Jaap Blonk: Dr. Voxoid's Next Move | Arts + Literature Laboratory | Madison Contemporary Arts Center

Jaap Blonk: Dr. Voxoid's Next Move

Auricle and Common Sage Arts welcome Jaap Blonk for his current voice and electronics performance, Dr. Voxoid's Next Move, on Tuesday, October 17, 2023 at 7:00pm. Advance tickets are $20 ($15 student/ALL member), or $25 at the door for everyone. The second set will also feature local musician Tim Russell.

 

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Dr Voxoid's Next Move is Jaap Blonk's current voice and electronics performance. It is in constant development, new possibilities being added frequently. He prefers to choose a specific program on the spot and may even change it during a performance.

Dr Voxoid's Next Move may contain:

  • sound poetry (his own works and possibly an occasional 'classic' from this tradition)
  • pieces in invented languages, for instance in "Onderlands" (the language of the Underlands, a variation on Netherlands)
  • phonetic etudes and processes
  • live soundscapes
  • improvisations, both for solo voice and in dialogue with his live electronics
  • and more...

"We can add to [the] short list of 2011 [Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville] highlights the mind-bending Dadaistic vaudevillian virtuosity of the Dutch Jaap Blonk, who does things with his voice and texts (including historic 1920s-era sound poem works by Kurt Schwitters and others) that nobody else does. I felt my mental pores opening up during his solo show, called Dr. Voxoid’s Next Move. Some semi-Godly vision of controlled abandon welled up inside of me. Or maybe that’s just Harold Camping putting the religious inklings in me, redirected toward the dada side by the shaman Blonk. It’s the kind of epiphany occasionally to be found in this cowtown, although you never know when it will hit and zap your sense of wonder. Such is life." --Santa Barbara Independent

Some video examples:

Some sound examples:

Publicity photo of Dutch vocal artist Jaap Blonk

Jaap Blonk (born 1953 in Woerden, Holland) is a self-taught composer, performer and poet. He went to university for mathematics and musicology but did not finish those studies. In the late 1970s he took up saxophone and started to compose music. A few years later he discovered his potential as a vocal performer, at first in reciting poetry and later on in improvisations and his own compositions. For almost two decades the voice was his main means for the discovery and development of new sounds.

From around the year 2000 on Blonk started work with electronics, at first using samples of his own voice, then extending the field to include pure sound synthesis as well as work with analog synthesizers. He took a year off of performing in 2006. As a result, his renewed interest in mathematics made him start a research of the possibilities of algorithmic composition for the creation of music, visual work and poetry.

As a vocalist, Jaap Blonk is unique for his powerful stage... Read More

Tim Russell lives at the confluence of the aural and the visual. He currently serves as Music Director for the University of Wisconsin’s Dance Department. In 2019, Tim was selected as one of the Cowles Visiting Artists at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, a first for a Musician in the field of Dance. He has a vast catalogue of works specifically for choreography, most of which exist live, in collaboration with movement. His commitment to the nowness in performance led him to co-create/curate, along with choreographer Maria Gillespie, Hyperlocal MKE, a Music and Dance improvisation series that exists to this day in Milwaukee. His current curatorial project: Common Sage Arts, promotes multidisciplinary artists through carefully curated performances. Along with Tim’s long time collaboration with the Gerald Casel Dance Company, his audio shares the stage with a vast array of choreographic artists bringing Tim and his music across the world from Dock 11 in Berlin to YBCA in San... Read More

with additional funds from the Endres Manufacturing Company Foundation, the Evjue Foundation, Inc., charitable arm of The Capital Times, the W. Jerome Frautschi Foundation, and the Pleasant T. Rowland Foundation

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Arts + Literature Laboratory is located at 111 S. Livingston Street #100, Madison, Wisconsin, 53703.

Our galleries are open Tuesday through Friday 10am-5pm and Saturday noon to 5pm, and other programs take place throughout the week. Please check the events calendar and education section for details.

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