Chris Pitsiokos & Otomo Yoshihide
Uncanny Mirror Asian Tour 2024
Kuala Lumpur

This is THE concert that you should attend in September 2024! KLEX is honoured to present the “Uncanny Mirror Asian Tour 2024” in Kuala Lumpur, the duo concert of New York and Berlin-based renowned saxophonist and composer Chris Pitsiokos (sax & electronics), and highly acclaimed and established Japanese musician and composer Otomo Yoshihide (guitar & turntables). Otomo is one of the prominent figures in the Japanese underground/avant-garde/free jazz history, and Rolling Stone has praised Pitsiokos for his “startlingly original vision” and “astonishingly fleet sax work”. This is the duo’s first concert in Malaysia! Come experience their cross-regional and cross-generational collaboration through improvisation! Also on the bill are local improvisers Kok Siew-Wai (voice), Yii Kah Hoe (dizi & suling), and Yong Yandsen (tenor sax). Mark your calendar, bring a friend and spread the word! A concert not to be missed!!

This concert is co-hosted by KLEX Festival, Percussion Store, and Khatulistiwa.

Date: Saturday, 21 September, 2024
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 suggested donation: RM50
For Reservation, WhatsApp: 012 919 8031
More info and musicians’ profiles: https://www.facebook.com/events/538333065228142/

Design: OMNIBVS WORKS @omnibvs.design
More info:
[email protected]
www.klexfestival.com
www.facebook.com/groups/klexfest
Instagram: @klexfestival
#klexfest #klexspil #seriousplayimprovlab #percussionstore #improvisedmusic #freeimprov #freejazz

FEATURE MUSICIANS:

Chris Pitsiokos & Otomo Yoshihide

Alto saxophonist Chris Pitsiokos, who has been electrifying the improvisation scene with his intense speed and rich sonority, will tour over a dozen cities in Japan and Asia with his latest DUO album “Uncanny Mirror” with Otomo Yoshihide. Born in 1990, Chris is now 33 years old. He has performed with Otomo in more than a dozen countries since their collaboration at the 2017 Sapporo International Art Festival. His unparalleled improvisation on alto saxophone as well as his speedy fusion of multiphonic and saxophone using unique electronics is unique and far beyond the boundaries of conventional improvisation. Otomo, who was born in 1959, also uses turntables and guitar as his main instruments, and together with Chris creates a new world of improvisation while freely using his own improvisational language that he has acquired from the 1980s to the present day.

Otomo Yoshihide: https://otomoyoshihide.com/en/

Otomo Yoshihide moves between free jazz, noise, improvisation, composition and the unclassifiable with a generosity that opens up the possibilities for expression in all of the constellations with which he’s involved. He spent his teenage years in Fukushima, about 300 kilometers north of Tokyo. Influenced by his father, an engineer, Otomo began making electrical devices such as a radio and an electronic oscillator. In junior high school, his hobby was making sound collages using open-reel tape recorders. This was his first experience creating music. Soon after entering high school he formed a band that played rock and jazz, with Otomo on guitar. It wasn’t long, however, before he became a free jazz aficionado, listening to artists like Ornette Coleman, Erick Dolphy and Derek Bailey; and hearing music, both on disk and at concerts, by Japanese free jazz artists. Especially influenced by alto sax player Kaoru Abe and guitarist Masayuki Takayanagi, Otomo decided to play free jazz.
In 1990, Otomo started what was to become Ground Zero. Until it disbanded in March 1998, the band was at the core of his musical creativity, while it underwent several changes in style and membership. Since Ground Zero, Otomo has embraced minimal improvisation, film music and the jazz/big band conceptions of his New Jazz Quartet/Quintet/Orchestra.

Chris Pitsiokos: https://noearplugs.no/chris-pitsiokos/

Chris Pitsiokos is a New York-born, Berlin-based world-renowned saxophonist, improviser, composer, and multi-instrumentalist. He has performed extensively in North and South America, Europe and Japan. Chris has been praised by Rolling Stone for his “startlingly original vision” and “astonishingly fleet sax work.” Downbeat has identified his band CP Unit as “A persuasive combination of harmolodic jazz and contemporary noise rock.” As a soloist he has developed a unique voice on the alto saxophone: his expansion of the instrument’s vocabulary has served to multiply its emotive and formal possibilities. He has performed at dozens of major festivals across the globe, including (but not limited to) Wels Unlimited Festival in Austria, Sapporo International Arts Festival in Japan, Moers Festival in Germany, Tempo Reale Festival in Italy, Rewire Festival in the Netherlands, Jazz Jantar Festival in Poland and Festival de Jazz Lima in Peru. In New York he has presented his work at Roulette Intermedium, ISSUE Project Room, and during a residency at John Zorn’s club the Stone. Lately, he has developed interactive electro-acoustic systems for saxophone and computer. He also composes music for film. His list of collaborators represents a who’s who of the luminaries in 20th and 21st century improvised music, experimental music and jazz: he has worked with Jaimie Branch, Luke Stewart, Peter Evans, Tyshawn Sorey, Lea Bertucci, Weasel Walter, Otomo Yoshihide, Nate Wooley, Axel Dörner, Julien Desprez, Sachiko M, Mazen Kerbaj and Paul Lytton to name a small few.

LOCAL GUEST MUSICIANS:

Kok Siew-Wai started 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. Siew-Wai is interested in improvisation and the exploration of expressions with the human voice.

Yii Kah Hoe is a Malaysian composer and Chinese dizi and xiao 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, he 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. He 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 Festival (Singapore), amongst others. Yandsen, together with Darren Moore and Brian O’Reily, form the improvised trio called Game of Patience. They have toured Japan, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. Hungry Ghosts is his trio with European musicians Christian Meaas Svendsen and Paal Nilssen-Love and have done several tours in Asia and Europe. In 2022, the Big Foot quartet was formed with Akira Sakata, Seo Takashi and Darren Moore. Yandsen has also done several solo tours to Japan and Taiwan. He is the co-founder of a Malaysian record label, LaoBan Records, focusing on releasing contemporary improvised music.

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

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