Solo concert & dialogue + Improvisation with local guests

Dear friends, hope you’re surviving the heat wave okay! Do take care! We’re having a very special SPIL session in August! KLEX is honoured to host Berlin-based, thoroughly engaged and highly established composer-performer, violinist, interdisciplinary artist, improviser and curator, Biliana Voutchkova. Biliana will give an artist’s talk on her work, presenting a solo concert, and will end with an improvisation session with local guest musicians Kok Siew-Wai (voice), Yii Kah Hoe (dizi/suling) and Yong Yandsen (tenor sax). This will be a night with full force! You can’t miss this! Mark your calendar and we’ll see you on Saturday, 23^rd August, at Percussion Store! 

This concert event is made possible with the support of the Goethe Institut.

* Scroll down for musicians’ profiles

 

Date & Time: Saturday, 23^rd August 2025 
Time: Doors open @ 8PM
Venue: Percussion Store 
Add: A-01-03 LG Floor, Dataran Cascades, No. 13A, Jalan PJU 5/1, Kota Damansara, 47810 Petaling Jaya, Selangor.
Admission by donation: RM40
For tickets: 012 919 8031 (WhatsApp)

FB Event: https://www.facebook.com/share/1CoVQqJxwy/ 

More info: 
[email protected]  
www.klexfestival.com
www.facebook.com/groups/klexfest 

Instagram: @klexfestival 
#klexfest #klexspil #seriousplayimprovlab #percussionstore #improvisedmusic #freeimprov #freejazz

Founded in May 2014, Serious Play Improv Lab (SPIL) is the music series of KLEX Festival. It is an art laboratory focusing on music experimentation and improvisation. SPIL provides a platform for musicians from various backgrounds to collaborate and present a new collective expression through improvisation. Over the years, many local and international artists have initiated experimentations and collaborated in the SPIL series, enriching the region’s experimental and improvised music scene.

ABOUT THE MUSICIANS:

Biliana Voutchkova is a dynamic, thoroughly engaged composer-performer, violinist, interdisciplinary artist, improviser and curator with highly individual, unconventional artistic language. Through the prism of listening, her early education in classical music and the years of development as a contemporary artist-performer, she explores states of spontaneity and intuitive resonance embodied in her multifaceted activities. Her work spans a wide range of sound, vision, movement and includes concert performances of improvisation, contemporary composition and original site-specific work, exhibitions, long durational/multidisciplinary performances, audiovisual works and installation formats with focus on the interconnection between inner world and sound space. Biliana works internationally as a soloist and in collaboration with many renowned artists and ensembles (the Splitter and Trickster Orchestras, Ensemble Modern, her groups Jane in Ether, Voutchkova/Thieke duo and the L a n d S t a g e s Collective, among others). She is the founder and curator of the DARA String Festival, faculty at the Academy of Arts Bern/ HKB Bern, SHAPE+ Platform artist for 2022/2023, recipient of the Berlin Residency Stipend at Cité des Arts / Paris ans Villa Aurora / Los Angeles, the Composition Stipend from the Berliner Senate, and multiple grants (Musikfonds, Hauptstadtkulturfonds, INM/Berlin, the National Culture Fund/Bulgaria, the Trust for Mutual Understanding/New York etc.) She has releases on the labels Unsounds, Another Timbre, Elsewhere, Relative Pitch Records, Confront Recordings, Inexhaustible Editions and Cafe Oto’s Takuroku. Born in the family of musicians, Biliana began playing violin at the age of 4, made her orchestra debut at the age of 9, and recorded her first CD for the Japanese label Crown Record Ltd. at the age of 16. By the age of 18, she started realising classical music wasn’t her path. In search of artistic growth, Biliana moved to Los Angeles to further study and discover music. This was followed by a period on the East Coast of the US (New York and Boston), where she engaged with contemporary/experimental music and improvisation, fulfilled her Master’s Degree, broke from standard classical convention and began to understand something of her calling. In 2008, Biliana moved to Berlin, where she further developed her artistic vocabulary, incorporating the voice and performance/movement, creating a unique quality as a composer-performer. Most recently, Biliana has been drawn into the visual world as a different medium for creative input. She continuously follows her intuitive path that organically reveals itself. 
www.bilianavoutchkova.net

Kok Siew-Wai started out as a video artist, now active as an improvised vocalist and artist-curator/organizer. She has shown her videos, curatorial video programmes and performed in Asia, Europe, Australia, Canada and USA, including allEars Improvised Music Festival (Norway), Asian Meeting Festival (Japan), CTM Festival (Germany), Hanoi New Music Festival (Vietnam), Kuala Lumpur Contemporary Music Festival, Nusasonic (Indonesia) amongst others. In 2023, Siew-Wai participated in “Karantena del 3 – #millionsmissing”, a dance-sound-installation performance with 20 dancers, conceived by choreographer Kristine Nilsen Oma, as a solo improvised vocalist, in Bergen, Norway. Her video text and vocal improvisation performance piece, “Language of Self” (2011/2014), is in the collection of the He Xiangning Art Museum in Shenzhen, China. Siew-Wai is interested in improvisation and exploration of vocal expressions with the human voice.

Yii Kah Hoe is a Malaysian composer and music improviser. Yii has been recognized as one of the major voices among Southeast Asian composers of his generation. His music has been widely performed in Asia, America, and Europe. Yii won the National Outstanding Educator Award 2018 presented by the Private Education Cooperative of Malaysia. In the fall of 2015, and in the spring of 2023, Yii was the Scripps College Erma Taylor O’Brien Distinguished Visiting Professor at Scripps College in Claremont. Yii was a Fullbright Scholar in Residence from August 2022 to June 2023 while working as a composition professor at Washington State University. Yii was the festival director of Kuala Lumpur Contemporary Music Festival 2009, the festival director of SoundBridge festival (2013, 2015), the president of Society of Malaysian Contemporary Composers (2014 – 2016) and a senior lecturer at SEGi College Subang Jaya, Malaysia since 2000.

Yong Yandsen is a free jazz and improvised saxophonist from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Yandsen has released albums through XingWu and Herbal Records in Malaysia, Utech Records (USA), Dream Sheep (Italy), and his solo debut on vinyl through Doubtful Sound (France). He has played at allEars Improvised Music Festival (Norway), Asian Meeting Festival (Japan), Mosaic Music Festiva, Jazz in July (Singapore), amongst others. Yandsen, together with Darren Moore and Brian O’Reily, form the improvised trio Game of Patience. Hungry Ghosts is his trio with European musicians Christian Meaas Svendsen and Paal Nilssen-Love. In 2022, the Big Foot quartet was formed with Akira Sakata, Seo Takashi and Darren Moore. Yandsen is the co-founder of a Malaysian record label, LaoBan Records, focusing on releasing contemporary improvised music. He is also the co-founder of Khatulistiwa, a local venue for experimental and improvised music.