from instruments and musical styles from all across the world. Heavily experimenting with time signatures and morphing temporals, their minimal sound palette feels rhythmically and aesthetically diverse. Even on stage, Andrews’s synth sounds will inform what Davies plays and vice versa, generating organic, exploratory, spontaneous, and incredibly fun electronic music.

Dawuna European premiere

The experimental yet effortless R&B of Dawuna conjures an intoxicating story world in which Dawuna is the mysterious protagonist. After releasing his staggeringly beautiful album Glass Lit Dream, Dawuna became somewhat of an internet sensation himself, garnering widespread acclaim from the who’s who of contemporary music. The underground hit beautifully renders gospel, soul, R&B, and dance into a texturally rich, emotionally inviting, and otherworldly whole. Dawuna’s incredible range as a vocalist — all crooning, whispering, lamenting — is perfectly carried by his minimal productions that include shades of ambient, lo-fi hip hop, and intoxicating synth lines. During Rewire 2023, Dawuna performs songs of his opus, amongst others, and showcases his extraordinary musical talents, unflinching songwriting chops, and spirituous stage presence.

Ghosted (Oren Ambarchi / Johan Berthling / Andreas Werliin)

A sense of free-spirited collaboration guides the vibes on Ghosted (2022), a transcendent collective work by musicians Oren Ambarchi, Johan Berthling, and Andreas Werliin. Taking musical cues from 70s ECM jazz, electronic minimalism, African music, krautrock, and many other influences, the trio lays down incredibly groovy pieces of music that are impeccably constructed but sound and feel effortless. Aussie guitarist Ambarchi is one of the experimental scene’s most recognizable figures, while Swedish bassist Johan Berthling is best known for founding the Häpna imprint and performing in bands such as Fire! and Tape. Drummer Andreas Werliin completes the puzzle, bringing his varied experience playing with Wildbirds & Peacedrums and Fire! Amongst others. These seasons musicians have been playing together for years, and Ghosted is where everything falls perfectly into place.

Grand River

All Above (live A/V)

As Grand River, Berlin-based Dutch-Italian composer and sound designer Aimée Portioli creates experimental electronic music with rich emotional colours. Her work is atmospheric yet rhythmically complex, incorporating a wide range of contemporary compositional and production techniques. On her third album All Above, Portioli seeks out what guiding forces might be driving, enticing, and affecting us, blurring the boundaries between electronic and acoustic and sculpting from familiar ambient forms personal themes that are painted with rich emotional colours. Written painstakingly over the last two years, All Above is the most ambitious and divergent set of music Portioli has assembled so far, incorporating voices, strings, organs, guitars, and synthesisers, besides the piano. During Rewire 2023, Grand River presents the intricate instrumentation of her album as a brand new live show, with light design by Marco Ciceri and Andert Tysma on the acoustic piano.

Joe Rainey & String Quartet European premiere

From a young age onwards, Joe Rainey was an astute pupil of Pow Wow music, recording and bootlegging influential Pow Wow groups on tape so he could absorb their rhythmic and melodic qualities. With his debut album Niineta (2022), he now demonstrates his own command of the Pow Wow style, descending from Indigenous singing heard across what is now called Minnesota. His musical project is one of channelling and echoing — orchestrating and recontextualizing the ancient Pow Wow song forms in exciting and new in-between places. Collaborating with producer and artist Andrew Broder, Rainey has crafted a distinct take on this traditional music with bombastic, occasionally dark, and menacing electronics. Rewire has invited Rainey, Broder, and Netherlands-based string players Alistair Sung, Isa Goldschmeding, Jellantsje de Vries, and Thora Sveinsdóttir for a residency in The Hague to translate Niineta into a brand new live show.

Kelela

The music of Kelela has always been simultaneously suited for a packed club event and an intimate listening session at home. By embracing emerging club styles pioneered by visionary producers like Bok Bok, Arca, and Jam City, Kelela has reshaped contemporary R&B in her own vision with brooding instrumentals, soaring vocals, and glistening sound design. Murky textures of bass music and dark club tracks can turn into gorgeous pieces of adventurous pop music thanks to the ever-crystalline presence of this outstanding vocalist. Kelela keeps nurturing this unique sound, resulting in instant-classic releases like the bouncy mixtape Cut 4 Me (2013), introspective club opus Hallucinogen (2015), and stunning debut album Take Me Apart (2017). Her most recent, critically-acclaimed studio album Raven, marked Kelela’s return with new music after five years.

Leslee Smucker

Worlds Within — world premiere

Leslee Smucker is a performer-composer utilising violin, voice, synthesisers, electronics, film, and poetry. For Rewire 2023’s Sensory Sensitive Concert, Smucker has developed the performance Worlds Within, a concert that evokes and invites discovery of sound within ourselves. Through this performance — suitable for stimulus-sensitive audiences — she invites the audience into sound worlds and resonances that reside within us by creating an environment conducive to listening, accompanied by resonances that invite deep listening and reflection. The concert takes the setting inspiration from a prehistoric cave, and travels through six tableaus composed for solo violin using octave lower strings, mutes, low-rosined bows, and handmade ceramic resonators. The hope of the work is to celebrate what is usually unheard or unnoticed—illuminating resonances with our ancient selves.

Commissioned by Rewire.

M. Takara & Carla Boregas

Versatile percussionist Mauricio Takara and distinctive sound artist Carla Boregas had long been key players in the experimental and underground music scene in São Paulo before relocating to Berlin. The two musicians have performed with each other so frequently that there’s a depth and fluidity that blurs the lines between their roles. As heard on their most recent album Grande Massa D’Agua (Great Body of Water) (2022), the duo explores themes related to water as they dive into uncharted musical depths. Evoking spiritual jazz, tinkered vintage dub, kosmische krautrock, and even leftfield punk, Takara’s fluid, nimble percussion bathes in the atmospheric and idiosyncratic synth work and sound manipulation of Boregas. In the music of Takara and Boregas, both water and sound have the ability to awaken in us different memories and emotional or physical states.

Maria Chávez + Mariam

Rezaei + Victoria Shen world premiere

Sound artists, composers, and performers

Maria Chávez, Mariam Rezaei, and Victoria Shen share an affinity for the turntable as an instrument for musical experimentation and improvisation. All three of these artists have become internationally renowned for their unique kind of turntablism, giving a new framework for a near-archaic and inherently lo-fi form of music making. Chávez’s book, Of Technique: Chance Procedures on Turntable (2012), further explores the turntable and its capabilities for live improvisation, while Rezaei presents a podcast on contemporary turntablism called These Are The Breaks… For Rewire

2023 Chávez, Rezaei, and Shen have been invited to collaborate on a commission to develop a performance for 12 turntables. The trio will be using “Needle Nails,” acrylic nails with built-in turntable needles that allow for simultaneous playback of multiple sound sources on the same record, developed by Shen.

Commissioned by Rewire & Counterflows.

No Plexus world premiere

No Plexus, an electronic duo comprising of Bec Plexus and No Compliments, create experimental electronic music that is conceptual, through-composed, and genre-defying. They embody art-school misfits, unapologetically executing their own creative vision in everything they do. Projecting out-there club music through an art-pop lens, the music of No Plexus is vibrant, audacious, and bewildering. During Rewire 2021, they presented the visual album Manicurism, a jolting work of intense music and choreographed film, shot entirely with racing drones. No Plexus are Rewire’s Young Artist in Residence for 2023 and 2024, during which they will even further hone in on their craft and develop new music and live performances. During Rewire 2023, they’ll perform alongside the celebrated stage and light designer Emmanuel Biard, who also designed the stage and lighting for Evian Christ’s performance at Rewire 2022.

This performance is commissioned by Rewire. Co-presented by Carhartt WIP.

Okkyung Lee’s Yeo-Neun Quartet European premiere

For the first time in Europe, Okkyung Lee presents her Yeo-Neun Quartet, which elegantly binds modern classical composition and freely improvised music with the emotive drama of Korean traditional music and popular ballads. A vital force in the contemporary global landscape of experimental music, Okkyung Lee is widely regarded for her solo and collaborative improvisations and compositions. Yeo-Neun (2020), recorded by Yeo-Neun Quartet — an experimental chamber music ensemble founded in 2016 and led by Lee on cello, featuring harpist Maeve Gilchrist, pianist Jacob Sacks, and bassist Eivind Opsvik — represents the culmination of one of longest and most intimate arcs in her remarkable career. Its 10 discrete works are born of the ambient displacement of the musician’s life: from her early days spent away from home studying the cello in Seoul and Boston, to her subsequent move to New York and the nomadism of a near-endless routine of tours.

Pak Yan Lau Bakunawa

Born in Belgium, with roots in Hong Kong, and now based in Brussels, Pak Yan Lau is a sound artist, improviser, musician, and composer, who has developed over the years a rich, dense, and captivating sound universe from prepared pianos, toy pianos, synths, electronics, and various sound objects. Skilfully blending electro-acoustic approaches, she explores sound in a bewitching way, merging different sound sources with poetry, magic, and finesse. During Rewire 2023, alongside her ensemble, consisting of Vera Cavallin, Giovanni Di Domenico, João Lobo, and Theo Lanau, Pak Yan performs a live rendition of her recent album Bakunawa (2021), delving and digging deep into the sound spectrum of detuned toy pianos, second-hand gong rods, prepared harp, metal tubes, and ring modulators.

This performance is a co-production of STUK, nona & Cortizona. This project performs during Rewire 2023 with the support of Flemish Arts Centre de Brakke Grond, VierNulVier & STUK.

Pamela Z A Secret Code

The driving force of Pamela Z’s luminous musical career has been to unearth sounds unheard and unfelt. Combining voice, live electronics, sampled sound, and video in real time, Z weaves complex and beguiling musical pieces from a plethora of sources. The renowned composer and performer is a pioneer of live digital looping techniques, processing her live voice to create dense sonic layers. Her solo works combine experimental extended vocal techniques, operatic bel canto, found objects, text, digital processing, and wireless MIDI controllers that allow her to manipulate sound through her physical gestures. Widely celebrated for her compositional work and unique performances, Z is a peer of like-minded innovators of contemporary music such as John Cage and Meredith Monk. During Rewire, her performance includes works from her most recent solo album A Secret Code, which shines brightly with musical playfulness, inventiveness, and virtuosity.

Patrick Belaga, Asma Maroof & Tapiwa Svosve The Sport of Love

Besides performing in the chamber music ensemble that’s part of 33’s performance, cellist Patrick Belaga also performs Sport of Love, the result of an ongoing collaborative project between Belaga, producer Asma Maroof, and saxophonist Tapiwa Svosve. The group first worked together in 2020 at a theatrical residency for Schauspielhaus Zürich, scoring a performance piece directed by artist and performer Wu Tsang. Since then, they have collaborated on numerous projects scoring for dance, film, theatre, and fashion presentations. Over the past few years the group has developed a symbiotic musical rapport and a body of work that has been shaped into an album titled Sport of Love that will be released in the spring of 2023 on label PAN. The group will perform a site specific live improvisational interpretation of the album for Rewire 2023.

Pavel Milyakov & Perila world premiere

Having worked with Rewire alumni like Norwegian sax virtuoso Bendik Giske and Ukrainian singer Yana Pavlova, prolific Berlin-based producer Pavel Milyakov (aka Buttechno) has shown his merits as a collaborative chameleon. For their world premiere at Rewire 2023, Milyakov graces the stage with Perila, the moniker of Berlin-based electronic musician Aleksandra Zakharenko, who has become a mainstay in the city’s experimental and avant-garde scenes. A collaborative album of the pair is slated to be released in 2023. Perila’s sensual and experimental works, sitting comfortably between ambient and musique concrète, are already a fascinating match for Milyakov’s shapeshifting guitar-focussed output. For this collaboration Perila also performs as a vocalist, alternating between dreamy pop and poetic spoken word. Matched together with Milyakov’s hazy mix of electronics and guitar, this joint enterprise results in mesmerising, smokey, and effortlessly cool music.

Pierce Warnecke & Matthew Biederman Spillover

After their live A/V performance of Somnifacient Signals during the 2021 online edition, Pierce Warnecke & Matthew Biederman return to Rewire for another collaboration using visual data sets for realtime audio and video mapping. Spillover’s focal point is a mountain range in northern Portugal that is scheduled to be destroyed to facilitate a proposed lithium mine. Through the use of aerial and land-based photogrammetry, Warnecke & Biederman have found a way to visualise and sonify the proposed landscaping project, providing an audiovisual metaphor for our fraught relationship with environmental extraction, where the landscape itself becomes the instrument. Spillover addresses and examines issues of the borders and the transitional spaces between man-made and natural landscapes, raising concerns for the Earth’s future, and bringing attention to a point that requires more focus: the inevitable meeting of society and nature.

Soundwalk Collective & Patti Smith Correspondences — world premiere

For its 2023 edition, Rewire is proud to present the world premiere of Correspondences, the result of an ongoing collaborative project and conversation between Soundwalk Collective and legendary artist, poet and performer Patti Smith that has spanned over 10 years and across multiple geographies. Soundwalk Collective’s founder Stephan Crasneanscki has explored and recorded at remote places all over the world to establish a sonic grammar that is underpinned by instrumental experimental compositions. All in the effort to create a musical space for Patti Smith to inhabit with her own poetry and voice. This ongoing resonance between the artists is expanded by ample studio recordings and experiments.

Following their inaugural performance of Perfect Vision in Centre Pompidou, this new and evolved show features visuals by filmmaker Pedro Maia, and will be performed by Soundwalk Collective’s Stephan Crasneanscki and Simone Merli, Patti Smith, Lucy Railton, and Nicolas Becker.

The worlds of guitarist and vocalist Steve Gunn and pianist and composer David Moore collided when Moore, the mastermind behind Bing & Ruth, worked on a remix of Steve Gunn’s Reflection. Gunn’s latest album Other You (2021) is a pleasantly contemplative piece of music, that feels like watching a sunset disappear beneath an urban horizon. In the remix, Moore’s minimalist sensibilities stretch out Gunn’s beautiful melancholy and turn his music into smokey, neon-drenched latenight bar music. It was the starting point for a more in-depth collaboration that resulted in the album Let the Moon Be a Planet. This album is an invitation to relive the intimate moments shared between two artists finding their way along a single path, and into a world where the most subtle of gestures can eternally ripple.

Recognized as a virtuoso, versatile and innovative artist in marimba and percussion, Bulgarian-born, Netherlands-based musician Tatiana Koleva has premiered over 100 works created especially for her solo and ensemble projects. For Rewire 2023, Koleva will be joined by renowned Bulgarian kaval player Zhivko Vasilev; integrating elements of Bulgarian folk music, in combination with electronics, contemporary music, jazz and improvisation in their duo compositions. Through the warmth of the rosewood enchanted by the live electronics, additional percussion, and the sound design of the equally important artist Ruben Kieftenbelt in this new formation, the audience will be immersed in a sublime world of sound scapes, intriguing harmonie and a unique mix of genres and styles. In addition and especially for the occasion, a new remix version with live electronics of one of the most famous percussion solo Rebonds by Xenakis will be presented.

Tim Hecker & Vincent de Belleval world premiere

The work of renowned Canadian musician and sound artist Tim Hecker has been described as “structured ambient,” “tectonic colour plates,” and “cathedral electronic music.” More to the point, he has focused on exploring the intersection of noise, dissonance, and melody, fostering an approach to songcraft which is both deeply physical and emotive. For Rewire 2019, Hecker was invited to perform his masterful piece Konoyo alongside the Konoyo Ensemble. Now, Hecker is commissioned by Rewire and co-commissioned by Le Lieu Unique for a unique, collaborative show with installation, stage, and object design by multidisciplinary artist Vincent de Belleval. Utilizing custom-made LED lights that are adjusted to Hecker’s music, this show explores different ways to “break up the grid” and find new interactions between light, sound, colours, contrasts, and textures.

Commissioned by Rewire.

upsammy & Jonathan Castro

Germ in a Population of Buildings — world premiere

Dutch DJ and producer Thessa Torsing, better known as upsammy, makes dreamy, abstract dance tracks that fluidly switch between styles such as electro, techno, and IDM. The Amsterdam-based artist earned acclaim for her adventurous DJ sets, which span a wide range of BPMs, and her gliding, spacious productions inspired by nature and science fiction. Following several sought-after EPs, she released her full-length debut, Zoom, in 2020 to high praise. upsammy’s explorative-based musical practice compliments that of graphic designer and multidisciplinary artist Jonathan Castro Alejos, whose work oscillates between the real and the fictitious, the tactile and the artificial, the recognizable and the uncanny. For Rewire 2023, the duo are joining forces to present the world premiere of Germ in a Population of Building, a live A/V show based around upsammy’s upcoming album on PAN.

Wacław Zimpel & Ben Kreukniet world premiere

Polish composer, classically-trained clarinettist, and multi-instrumentalist Wacław Zimpel is a beloved alumnus of Rewire. Risen to prominence due to his spellbinding albums, stunningly melodic free-jazz experiments, and adventurous performances, Zimpel has long been one of the most important figures in Warsaw’s vibrant jazz and improv scene. Zimpel now returns to Rewire 2023 to present a new performance based around the material of his recent album Train Spotter. Incorporating field recordings made in 2021 during his art scholarship with the city of Warsaw, Zimpel explores a more electronic dimension to his music, while retaining his unbridled creativity and multi-instrumentalist sensibilities. The world premiere of this performance at Rewire 2023 includes light and video design by esteemed multimedia artist Ben Kreukniet, whose collaborators include James Blake and Massive Attack, amongst others.

Zoh Amba with Johan Berthling & Frank Rosaly

At the age of 22, composer, saxophonist, and flautist Zoh Amba has been heralded as one of the biggest emerging artists to come out of the New York jazz and avant-garde music scene. Originally hailing from Tennessee, the break-out talent rapidly rose to notoriety in New York because of her powerful musical compositions and improvisations, performed with a deep sense of spirituality and emotional power. Her inquisitive and high-spirited music blends elements from avant-garde and noise, alongside devotional hymns and turns them into powerful, improvisational jazz. Highly productive and prolific, 2022 saw the release of two solo albums and two collaborative LPs, all of them tied together by her powerfully unique avantgarde sensibilities. For her performance at Rewire 2023, Amba is joined on stage by Dutch percussionist Frank Rosaly — who’s also performing in The Paper Ensemble alongside Ale Hop — and bass player Johan Berthling of Ghosted.

Zebra Katz

Zebra Katz, born Ojay Morgan, is a Jamaican-American multidisciplinary rapper, producer, songwriter and performing artist. His breakthrough hit Ima Read (2012) became a smash-hit due to its stark production, iconic vocals, and oozing, libidinal energy. Genre-defying and self-made, the Zebra Katz character originally surfaced through Morgan’s thesis project at the Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts at the New School. Making music became an extension of Morgan’s interest in theatre and culture studies, identity obsession, and the lively New York City underground arts scene around him. Debut album LESS IS MOOR (2020) further proved his knack for combining experimental music and club bangers in a performative and eccentric mould. Finding inspiration in artists like James Baldwin, Grace Jones, Nina Simone, and Little Richard, the versatile LESS IS MOOR is a pop juggernaut that packs a heavy discursive punch. On stage, Zebra Katz’s music translates to high energy performances that draw the audience into Morgan’s captivating persona.