Mi, 11.05.2022, 21:00 Uhr
sonopol #23: Mike Gennaro + Christoph Funabashi
1. Set: Christoph Funabashi - free chess 2. Set: Mike Gennaro and Christoph Funabashi - Improv - Set Mike Gennaro Toronto drummer Mike Gennaro has been active in the field of jazz and improvised music since the mid 90’s. Since then, he has collaborated with improvisers from around the globe including Wilbert deJoode, Trevor Watts, Veryan Weston, Mats Gustafsson, John Butcher and Eugene Chadbourne among others. This will be his first stop on a short tour which will also include duo performances with Matthias Schubert in Kassel and Frank Gratkowski in Berlin. Recent recordings: https://confrontrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/running-for-trains https://mikegennaro.bandcamp.com/album/bring-a-book “I think of free improvising as the ultimate musical challenge. The constant balancing act of listening, reacting and contributing is what makes improvising endlessly fun and engaging for me. I take a pretty traditional instrumentally based approach and think about my voice as a drummer rather than a sound maker or producer of textures. With an equal interest in the American and European traditions, I try to combine the energy and flow of jazz with the dialogue based and deep listening approach of free improvisation” Christoph Funabashi as a teenager christoph funabashi (*1974) got fascinated about rock guitar and the world of contemporary music. in the nineties he played with the indie rock bands scare your girl, ölkrise ’73 and nelson and studied classical guitar, popular music and composition at the arnhem institute for the arts and the dutch messiaen academy. after moving to berlin in 2004 he mainly played and wrote chamber music – often in connection with theatrical elements. he worked for the zeitgenössische oper berlin, the concert series unerhörte musik and saitenblicke, the international youth opera festival utrecht, the intersonanzen festival potsdam, the johannes gutenberg university mainz and the theater görlitz and premiered works by martin daske, markus wettstein, torsten papenheim, margarete huber, ferdinand försch and other contemporary composers. with the garagenoper kollektiv he developed interdisciplinary works between new music, contemporary jazz and dance theater and he played with the ensemble xenon, the electric guitar quartet e-werk and the impro duo whisper/whistle. since 2011 he lives in hamburg where he continues his work as guitarist/composer as well as guitar teacher. 2012 his complete recording of john zorn’s the book of heads was released by the label schraum. since then his focus shifted more and more towards free improvisation and he played in various ad-hoc-settings including gunnar lettow, korhan erel, john hughes, rolf pifnitzka, felix mayer, dirk dhonau, thomas gerwin, axel haller, audrey chen, if bwana, heiner metzger, phil durrant, andrea neumann, robert klammer, peter kastner, nicolas wiese, kris kuldkepp, ignaz schick and others. current projects are the impro trio føm and the ensemble emn, focusing on graphical scores and conceptual works. https://www.christophfunabashi.de free chess christoph funabashis compositon free chess is a musical game for 1-4 players in which tone rows and actions are given by tokens on a chessboard and optional event cards. in this way it combines serialistic and aleatoric principles with an improvisational and intuitive approach towards the instrument and the individual musical language of the players. for sonopol christoph performs a special solo version for electric guitar and objects.
