FREE PERFORMANCE: Monday, August 27, 2012, 7:00pm
CHICAGO: A leading figure in sound art for the last 25 years, Jaap Blonk is a brilliant, extreme vocalist. The Dutch performer has been one of the primary champions of the modernist canon of concrete poetry, reviving Dadaist classics by Hugo Ball, Tristan Tzara, and Kurt Schwitters with a combination of rigor and irreverence. Blonk’s 1986 version of “Ursonate” by Schwitters (re-issued on Basta in 2003) remains one of the finest takes on the difficult nonsense piece, and his CD Flux de Bouche (Staalplaat, 1993) is an outstanding introduction to his excursions into both historical and contemporary sound poetry. Blonk is also an accomplished improvisor and composer; he’s worked with many international figures, including some of Chicago’s finest, and he has deeply explored the use of electronics in vocal art.
For this performance, he’ll be working acoustically, offering a range of historical works and his own compositions, thoroughly confounding the relationship between sounds, words and meanings.
(Photo, above: Alisa Garin)
