Working on a new version of The instrumental ensemble work Usine Electrique for Eklekto Percussion and Ensemble Contrechamps in Geneva. Eklekto is celebrating this year the 50th anniversary of they will put together a week end of concerts in their recent built headquarters les 6 toits in Geneva.

The piece will happen in the central hall of les 6 toits, which consists of an intricate architecture made of wooden structures, balconies, corridors. The 16 musicians including 10 percussionists will be deployed around the space, creating a multilayered soundscape using the depth of the space. Played at dawn, Usine Electrique finishes in almost complete darkness with a counterpoint of lightning devices played by the musicians.

more infos here

The Fog festival is an event for highly engaged sonic explorations held in Basel since 2022. This year’s opening concert consists of a performance of Ryoji Ikeda’s epic work 100 cymbals performed by the students of the Academy of Music, which I will be conducting together with master percussionist and head of the Basel Hochschule Percussion class Christian Dierstein.
more infos here

Working on a brand new trio project with the cellist Elsa Dorbath and the pianist Gilles Grimaître. Based on the cello-piano duo piece “The Way Down”, the trio, added with drums, will be developping a repertoire of composed works to be performed live. First gigs in Spring 2025, stay tuned!

As part of the Usine Sonore festival in La Neuveville, we started a research with the designers of Atelier OÏ where they showed the results of an ongoing experiment around the Melde’s string, which allows a visual image of the standing waves appear when a string is connected to an oscillator. It resulted on a sound/visual installation called Cinematica, in which three walls made of copper springs get put in motion by three subwoofers playing extremely low sine waves.

We looked together for possible meeting points between the kinetic autonomy of the installation and the creation of sounds and music, eventually leading to a 20min performance involving drums and a sound composition, presented over the course of the multidisciplinary festival Usine Sonore. Many thanks to all involved in particular Julien Annoni, Armand Louis and the whole Oï and Usine Sonore team.

LIVEstinguished is the title of the new large-scale choregraphic work by renowned artist, choregrapher and Venice Biennal’s golden Lion recipient La Ribot. Based on her previous work “DIEstinguished” this work is a new version for the Basel Ballet. The music for this piece was made exclusively out of sounds produced by the dancers themselves: singing, clapping, producing a whole lot of noises, the 12 dancers of this challenging 50minutes performance are making sound onstage, while a tape-soundtrack composed of their own pre-recorded sounds is played as a mirror-like rythmical and environmental-noise composition. The premiere was held at the Basel Schauspielhaus on april 24, it will be followed by 9 more performances until June 12!
See and hear about it on the Basel Theater website 

Working on a new 10 minute solo percussion work in close collaboration with the Basel-based spanish percussionist Miguel Angel Garcia Martin. Miguel’s abilities to find sound possibilities using all kinds of possible materials and even more made the creation of new ideas rather challenging. We came up with a setup of aluminium bell plates put on top of each other on a flat table. the result is called “Restricted Reality” and deals with with multiple layers of polyrythmics and “polysounds” with which the interpret needs to deal, challenging his own abilities to achieve multiple realities without any help of a non-human device. 
Premiere at Gare du Nord Basel as part as Miguel’s “Abbau/Aufbau” solo programm. More performances to come in 2025.

Bayonne (FR) based Ensemble 0, joined forces with their local Hardware and do it yourself store, Leroy Merlin, in the course of an afternoon of concert. They commissioned a piece to be played with material found in the shop and perform by the employees. The whisper factory for 20 performers and 20 zither was premiered there in the store during opening hours. The instruments were entirely made using material found in the store shelves, and the members of ensemble 0 were joined by a group of employees of Leroy Merlin, who didn’t have any previous knowledge in music making. Look at a trailer for the French national tv here

The work Usine Electrique for 15 musicians and light design system, premiered in September 2023 at Biennale Son is discussed for a new incarnation in 2025 with Forum Neue Musik Luzern and Eklekto Percussion. Here a few pictures taken during the visit of the foreseen performance space, a former industrial warehouse in Kriens near Luzern, today used as a storage space for hydropower turbines. More infos to come soon

First collaboration with the Basel-based Concept Store Quartet, “Reports From The Unseen” is an evening-length concert piece involving the four musicians Alicja Pilarczyk (violin), Nejc Grm (accordion), Pablo Gonzales Baláguer (sax) and Jeanne Larrouturou (percussion) in a dialog between a tape playing back their own pre-recorded sounds and their own amplified live instruments. Initially conceived as an “hour-long decrescendo”, RFTU challenges the perfomers in a complex, intricated and enduring chamber music situation which brings the listener’s attention to a sonic journey starting with high volume soundwaves and finishing in pianissimo miniature articulations.
After a serie of working residencies in Basel, the piece saw its premiere taking place at the brand new Jumeaux jazz club in Lausanne, as part of the experimental music concert season Fracanaüm. More performances to follow in Basel, Dijon and more!

I have been working on a work for solo drums and tape, commissioned by the Ina GRM for their concert series “Multiphonies” at the studio 104 of Maison de la Radio in Paris. A very first attempt to expand the pure sonic and technical possibilitiesof the acoustic drumset with pre-recorded drum sounds, played onto the legendary GRM’s acousmonium. The result is a 20 minutes jounrey through dense multiphony, complex textures and intricated polyrythm. A short video making of is to be seen here

After an acclaimed performance of the snare drum quartet Snare Counterpoint at the IPEA percussion competition Shanghai, Eklekto Percussion performed a new version of this piece from 2020 during their seasonal prodcution “FLU(X)” at les 6toits in Geneva, alongside works by Mio Chareteau, Salomé Guillemin-Poeuf, Juliana Hodkinson, Isandro Ojeda-Garcia.
Pictures by ©François Volpé

Usine Electrique saw its premiere take place during the second weekend of the Biennale Son in Sion. After a one week residency with the young musicians from Conservatoire de Sion in the spectacular context of the Usine de Chandoline , the 60minutes spatialized piece was performed at dawn, startin in full bright light and finishing in almost complete darkness, allowing the light design system to draw a musical counterpoint with the resonating sounds. Watch a trailer of the piece here 

Working on a new work commissioned by Biennale Son in Switzerland. The Biennale Son is a new international event committed to draw a line between visual arts and sound arts. The main venue of the Biennale will be the former hydraulic power station of Chandoline near Sion in the spectacular Vallée du Rhône, and its architecture and unique acoustic will be the starting material for a new work for spatialized ensemble. The preliminary works has started for a 60minutes piece which will feature around 20 musicians spread around the space and drawing an acoustic soundscape. They should also all operate a custom made light design system which allow them to communicate visually between them. The premiere is planned on september 23rd

www.biennaleson.ch

Sudden Infant, the dada-noise-industrial trio consisting of Joke Lanz, Christian Weber and Alexandre Babel is hitting the road again, celebrating the latest LP release on Fourth Dimension record “Lunatic Asylum”. After a homegig in Berlin at the Urban Spree, the band is performing in Dijon, Geneva, Düdingen (Kilbi festival) and back in Berlin before more dates to be announced later in the season! See the calendar page for details

Released today on Shelter Press, The final piece of the collaboration with swiss based french maroccan artist Latifa Echakhch which started back in 2019 is now out. A black one-sided vinyl with a cover artwork designed by Norm graphics, “The Concert” is meant to work as a sound memory of the eponymous exhibition at the Swiss pavilion of the 59th Venice Art Biennale. This record is a complementary and inseparable partner piece to the exhibition and its eponymous catalogue, the latter having been published in April 2022 by Sternberg Press. The music features field recordings made at the Swiss Pavilion itself as well as pre-recorded percussion sounds and significant contributions by the Berlin-based musicians Jon Heilbronn, Rebecca Lenton, Theo Nabicht, Nikolaus Schlierf.

Available on Boomkat

La Ribot’s tentacular dance work DIEstinguished makes a stop at the Theatre de VIDY, during a week of events celebrating the reopening of the theater after renovations. Performing the music partially onstage, La Ribot’s dancers will be joined by 6 local performers to complete the cast.
“With a mobile phone in their hands, the performers are “body operators” as La Ribot says: they do not film the movement, the image is the movement. We dive with them into the labile energy of their dance, following the show simultaneously from our seats and on our own phones. The dance, the subjectivity of each moment, the humor and the latent sensuality recall the mutations of desires and possibilities in a present that cannot be contained.”

Official VIdy annoucement here

Currently working on a new work for 4 musicians. This collaboration features Basel based musicians Anne Katherin Klein, Sinforosa Petralia, Miguel Angel Garcia and Roberto Maqueda. After a first two days-working phase, a piece for inside piano and eight hands with the significant help of a mechanic lightning system will be brought to stage for its premiere in Basel in the next season.

The second night of the closing events of the swiss Pavilion at the 59^th Venice Art Biennial, curated by the artistic team of Latifa Echakhch, Francesco Stocchi and Alexandre Babel featured three concerts in two locations.

Babel’s solo work “Asphalte” in collaboration with swiss artist Florian Bach opened the evening in the heart of the Pavilion itself, allowing the drumset covered with bitumen to take advantage of the scenic situation offered by Latifa Echakhch’s monumental sculptures.
Later, at the spectacular venue Cosmo in la Giudeca, Kassel Jaeger delivered a new electroacoustic set, followed by Kali Malone’s “Does spring hide its joy” featuring Stephen O’Malley and Lucy Railton.

The Swiss pavilion at the 59^th Venice Art Biennial closes its doors on November 27^th after nine months of what has been the most visited biennial ever. After a period of nearly two and a half years since the beginning of the collaboration with artist Latifa Echakhch, curator Francesco Stocchi and light designer Anne Weckström on the pavilion exhibition “The Concert”, it was time to celebrate with proper decibels. Two nights of music held in the Serenissima, with special guests whose works and sounds have directly or indirectly accompanied the making of this project.

The first night of this programm curated by the artistic team of the pavilion featured three sets held at the Palazzo Trevisan: a solo by American legend Alvin Curran, a serie of chamber music pieces by John Cage, Annea Lockwook and Pauline Oliveros interpreted by Rebecca Lenton, Theo Nabicht, Corentin Marillier, Dorian Fretto, Louis Delignon, and as a grand finale, an appearance by french composer and performer Felicia Atkinson.

“On November 12, 2002, a new Geneva duo, BUTTERCUP METAL POLISH, emerged from the depths of Geneva’s Cave12, at the time still under the fire of the squat Rhino. This exploratory-hyper_nervous encounter of two drummers generated a mass of rich and thrilling percussive frequencies that could, at any moment, transform into a furiously encompassing maelstrom of joyfully knocking and stunning bludgeoning!” (Fernando Sixto, Cave12)
twenty years later, Nicolas Field and Alexandre Babel join forces again to celebrate the duo’s 20^th anniversary. This time they are joined by four special guests: vocalist and performers Joke Lanz, Fritz Welch, Maarten Seeghers and Catherine Travelleti for a one night only performance at the Cave 12.

concert announcement here

After 9 vears as the artistic director of the Geneva based percussion ensemble Eklekto, my long term collaboration with this unique musical organization is coming to an end, after a final concert for 15 percussionist with a new piece by Anthony Pateras. The journey started back in 2001 as I worked for the first time as a percussionist for Eklekto. It was followed by a number of collaborations over the following 20 years, including the creation of the biennial festival Batteries! which focused on drumset-based music.
I can’t thank enough my collaborators at Eklekto who made this amazing chapter possible, and contributed to push the boundaries of contemporary percussion music.

The commission of a new work by pianist, electronic musican and prolific Melbourne-based composer Anthony Pateras has been a dream for years. It is now a reality through the rather ambitious project of staging 15 percussionists through a room for a 45 minutes ensemble piece without conductor. “Grace/or/echo” is an evening long masterpiece dedicated to Eklekto  and which I conducted for its premiere on September 30th. 

After numerous working residencies in Geneva, La Chaux de Fonds, Lausanne over the course of the summer, The music for Spanish Choregrapher La Ribot’s new major work DIEstinghished is now ready to take the stage! The final result is made of live performed voice and percussive sounds surrounded by a recorded track made from the voices of the performers.
Premiere on September 28th at the TPR in la Chaux de Fonds

, further performances at La Comédie de Genève, Théatre VIDY Lausanne, Théatre les Halles, Sierre

La Ribot / DIEstinguished video trailer

The extraordinaire artist and choregrapher La Ribot, winner of Golden Lion at the Venice Dance Biennale 2020 announces a new major work to be premiered in September 2022. I will be working with the dancers to create a live performed stage music, that involves voice sounds, percussive hits, and fast movements. The premiere is planned at the TPR in la Chaux de FOnds, further performances at La Comédie de Genève, Théatre VIDY Lausanne, Théatre les Halles, Sierre
more infos here

The opening ofthe 59th Venice Art Biennale wil be preceded by a preview including press conference, official opening and VIP previews. Latifa Echakhch’s exhibition “The Concert” at the Swiss Pavillion, co-curated by Francesco Stocchi and Alexandre Babel, in close collaboration with finish lightning designer Anne Weckström will be part of it with a live streamed press conference on the 20th at 2pm, to be seen online here

The recording sessions have started at Jazzanova Studio in Berlin for an upcoming release on shelter-press. The Concert is a digital and vinyl release composed by Alexandre Babel in close collaboration with artist Latifa Echakhch. It features significant contributions from the berlin based musicians Rebecca Lenton, Theo Nabicht, Jon Heilbron and Nikki Schlierf. The record is meant to accompany the exhibition at the swiss pavilion of the 59th Venice Art Biennale. 
Digital release available through the exhibition catalog on sternberg press, and Vinyl release will be available from november 2022!

I had the honor to be invited as the master of the Jan Pustjens Focus Day 2022. The Focus Day is a unique opportunity for percussion students from all the conservatories in the Netherlands to meet and present their work. An semi-online version adapted to the pandemic realities was beautifully organized by the Jan Pustjens Foundation, and I had the pleasure to listen and work with the percussion groups from Rotterdam, Tilburg, Den Haag, Maastricht, Groningen, Zwolle, with a great finale by the students from Amsterdam who printed Gerhard Stäbler’s graphical score on t-shirts!

Post-noise-industrial-dada-power trio Sudden Infant (Joke Lanz, Christian Weber, Alexandre Babel) is spending two weeks in the remote cultural center Wiesenburg in Wedding, Berlin, to prepare what will become the third album of the trio-incarnation of Joke Lanz’s three decades running project Sudden Infant. Due for a release on fourth dimension records in spring 2022, this serie of new compositions promises to explore a wide variety of loud and intricate audio and text materials coming from the three musicians, Stay tuned!

The annual Swiss Music Prize have been revealed! Alexandre Babel is a laureate of this years edition! The swiss music prize “show snapshots of Switzerland’s current musical creativity. But the winners create timeless music, set impulses in the diverse, globally networked music scenes and, as cultural ambassadors, present an open-minded Switzerland at home and abroad. of a swiss music prize 2021”

Alexandre Babel’s new piece, “Damage Control”, will be performed for the very first time on two upcoming occasions: on April 23rd, 2021 at Kunstraum Walcheturm, Zürich and on a date that will soon be revealed at BNU (Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire), Strasbourg, as part of the collective lovemusic’s online programme “Fractales”.
The idea for this Franco-Swiss programme came from lovemusic’s wish to collaborate with Alexandre Babel on a new piece, specially written for the collective. Within these online events, lovemusic aims to explore different techniques of stage performance and to encourage the audience to have another perspective on live music…

WORK IN PROGRESS – Working on a new work commissioned by the Strasbourg-based collective lovemusic. The piece will be presented as part of their Franco-Swiss programme entitled “Fractales”. Under the title “Damage Control” this collaborative composition for 5tet is using string and wind instruments as percussive objects, and is constructed around the structures of communication flows.

The same announcements are made day after day: many concerts are being cancelled, again and again. The instruments, wisely put away, have to wait. And so do we. But we will not let it get us down and we will keep on creating!

The recording of Tristan’s Perich’s 50 minutes piece for 3 vibraphones and 1-bit electronics entitled « Open Symmetry » took place at the OARA (Office Artistique de la Région Nouvelle Aquitaine) in Bordeaux, France. The team was complete! Stéphane Garin, Julien Garin, Alexandre Babel as the vibraphone trio, Lucas Pizzini, as the sound engineer. A production by ensemble 0 and Eklekto Percussion, kindly supported by Bergerault.

To close the festival, Alexandre Babel performed his piece « Asphalte », a new drum solo in collaboration with artist and lighting designer Florian Bach. The drum set found itself propelled into the role of soloist to create an eventful discourse between rhythms, impacts, sound textures and resonances.
Alexandre Babel at L’Heure Bleue, La Chaux de Fonds

Four ensemble pieces, three composers and a shared taste for rhythm and repetitive music. At La Chaux de Fonds’ Temple Allemand, the musicians of the NEC ensemble, together with the percussionists of Eklekto, unveiled works that evoke electronic music, urban palpitations or even the murmur of a passing train.
Pieces by Thomas Meadowcroft, Annette Schmucki and Alexandre Babel

On the third day of the festival, the minimal and scenographical universe of the collective Radial met the acoustic works of the Japanese master of digital art Ryoji Ikeda for the first time. An evening at the Temple Allemand, which was placed under the sign of musical essence.
Performers: Radial, Eklekto Percussion

During the second day of the festival, 50 percussionists took possession of the impressive Usine Électrique of La Chaux-de-Fonds to perform simultaneously the same piece for snare drum: “Field Drum Monument”, by Mio Chareteau. The audience was invited to follow the resonating sound of the drum sticks.

The second half of the opening concert of  les Amplitudes festival featured the world premiere of a duo collaboration with australien pianist and composer Anthony Pateras. Pateras and Babel had crossed paths in a number of occasions in the past, but had never shared the stage as a duo unit.

Entitled ÉCLATS, the first day of the festival was devoted to acoustic works for percussion, cello and piano that explore rhythm and sound colours. The composition « Chœur Mixte », written by Alexandre Babel for 15 snare drums, was one of the opening concerts, which took place at the Théâtre L’Heure Bleue.
Performers: Eklekto Percussion, Till Lingenberg, Duo Orion

Amplify the music, make it audible, perceptible and tangible. It is now, and perhaps more than ever, time to awaken, to reveal oneself and to resonate. This is the whole intention of this new edition of the Amplitudes Festival in La Chaux-de-Fonds, CH.
Alexandre Babel has elaborated a program including the creations of musicians and composers Caspar Brötzmann, Ryoji Ikeda, Wojtek Blecharz, Mio Chareteau, Thomas Meadowcroft, Radial, Sudden Infant, Annette Schmuki and Anthony Pateras; the screening of animated films by director Delia Hess; the installations by artist and lighting designer Florian Bach; and the interventions of composer and theorist François J. Bonnet aka Kassel Jaeger and visual artist Latifa Echakhch.
Check out the detailed programme here.

The Amplitudes Festival in la Chaux-de-Fonds will focus this year on Alexandre Babel’s works and compositions. Two brand new works will be presented, one of which is a snare drum quartet to be performed by the Swiss based percussion group Eklekto. It will be part of a concert with Eklekto and le NEC, featuring exclusive works by Thomas Meadowcroft and Annette Schmucki. The composition process has started, in the inspiring Wiesenburg Studio in Berlin.

The internationally acclaimed electronic composer and artist Ryoji Ikeda is creating 8 new works for acoustic percussion instruments, in collaboration with the percussionists and performers Stéphane Garin, Amélie Grould and Alexandre Babel. The rehearsals have just started this week in Strasbourg and the premiere is due for September 2020 at the Festival Musica Strasbourg. After “Music for percussion 1” (photo) commissioned by Eklekto Percussion and premiered in 2016 at the Bâtie-Festival de Genève, Ikeda is bringing “Music for percussion 2”, an unexpected journey into the sonic possibilities of small percussion instruments, which draw a contrast with his usual large scale video and electronic installations. Stay tuned!

Covid-19 strikes again, La Biennale di Venezia has revealed new dates for the Architecture Biennale as well as for the Art Biennale. While the architectural event will be taking place from May 22nd to November 21st 2021, the Biennale Arte will be held from April 23rd to November 27th 2022. These are major changes but we won’t be discouraged! Swiss artist Latifa Echakhch and her two collaborators, curator Francesco Stocchi and percussionist Alexandre Babel, will hence be more than ready to take you on an acoustic & spatial journey at the Swiss Pavilion of the 59th International Art Exhibition in 2022.

www.labiennale.org

The coronavirus containment measures still allow creation processes for future projects to happen! The working residency #1 for a new solo work with light design by swiss artist Florian Bach has begun in Berlin. This new work, to be premiered on october 25th at the Amplitudes festival, draws a line between acoustic and light articulations.

The difficult times we are all experiencing is highly touching the performing arts. Many events have been canceled or postponed, it might only be the beginning. These times are a good opportunity to question our practices, and the possible future of adventurous music.
Stay healthy, and listen to music at home!

The Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia has chosen to entrust the Swiss Pavilion at the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia to the artist Latifa Echakhch. The artist herself has asked curator Francesco Stocchi and percussionist Alexandre Babel to join her for the realisation of the exhibition. Together they intend to offer visitors of the Biennale a rhythm-based experience with visual, acoustic and spatial effects.

www.prohelvetia.ch

News from les Amplitudes Festival!
Alexandre Babel will be the invited artist of the 2020 edition of the monographic contemporary music festival held in the city of La Chaux de Fonds in Switzerland focusses on the work of one musician. Babel will present 5 days of concerts, art exhibitions, lectures and performances from October 21st to 25th. Stay tuned!
More infos here:

www.lesamplitudes.ch

The trio consisting of pianist Hildegard Kleeb, trombone player Roland Dahinden and Alexandre Babel has released a new opus on the newly created label ezz-tetcis! The legendary experimental jazz and contemporary music label Hat Hut is back, in the form of this new series, created by label owner Werner X. Uehlinger. 10 original tracks beautifully recorded by Rainer Robben in Berlin and mixed by Micha de kanter. Liner Notes by Andy Hamilton!

www.hathut.com/ezz1004