Microtonal Music Studios Research and Study Programme Exhibition and Event Week
09.05.-19.05.2024
Vernissage/ Avajaiset 09.05.2024 18:00-20:00
Performance Schedule
16.05.- Stéphane Clor solo Rhizome
17.05.- Dylan Rodgers // Dr. Ryo Sugiyama
18.05.- Tianjun Li // Lucía Hinojosa Gaxiola
Participating artists:
Nemat Battah, Melik Turunen, Noah Jordan, Stephen Webb, Dylan Rodgers, Rebecca Minten, Jacob Elkin, Dr. Ryo Sugiyama, Tianjun Li (aka. Timjune Lee), Juulia Haverinen.
Visiting Artists:
Paul Devens, Lucia Hinojosa Gaxiola, Linda Sormin
Microtonal Music Studios is a project directed by Timo Tuhkanen
The first Microtonal Music Studios Research and Study program exhibition and event week explores the practices of participating student practices through voice and text, image, microtonality, instrument making, and performance. As well as an installation the week contains discussions, concerts, and performances from all participants. More events and programme will be announced so please stay tuned for it!
Poster by Sahar Ajami
Microtonal Music Studios 2023-24 Research and Study Programme Student Biographies
Nemat Battah is a Palestinian Jordanian singer, oud player, composer and educator. She is now based in Helsinki, Finland where she is a part time lecturer, Vice-head of the Global music department in Sibelius Academy, and partly a freelance musician collaborating with several artists in Finland and Abroad. At the moment, Nemat is also developing her new solo project using Oud, voice and loop station.
Melik Turunen is a musician based in Helsinki. He is especially interested in intercultural musical collaboration, exploring new musical aesthetics and discussing artistic identities. Free improvisation is a very dear technique of music-making to him.
Noah Jordan studied Piano in the Royal Conservatory of Music in Canada (1993-2005), composition and jazz piano in Capilano University in Vancouver (2008-2010). Simultaneously, he studied mathematics, physics, and linguistics at Simon Fraser University (2007-2013). Afterwards, he focused his studies on composition, mathematical music theory, tuning, and piano restoration (2018-2020). He toured and recorded in USA and Canada with the group Redrick Sultan (2010-2016) and toured as a soloist with improvisation of microtonal piano in Mexico and the USA where he gave workshops (2016-2020).
He has collaborated in interdisciplinary expositions in Israel, Iceland, France, and Italy, and in residences in Mexico and Iceland (2018-2019). Noah continues his studies in microtonality, creating new works for Just intonation piano with sound objects (in collaboration with Roxanne Nesbitt) and Just Intonation Requintos (constructed in December 2020, and another in early 2021), which are currently being released as instrumental tracks and in collaboration with the poetry of Tania Marquez Aragon for the project Borders / Fronteras.
He released the book Detrás del Horizonte in late 2021 (bilingual in Spanish and English) in collaboration with Tania Marquez Aragon and Patricio Hidalgo about the evolution of the fandango and the life of maestro Patricio Hidalgo Belli. He has recently returned from being artist in residence in West Africa studying microtonality and oral traditions, and working on photo-video-poem-music works with his project Borders / Fronteras including tracks with a 23-limit jarana, and has recently released a new album (Sept 2023) featuring pieces and improvisations with a 13-limit microtonal requinto “I Was Once a River”
Dylan Rodgers is a recent graduate from the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Ethnomusicology program. Throughout his studies of various global musical traditions, Dylan has remained an avid composer and sonic experimentalist. As a multi-instrumentalist, Dylan performs regularly on the guitar, oud, saz, drums and synthesizers. Situating himself at the crossroads of the traditional and the avant-garde, Dylan’s work draws upon aspects of rock, folk, classical and electronic music. Since 2020, his research and experimentation have primarily been centered around the consolidation of microtonality and guitar performance. In 2022, Dylan was awarded funding by the American Musical Instrument Society for the creation of four different experimental microtonal guitars; his article ‘The Microtonal Guitar: Liberating the Guitar From the Confines of 12-Tone Equal Temperament’ details the various aspects of this project. Presently, Dylan is in the process of composing a series of electroacoustic studies centered around the intersection of harmonic polyrhythm and extended just intonation.
Rebecca Minten (she/her) is a multifaceted bass and contrabass clarinet player based in Switzerland. Her practice tries to focus on new and electronic music, transdisciplinary creations, and free improvisation but curiosity leads her to many more artistic activities. She holds a Bachelor of Arts as well as a Master in Music Performance from the Bern University of the Arts where she’s been studying until 2023 in the class of Ernesto Molinari. Currently, she works on electro-acoustic compositions with sound artist Luz Gonzalez, explores the potential of alternative performance formats with her collective IPSO and performs with various new music or improvisation ensembles in Switzerland and abroad. Rebecca also co-founded the balkan/klezmer band Tzupati Orchestra that has been active since 2018.
Jacob Elkin is an NYC-based musician, composer and educator. His music emphasizes a contemporary approach through microtonality and electronic spatialization.
Mr. Elkin has performed on some of the most prestigious stages of the world including Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center and The Kimmel Center. He has presented lecture performances at Mozarteum University Salzburg, the University of London and The Contemporary Art Center Seoul, South Korea. He has premiered new works for trombone in chamber settings with New York Composers Circle, Mimesis Ensemble, Contemporaneous, Ensemble Mise-en and The New York Trombone Consort with David Taylor. He has premiered solo works for trombone by Hubert Howe, Dary John Mizelle, Monroe Golden, Joseph Pehrson, Jin-Hee Han, Josh Oxford and many others. Mr. Elkin has been written about in many publications including Broadway World, OperaWire, New Music USA, I Care if You Listen, Classical Music Daily and Avant Music News. His music is available on WAW and Ablaze records and has been played on WKCR New York Radio.
Jacob Elkin regularly performs on tenor trombone, bass trombone, euphonium and tuba. He is on faculty as brass instructor at The United Nations International School.
Dr Ryo Sugiyama, born in Nagano, Japan, studied music at Aichi University of the Arts (Aichi, Japan) and completed the doctoral degree (Doctor of Music) in field of violin performance, microtonal research, and composition. In recent years, he has composed and performed his original works, especially for violin with other instruments and sounds.
Tianjun Li (b. 1999, China), also known as Timjune Lee, is a Helsinki-based interdisciplinary artist focusing on Photography, Sound and Performance. Timjune’s works focus on the interplay between diverse photographic subjects, sonic elements, and his vocal practice, reflecting on living reality and human-nature relationships, creating a new poetic dimension through the process of reconstructing various elements he documented. This approach allows him to reinterpret Anthropocene and contemporary phenomena from an ethereal perspective of surrealism. Timjune’s works have garnered attention from international art presses and have been exhibited in prestigious museums and galleries across the globe. He is also among the youngest artists to have held a solo exhibition in South China. He was recently awarded the 1st Prize in New Talents of Belgrade Photo Month 2023, and his recent work will be exhibited at OPIA Launch Event Gallery, Presented by Ólafur Arnalds, at Silent Green Kulturquartier, Berlin in October, 2023. In addition to his artistic practice, he collaborates with the music industry, creating album artwork and visuals for international musicians and labels like Warner Music Group. His unique dreamlike vision and creative approach have earned him recognition as a rising talent in the art world.
Visiting Artists
Paul Devens
Drawing on a research-based approach within his artistic practice, Paul Devens develops bodies of works that connect elements from sound and architecture. Collecting site-specific audio recordings, Devens actively considers the physical space and social context. His research manifests in sound-based installations, architectonic interventions, performances, and CD and vinyl releases. His work furthermore alludes to infrastructures around value, preconception and code in civil society. Paul Devens’s work stems from a longstanding investigation into how the historical, political and social layers of a specific context can be processed through sound in relation to the role of architecture within that given landscape. His field research results in sound installations that show the social situation of the place in a way that integrates the voice of political minorities, consequently amplifying an amendment to what is considered ‘reality’. Throughout his artistic career, he is continuously exploring a new visual and audible vocabulary in order to catch the relevance of a moment and place. This language is formed by the economical, historical or political circumstances that are informing the work. The transformation of the original information into a work of art happens through a process of isolating sound from the original context, moulding it manually and presenting it in a new context, to that end giving the act of recording new meaning. His work has been installed and performed at: Experimance Festival Saarbrücken (2023), Bonnefantenmuseum (2022), Sonic Matter Zürich (2021), November Music Den Bosch (2019), Instituto Buena Bista Curacao (2018-2019), Museum Z33, Hasselt (B) (2002 & 2012), Ctrl_Alt_Del, Istanbul (2003, 2005, 2007), OCA/ISP, Oslo (2004), Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2010), Diapason Gallery, New York (2011), Radio Art Festival, Tallinn (2011), D-0 ARK Biennial of Bosnia – Herzegovina (2013), Jerusalem Show (2014), DordtYard, Dordrecht (2014), Stimulating Synapse, EMAA, Nicosia (2015), Galerija Umjetnina, Split (2015), Hacking Habitat, Utrecht (2016), bb15, Linz (2016), Ateliers de Clerici, Milano (2017), Electromagnetique Mobile, Off program, Dakar (2018), etc. Paul Devens lives and works in Maastricht (NL).
http://www.pauldevens.nl
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Devens
https://www.artcuratorgrid.com/users/paul-devens/posts
http://www.outside-sounds.com/paul-devens/
Lucía Hinojosa Gaxiola
Lucía Hinojosa Gaxiola (Mexico City, 1987) is an interdisciplinary artist, poet and editor working with language in a variety of ways. She exhibits and performs in multiple media, fusing her poetic practice with sound, film, drawing and installation to explore the materiality of language, archive, memory, and the ecology of sound. Her work also explores somatic and improvisatory aspects of performance as a collective practice. Her art & poetry book The Telaraña Circuit (Tender Buttons Press) was recently published, and since 2013 she co-edits diSONARE, an experimental press from Mexico City.
She has exhibited & performed at Vernacular Institute (Mexico City); Ex-Teresa Arte Actual (Mexico City); Pequod Co. (Mexico City); Museo de Arte Moderno (Mexico City); The Poetry Project (NYC); Microscope Gallery (NYC); among others.
Linda Sormin
Canadian artist Linda Sormin explores upheaval, migration, change, and her Indonesian-Thai-Chinese diasporic experience through clay and mixed media installations. Sormin was awarded a 2023 NYSCA/NYFA Fellowship (New York State Council on the Arts/New York Foundation for the Arts), and a Canada Council grant (2021-22). She lives and works in New York City, and is associate professor of studio art at New York University. Born in Bangkok, Thailand, Sormin immigrated to Ontario, Canada with her family at the age of five. She exhibits her work internationally, including the mixed media installations “Boru Sibaso Paet, on the foam of the primordial sea” in Hokusai: Inspiration and Influences” at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA (2023), “Stream” in Ceramics in the Expanded Field: Sculpture, Performance and the Possibilities of Clay at MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA (2021-23), and Expanded Forms, her first solo exhibition at Messums, Wiltshire, UK (2022). Recent art residencies include the European Ceramic Workcentre in Oisterwijk, the Netherlands (2021, 2023), and CSULB Center for Contemporary Ceramics in Long Beach, California (2022). Sormin’s ceramic sculptures are included in private and public collections including the permanent collections of the Renwick Gallery of the
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC, the Gardiner Museum, Toronto, Canada, and
CLAY Ceramic Museum of Denmark, Middelfart, Denmark.
Principal Investigator of Microtonal Music Studios: Music Outside Keys and Cultures
Dr Timo S. Tuhkanen
Dr Timo S. Tuhkanen (b. 1983) is an artist-composer, curator, and writer, whose work intersects between contemporary art, music, and research into the cultural and historical aspects of touch. Their work is concerned with designing and creating direct actions and socio-political interventions as an artistic practice through collective intelligence, relational aesthetics, and operational realism, and their subject matters often adapt inside an occupied environment of urban landscapes, digital platforms, and hydrosocial-spaces. Tuhkanen likes to describe their work as lived-through narrative fiction and mythopoetics, and they are interested in the psychological conflict between what is imaginable and what is realistically achievable and how this conflict materialises in the resources we construct. Tuhkanen received their BA and MMus from Brunel University of West London where their work focused on algorithmic music and non-narrative stage craft, focusing on opera. They received their PhD from the University of Leeds where their research focused on the aesthetics of touch in the philosophy and practice of musical composition. As well as currently being the director of the artist-run gallery Myymälä2 in Helsinki, they are an Affiliate Researcher of the Department of Musicology at the University of Turku, an artistic-researcher in the Atlas Project at Angewadnt University of Arts, Crafts, and Design Vienna and has been, among others visiting researcher at IRCAM Sound Music Movement Interaction lab and visiting lecturer at University of the Arts Helsinki and the Sibelius Academy.
Microtonal Music Studios Research and Study Programme Exhibition and Event 2024 is supported by Kone Foundation, Saastamoinen Foundation, Scandinavia Japan Sasakawa Foundation, and Myymälä2.