Happy New Year 2026! We wish you a peaceful and productive year ahead! Please join us for the first SPIL lab of the year, featuring 3 international guests who will be appearing at the SPIL series for the very first time! Please welcome Japanese award-winning performer/composer/sound poet/installation artist and occasional theater director, Tomomi Adachi! We also welcome back our good friends from the United States, Debora Bernagozzi and Jason Bernagozzi, sound/video artists/technologists and founders of the nonprofit organization, Signal Culture. Please come to check out the innovative work of these wonderful artists, and meet and chat with them in person! Also featuring local improvisers BURN Trio with Siew-Wai Kok (voice), Yii Kah Hoe (dizi/xiao/suling) and Yong Yandsen (tenor sax). See you next Saturday at Percussion Store!
Date & Time: Saturday, 10th January, 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: RM30
Reservation: 012 919 8031 (WhatsApp)
Musicians’ profiles/FB event: https://www.facebook.com/share/17b2yzbmMW/
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:
ADACHI Tomomi, born in Kanazawa, Japan in 1972, is performer, composer, sound poet, installation artist, occasional theater director. He studied philosophy and aesthetics at Waseda University in Tokyo. He has played improvised music with voice, live electronics and self-made instruments. He had composed works for his own group “Adachi Tomomi Royal Chorus” which is a punk-style choir. He has performed contemporary music: vocal, live-electronics or performance works by John Cage, Cornelius Cardew, Christian Wolff, Tom Johnson, Dieter Schnebel, TAKAHASHI Yuji, YUASA Joji and Fluxus including world premiere and Japan premiere as Cage’s “Variations VII,” “Europera 3&4, ““Europera 5,” and “Waterwalk”. He is the only performer of sound poetry in Japan and has performed Kurt Schwitters’ “Ursonate” for the first time in Japan. He has made several sound installations and original instruments (e.g.”Tomomin”, his hand made electric instrument is familiar with many musicians). In the field of theater music, he has collaborated with some experimental theaters and dancers. He also has organized many concerts which picks up experimental music, sound art, collaboration work and inter-disciplinary performance in Japan and Germany, include concerts with Chris Mann, Trevor Wishart, Nicolas Collins and STEIM in Japan. He founded “Ensemble for Experimental Music and Theater” with his students in Tokyo in 2011, the group is working for pieces by Fluxus and recent conceptual composers. He has performed with numerous musicians, dancers and film makers including Jaap Blonk, Nicolas Collins, Carl Stone, TAKAHASHI Yuji, SAKATA Akira, ICHIYANAGI Toshi, TANAKA Yumiko, dj sniff, Jerome Noetinger, SUZUKI Akio, Alessandro Bosseti, Ignaz Schick, FURUDATE Tetsuo, Jennifer Walshe, Annette Krebs, Dickson Dee, Zbigniew Karkowski, Johannes Bergmark, MAKIGAMI Koichi, Butch Morris, Jon Rose, OTOMO Yoshihide, ITOH Kim, IIMURA Takahiko, ISHIDA Takashi. He has presented his works in Japan, Europe, U.S., Australia and other asian countries at many kinds venues include Tate Modern, IRCAM/Centre Pompidou, Hamburger Bahnhof Museum, Haus der Berliner Festspiele, Akademie der Kuenste Berlin, Waker Art Center, STEIM, Experimental Intermedia, ZKM, Merkin Hall, Ontological-Hysteric Theater, Roulette, Tonic, The National Museum of Art Osaka, Super Deluxe, La Mama Theatre Melbourne, Anthology Film Archives and 21th Century Museum of Contemporary Art Kanazawa. He has given lectures at Tama Art University, Yotsuya Art Studium, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Universitaet der Kuenste Berlin, Mills College, Bard College and London College of Communication. As a critic, he has written about visual art, music and performance art on papers and magazines. He had participated in an art theory bulletin “Method” 2000-2001. He started visual art (video and installation) in 2003. He stayed in New York 2009-2010 as an Asian Cultural Council grantee. Also he was awarded the DAAD invited composer for Berlin 2012, the Award of Distinction from Ars Electronica 2019. He composed the world’s first opera which adopted a libretto written by an artificial intelligence, for which he won the Keizo Saji Prize in 2022. His CDs were released from Naya Records, Tzadik, Fontec and Omegapoint.
Debora & Jason Bernagozzi are artists and technologists living and working in Binghamton, NY. In addition to their solo careers, they have been creating live video and sound performances for over 15 years. Their work explores themes such as ritual, transmission, and memory. They perform using custom software and hardware and work with visual media in an improvisational way that is meant to be felt as much as understood. Along with Hank Rudolph, they are co-founders of Signal Culture, a nonprofit organization that provides residencies, resources, and exhibition opportunities for artists, researchers, and innovators working in experimental media art where Debora serves as Executive Director while continuing to make and exhibit her own work. Jason is head of research at Signal Culture and is an assistant professor of Cinema at Binghamton University.
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. Siew-Wai is interested in improvisation and the exploration of 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.