X-Sessions

A couple of years ago with my brother John, I participated in the X-Wohnungen festival produced by the HAU (Hebbel am Ufer) theater in Berlin. The idea behind the festival was to focus on one neighborhood and have an audience which travels in pairs, and with a map, go from apartment to apartment, seeing several installations, performances, or exhibits. The festival operated for five days, eight hours a day. For my flat, I converted it to look like the old migrant, worker flat it originally was, and made a ten-minute film that was presented as a triple projection (which can be seen in the “film” section of this blog). This was accompanied by interviews John had done with our grandmothers concerning their childhood experiences of immigration. While the interviews and the film played, we performed music live, wired in from the kitchen. The audience rarely knew it was live until exiting the flat and seeing us in the small kitchen filled with instruments.

This we did eight hours a day for five days. It was the most strenuous exercise in improvisation I ever have undertaken. Here I have finally gotten around to putting some of the music together for others to hear. The following sections together form about five hours of improvisation, mixed into roughly 25 minute segments, so it is easy to listen to and come back to the others later. It is not really free improv as we were somewhat bound by the limits of the film, as well as by performing live music for so long in an building that was not really soundproofed for neighbors. I have kept the playing intact, editing out only the exits and entrances of the audience from my apartment. Session X-10 also features Georgian artist BEKA GIGAURI on clarinet and mouth harp, and VAGINAL DAVIS on assorted objects.

I have tried to get these to play in this blog, but cannot seem to figure it out. Here is the link for a free download of each 20 minute track. I think they are nice, and John's guitar playing is lovely.

http://www.last.fm/music/The+Pixie+Kitchen/X-Sessions+MP3+uploads