Thursday, December 7, 2023: F.I.M. meets VAMH/Hamburg scene

In the spirit of networking, the F.I.M. annually invites a national/international initiative of improvised music for musical exchange. This year the F.I.M. invites the Hamburg scene with the - Association for Contemporary Music Hamburg/VAMH.

In the evening, 4 musicians each from VAHM and F.I.M. will improvise and interact in five formations. For the F.I.M., among others, the drummer Mani Neumeier will play, who is known as the protagonist of the Krautrock band Guru Guru, but at the beginning of his musical career was arrested in Free Jazz (projects with Irene Schweizer, Alfred 23 Harth and others).

From VAMH:

• Birgit Ulher - trumpet, radion, speaker, objects
• Felix Mayer - trombone
• Gunnar Lettow - bass, objects, electronics
• Heiner Metzger - bass claninet, clarinet

Und vom F.I.M.:

• Eric Plandé - saxophone
• Christoph Aupperle - vibraphone
• Jürgen Werner - flute, bansuri
• Mani Neumeier - drums

The musicians

Birgit Ulher studied painting and free art, which still has a great influence on her music. Since 1982 she lives as a freelance musician, sound artist and composer in Hamburg.
With trumpet, radio, loudspeakers and other objects she has developed her own playing techniques and preparations. Apart from this material research, her special interest is the relationship between silence and sound.
Her work includes acoustic and electro-acoustic projects, solo performances, sound installations, videos, concerts with long-standing line-ups and ad hoc formations, as well as projects with visual artists and composers.
Since 2006 she has been working with loudspeakers, fed with radio sounds, which she uses as trumpet mutes. Here, the trumpet becomes both transmitter and receiver. Her solo work includes both pieces with feeds - Traces and splitting 21, a collaboration with Michael Maierhof - as well as pieces for sound installations - e.g. Reveille for the sound and light installation 'Wake Up' by Allora & Calzadilla.

Gunnar Lettow expands the sound of the electric bass through different preparations such as skewers, clamps and brushes as well as the use of effect devices. Current projects include Duo and Korhan Erel (Laptop, Istanbul), as well as with Robert Klammer (electronics, Hamburg). He regularly plays in ad-hoc ensembles and since 2010 has organized the concert series Frequency Courses for improvised and experimental music in Hamburg.

Felix Mayer *1990 is a trombonist, composer and sound artist active in the field of experimental music. In bands, collectives and ad-hoc groups, he explores the boundaries of improvisational and instrumental practice. As a composer, he deals with alternative notation possibilities such as text and game pieces, video scores and improvisation concepts. In addition, he works in multidisciplinary contexts with literature, film, dance, theatre and performance and organises the concert series “sonopol”. In installation-based, site-specific works, he deals with the possibilities of successful communication, connection and relationship via (always) alienating aids. Based on pandemic-related shifts and alienations as well as the experiences of isolation, isolation and the confrontation with the relationship between closeness and distance, he explores, among other things, the possibilities that arise through the processing, alienation and design of sound material with canned telephones.

Heiner Metzger (*1954) has been working with improvisation and experimental music, composition and performance since the eighties. Instruments: soundtable, saxophone, clarinets, synthesizer and piano. In ensembles and ad hoc groups. In the 80s he co-founded the groups vis, tyrrn, Timeta and performances with dancers, visual artists and the World Music Ensemble. Until 2006 he was a musician and composer in the TonArt Ensemble, where he researched graphic notation for a larger ensemble.
In 2005 he developed the soundtable, an instrument / table with and on which sounds of objects and the table are amplified. Since 2007 concerts with the Stark Bewölkt Quartett, with Gregory Büttner, Michael Maierhof, Birgit Ulher. 2019 Founding of the Ensemble EMN, with Kristin Kuldkepp, Christoph Funabashi, Felix Mayer - which focuses on the performance of graphic scores, play or text pieces and open compositions.
In collaboration with musicians of the international experimental and improvisation scene he organizes concert series: the h7-club for contemporary music, the festival "blurred edges" with and in the Association for Contemporary Music Hamburg e.V. (VAMH) and produces the monthly radio show for current music / klingding on the local radio station FSK. With Judith Haman: Videos, installations, performances and organization of the artists' spaces Blinzelbar / Frappant.

Eric Plandé ... a saxophonist the likes of which you rarely meet. He has an almost explosive urge to play with an enormous virtuosity and creative furor... (Ulrich Olshausen F.A.Z.)
He is a saxophonist and was born in Marseille in France. He plays tenor, soprano saxophone and flute. His career as a saxophonist began in the south-west of France and then continued in Paris and Frankfurt am Main.
He plays in France and Germany with musicians such as Joachim Kühn, Barre Phillips, John Betsch, Jean-Paul Celea, Bob Degen, Jürgen Wuchner, Heinz Sauer, Janus Stefansky, Uwe Oberg and many others, as well as in art projects by painters e.g. Barbara Heinisch and Ahmad Rafi, the actresses Fanny Ardant and Maruschka Detmers, the dancer Sara Orselli.

Christoph Aupperle: Growing up in Böblingen, he came back to Stuttgart via Paris (jazz studies, including special prize of the city of Paris for vibraphone), Brazil (out of love for Latin jazz) and further studies in New York (vibraphone with David Samuels, piano with John Lewis, arrangement with Gil Evans, gigs with Chris Woods and Gil Evans).
Today he lives in Frankfurt and works as a vibraphonist and pianist in and from the Main metropolis with numerous Latin and jazz formations.
Christoph Aupperle about himself: "There's nothing like a good band with which you can achieve chamber music density, but in which there is also can go off mightily. Jazz is freedom with rules that give orientation and has something of 'saving childhood'. Trying things out again and again, picking up ideas and continuing to shoot is extremely inspiring, it's the choice without agony."

Jürgen Werner: After classical training on the flute, learning various saxophones, dealing with traditional playing styles (jazz standards, bossa nova), free improvisation became a focus of his musical interest. As a member of the F.I.M. in the 90s, he continued to play freely improvised music in various formations (including the Katharsis Ensemble) even after its dissolution.
Trips to Cuba and India brought world music influences and extensions of the instrumentation (ind. Bansuri, Kalimba).
Apart from dogmatism, purism and stylistic conventions, his musical conception is to incorporate influences from a wide variety of playing styles - from new music, world music to free jazz - into free improvisation.

Mani Neumeier is a veteran of Krautrock. Once a renowned jazz drummer with the famous 'Iréne-Schweizer-Trio', he was inspired by the wave of psychedelic rock spilling over from the USA to Germany in 1968 and founded the pioneering band 'Guru Guru' with countless concerts all over the world and with around 30 albums he has written music history.
Although a legend, he is not characterized by a trace of arrogance, on the contrary, in his solo concert he convinced not only with an incredible energy, but also with an age-wise charm that resembles that of a European shaman who has found safe waters after an odyssey through the harmonious or chaotic spheres of sounds. Highly precise depth, in which ferocity and grace, relaxation and frenzied chase alternated through the dirt cloud of listening habits, proved that he is one of the best, if not the best, drummer and percussionist in our country.
It was not showmanship, but a serious and at the same time childlike portrayal of the many sound worlds that he had explored over six decades that made it clear that his performance was more than an extraordinary musical event. (hh)
© 2006 Frankfurter Rundschau - 2007 Mani Neumeier