I) The Concept

In 2003 curator Gene Coleman, bass clarinet player and composer from Chicago, will present projects primarily by Chinese and Japanese musicians. Among them are the singer Liu Sola, whose music wanders freely between Blues, New York jazz and classical Chinese music, or Yoshihide Otomo, star of Tokyo's experimental scene; the German ensemble L’ART POUR L’ART will present its close cooperation with the composer Jô Kondô from Japan, Yumiko Tanaka, a representative of Japanese noise rock and also a virtuoso on the traditional lute, the shamisen, will meet Carl Stone, a master of electronic music. The musicians and composers not only traverse countries and continents in their joint projects, but by involving themselves with the musical traditions and current work of their colleagues also surpass the limitations of their genre. They will explore uncharted territory – literally, culturally and musically.

With transonic, the House of World Cultures is pursuing its central aim, which is to promote dialogue between non-European and Western cultures. The series of musical events continues a pattern which started successfully in 1998 with the guitarist Jean-Paul Bourelly and the "Backroom" series of jazz performances or the "Innovative Music Meeting", and is conceived as a production forum for new developments in the international music scene, an experimental field not limited to categories such as new music, jazz or world music.

The meeting of these musical worlds gives music a new note. At issue is not a fusion but rather a discriminating engagement with historical forms of composition and improvisation or highly individual contemporary positions. The objective of such open fields of experiment is the development of new aesthetic forms and the radical examination of our own forms of production and perception. In cooperation with these musicians from around the world and their projects transonic wants to address radical issues relating to traditions and the determinants of cultural politics. The absolutist claims of the Western avant-garde have been ignored for a long time, but today they are increasingly the focus of criticism by art practitioners and theorists. The meeting of Western and non-European musical traditions has its own history which is also increasingly the subject of examination and has become the direct and indirect frame of reference for transonic.

The essential theme is not so much the question whether non-European thinking, forms of composition or instruments are being used for Western music development, but rather how they are being used. In which forms can musicians and composers from different cultural and aesthetic traditions work on new means of musical expression without exploiting the other for their own, usually Western, means of expression? Experimental music creates a space in which the differences between Western and Eastern musical tradition are losing their significance. The experimental space is becoming the ideal ground for unconditional encounter, comparable with the tabula rasa described by Frantz Fanon for the postcolonial position. The players leave behind the concept of the political implications of Western art without ever negating their forms of aesthetic expression.

The many strata of modernism and local traditions, of avant-garde and archaism, of spirituality and rationalism, of political involvement and aesthetic expression, of humanism and emancipation are revealed as a unique, transcultural process. Today, the goal is no longer the futuristic lingua franca, independent of traditional determinants or local nuances, but rather an unoccupied note on which musicians from Asia, Europe and the USA can meet and experiment.

II) The Program

Friday, 10. Januar 2003, 20 Uhr

Confucian Blues
Sola Hard
Liu Sola (Komposition und Gesang), Amina C. Myers (Klavier), Fernando Saunders (Bass), Pheeroan Aklaff (Schlagzeug), Li Zhengui (Perkussion), Yang Jing (Pipa), Yuan Sha (Zheng), Liang Heping (Synthesizer), Pu Hai (Perkussion), An Zhigang (Perkussion), Zhang Lie (Perkussion)

Saturday, 11. Januar 2002, 20 Uhr

Confucian Blues
Sola Soft
Liu Sola (Komposition und Gesang) und Amina C. Myers (Klavier) mit Yang Jing (Pipa)

Tuesday, 14. Januar, 20 Uhr

Ensemble L’ART POUR L’ART
spielt Werke von Jo Kondo, John Cage und Isang Yun
Werkeinführung: Jo Kondo
Astrid Schmeling (Flöten), Ariadne Daskalakis (Violine), Michael Schröder (Gitarre), Hartmut Leistritz (Klavier), Stefan Schäfer (Kontrabass), Matthias Kaul (Perkussion), Norma Enns (Sopran)

Thursday, 16. Januar 2003, 20 Uhr

Klänge in Freiheit setzen
Yoko Nishi und das Ensemble N_ER
spielen Werke von Yûji Takahashi und John Cage
Paulo Alvares (Klavier), Vincent Royer (Viola), Matthias Kaul (Perkussion), Gene Coleman (Bassklarinette), Krassimir Sterev (Akkordeon)

Friday, 24. Januar 2003, 12 bis 22 Uhr

Neue Musik und Globalisierung
Conference
mit: Hamza Walker (Chicago), John Corbett (Chicago), Sachiko Matsubara (Tokio), Christian Utz (Wien), Carl Stone (Tokio/San Francisco), Min Xiao Fen (New York), Yumiko Tanaka (Tokio), Gene Coleman (Chicago)

Saturday, 25. Januar 2003, 20 Uhr

Konstruktive Interferenzen
Carl Stone, Min Xiao-Fen und Yumiko Tanaka spielen Werke von Carl Stone
Carl Stone (Komposition und Laptop), Min Xiao-Fen (Pipa), Yumiko Tanaka (Japan) Bass-Shamisen

Wednesday, 29. Januar 2003, 20 Uhr

The Four Elements
Gene Coleman und Yoshihide Otomo
Ko Ishikawa (Shô) Aya Motohashi (Hichiriki) Takeshi Sasamoto (Ryuteki) Xasax Saxophone Quartet:Serge Bertocchi, Jean-Michel Goury, Pierre-Stéphane Meugé, Marcus Weiss, Burkhard Stangl (Gitarre und Electronics) Gunter Schneider (Gitarre und Electronics) Rei Hotoda (Dirigentin), Gene Coleman (Sound-Projektion), Yoshihide Otomo (Gitarre, Turntables und Electronics), Sachiko M. (Sine Wave Sampler und Electronics)

Thursday, 30. Januar 2003, 20 Uhr

The Combination of the Four Elements
Yoshihide Otomo und Gene Coleman
Ko Ishikawa (Shô), Aya Motohashi (Hichiriki), Sasamoto Takeshi (Ryuteki), XASAX Saxophone Quartet, Gene Coleman (Bassklarinette und Video-Projektion), Sachiko M. (Sine Wave Sampler und Electronics), Yoshihide Otomo (Gitarre und Turntables), Tom Denlinger (Video-Projektion), Rei Hotoda (Dirigentin)