FREEDOM MUSIC FESTIVAL vol. 4
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Freedom Music Festival is one of the leading festivals of free improvised music in northern Europe. It is 6 days of concerts, artist talks, a movie night, and so much more!

PROGRAM:
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Day 1 : Tuesday, Aug 28
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ARTIST TALKS at Insulamusic :
6:00 PM : Talking with Teguh Permana + Yngel
CONCERTS at KoncertKirken :
8:00 PM : Jacob Anderskov (church organ) [DK]
9:00 PM : Zoe Efstathiou + Egil Kalman (prepared piano & modular synth) [GR/NO]
10:00 PM : Teguh Permana + Yngel (tarawangsa & guitars) [ID/DK]

Day 2 : Wednesday, Aug 29
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CONCERTS at KoncertKirken (in collaboration with the Austrian music collective Styria) :
8:00 PM : Maria Bertel + Heimo Puschnigg + Kresten Osgood
(trombone, piano & drums) [AU/DK]
9:00 PM : Katharina Klement + Michael Pinter + Michala Østergaard-Nielsen (piano, electronics & drums) [AU/DK/DK]
10:00 PM : Alpenglow 6 Super Group (40+ musicians improv big band) [AU/DK]

Day 3 : Thursday, Aug 30
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Free Improv Themed Documentary MOVIE NIGHT and CONCERT at Cinemateket :
7:00 PM : ‘Imagine the Sound’ (1981) – dir. Ron Mann (90 min)
8:30 PM : Ana Ïsma Viel (vocals & instruments) [US]
9:30 PM : ‘Milford Graves Full Mantis‘ (2018) – dir. Jake Meginsky, co-dir. Neil Young (91 min)

Day 4 : Friday, Aug 31
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CONCERTS at KoncertKirken :
8:00 PM : Nikita Rafaelov (piano) [FI] : album release
9:00 PM : Anna Högberg + Signe Dahlgreen (saxophones) [SE/DK]
10:00 PM : Mat Maneri + Tanya Kalmanovitch (violas) [US/CA]

Day 5 : Saturday, Sept 1
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ARTIST TALKS at Insulamusic :
12:00 PM : Talking with Mat Maneri + Tanya Kalmanovitch
6:00 PM : Talking with Peter Brötzmann + Heather Leigh
WORKSHOP at KoncertKirken :
1:30-5:30 PM : Vocal Improvisation Workshop with Anaïs Maviel
CONCERTS at KoncertKirken :
8:00 PM : Michala Østergaard-Nielsen (drums) [DK] with recitation by Flemming Agerskov [DK]
9:00 PM : PAPER PAIRS – interactive film/paintings/music experience with
Paul Hubweber + Ebba Jahn + Tomo Jacobson (trombone, film, paintings & double bass) [DE/PL]
10:00 PM : Peter Brötzmann + Heather Leigh (sax & steel pedal guitar) [DE/US]

Day 6 : Sunday, Sept 2
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CONCERTS at KoncertKirken :
8:00 PM : Kārlis Auziņš (saxophones) [LV] : album release
9:00 PM : Head of Hydrus : Nicole Hogstrand + Adam Grauman (viola da gamba duo) [SE]
10:00 PM : Sonja LaBianca + Tomo Jacobson (sax, electronics & double bass) [SE/PL]

The highlights of the festival:
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#1: Peter Brötzmann + Heather Leigh
We are VERY proud to announce that Freedom Music Festival vol. 4 will be marked by the presence and music of one of the living legends of improvised music, a single person who has probably been the most influential in leading the way for the generations of improvisers around the planet. Peter Brötzmann will perform in a duo with the most extraordinary electric pedal steel guitarist, currently Peter’s most common musician of choice, Heather Leigh.
Check their Sex Tape out at: https://trostrecords.bandcamp.com/album/sex-tape

#2: Mat Maneri + Tanya Kalmanovitch
I’ve kickstarted only one album in my life, and it took like 3 years before it reached me, but when it did EVERYTHING changed. I’m talking some-of-my-favorite-music-ever kind of experience! And YES, the otherworldly viola duo consisting of one of the most important living improvising string players Mat Maneri, and maybe a bit less known in Europe, but by all means equally gifted and recognised Tanya Kalmanovitch, is coming to town! They are very rarely in Europe and flying from NYC only for this one concert, so this is a do-not-miss-it-or-you’ll-regret-it-for-ever situation!
Check out their amazing album Magic Mountain at:
https://kalmanovitch.bandcamp.com/album/magic-mountain-kalmanovitch-maneri-duo

#3: Teguh Permana + Yngel
Now take that: Teguh Permana, the master of Tarawangsa tradition – the sacred music from Sundanese West Java, Indonesia, will perform an improvised set with the experimental Danish guitar super duo Yngel (Emil Palme & Taus Bregnhøj-Olesen)! This is one of these situations which makes my heart and brain melt – Teguh is a true musician-magician and this meeting of musical cultures will surely deliver y’all to another plane. Miss not!
And check out Teguh’s new album of traditional ritualistic Indonesian music out at: https://teguhpermana.bandcamp.com/al…/tarawangsa-rancakalong

#4: Styria meets Copenhagen
Stoked to announce that we will collaborate during one day of Freedom Music Festival vol. 4 with Alpenglow, an international improvised music summit mixing leading players from Styria in Austria with a wide range of your favourite improvisers from the Copenhagen scene. Embracing a true spirit of experimentation, we will mix many artists who, until now, have never shared a stage together. And at the end of the evening we will present Alpenglow 6 Super Group – an improvising ensemble of 40+ musicians, a total mix up of the Styria and Copenhagen scenes. It will get HOT!

#5: Free Improv Themed Movie Night
Time to announce our Free Improv Themed Documentary Film Night that will take place at Cinemateket this year!
We will screen two films and present a concert in-between.
‘Milford Graves Full Mantis’ (dir. Jake Messina Meginsky, co-dir. Neil Young, 2017) is a multi awarded documentary, the first ever feature-length portrait of renowned percussionist, martial artist, heart scientist, acupuncturist, and herbalist, Milford Graves, exploring his kaleidoscopic creativity and relentless curiosity.
“A captivating sound poem.” (The New York Times)
“Rhythmically right on.” (Rolling Stone)
‘Imagine the Sound’ (dir. Ron Mann, 1981) is a true classic. It brings together interviews with and musical and dramatic performances by the true legends: Cecil Taylor, Archie Shepp, Bill Dixon, and Paul Bley, the prime innovators of the once controversial free jazz movement of the 60s.
“The best documentary on free jazz that we have.” (Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader)

#6: PAPER PAIRS Group Painting Exhibition / Video / Live Duo Performance
We are stoke to announce that Freedom Music Festival vol. 4 will host a very special multimedia experience, PAPER PAIRS Group Painting Exhibition / Video / Live Duo Performance.
Immerse yourself in abstract works on paper size 30 x 40 cm by over 20 artists from Germany, the Netherlands and New York – curated by Ebba Jahn (known for creating the 1984 cult free jazz documentary “Rising Tone Cross”, which we screened last year). See the German master trombonist Paul Hubweber in action on screen, playing, concentrating, walking and stopping along the artworks, using them as inspiration for his improvisations – thoughtful, soulful – gracing PAPER PAIRS with his outstanding multifaceted trombone solo performance – film directed by Ebba Jahn. Hear live improvisation to Paul Hubweber’s solo performance on screen by the Freedom Music Festival’s own double bass player, Tomo Jacobson. And finally engage yourself in the seamless blending of the video and live duo set by Paul Hubweber in person and Tomo Jacobson again. Does that even make sense in writing? Cause it so much does as one of the Freedom Music Festival’s highlights – to experience in person!

#7: Vocal Improvisation Workshop with Anaïs Maviel
Anaïs Maviel offers a workshop around the use of the voice as a liberating music instrument. Voice as a tool to ground in ancestral practices as well as to explore societal, futuristic narratives. This fragile yet powerful instrument reveals the unique design of each instrument: how each body resonates. Vocal improvisation takes awareness of the physicality of singing, and conscious choices through constant motion, flows of information that the body experiences. How to communicate, translate the unspeakable, manifest abstract thoughts in sound, with this deeply personal instrument? Communication implies a language, and there are as many improvisation languages as there are individuals. There the challenge becomes non-the-less to formulate our own discourse in coherence with our very own background, beliefs, aesthetics, aspirations (…) and in the mean time to communicate with other-as-complex-and-mysterious improvising voices. In other words – how to conciliate transforming chaos of heterogeneous identities in sound? This workshop will structure around four axes:
– Communication: the voice in conversation. To formulate, articulate oneself vocally is an exquisite process leading to expression. Expression is one side of communication. Another that is as critical is processing the sonic information from outside. Silence, sounds generated or impacted by acoustics, environment, and other players. Through collective exercises that will put us in communicative situations, we will touch questions of space, melody, rhythm, harmony, dissonance and noise as tools to build a language, to get a point across, as well as to hearing and responding to the sonic (but also spatial, visual etc.) stimulations we perceive.
– Listening: the ear, essential tool to expression. One can only sing what one can hear. We sometimes think about music and improvisation as action. The practice of singing teaches us that no music happens without deep, acute hearing. The same way that in order to produce a specific note, the singer needs to hear it first, to produce a specific sound in improvisation, the ear needs to conceive it first. To understand the relation between hearing and making sounds is a skill that the vocal improviser develops at all levels, at all times. Thus, instrumentalists may be interested as well, to develop a closer relationship between what they play and what the hear by the study of singing.
– Knowing the voice: body and language. The vocal instrument, a delicate muscle set in vibration by a breath flow, produces a myriad of sounds that have a powerful impact on the vocalist and the listeners. So that one can safely explore vocal possibilities, one needs a technical base. We will study the vocal apparatus from a physical standpoint, with technique inspired by Jo Estill, the prosodic body (Sanskrit phonetics, Qi Gong and Yoga), to further understand our use of this spontaneous yet intricate instrument. Extended techniques, as they are different for each singer, will be explored individually.
– Improvisation and culture: what is freedom? Vocal improvisation has a long and wide oral history all over the world, displaying various approaches of cultural, social, political, historical parameters that they relate to. Vocal improvisation has often been tied to a structure that it comes to strengthen, surround, interweave with, deconstruct (…). We will identify the structures which we are responding to, in our inquiry to free improvise and make conscious choices on how to relate to the landscapes of our freedom.
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The festival was established with a motto: Freedom – Improvisation – Expression – Exploration – Now! These five words encompass the festival’s mission and focus. We celebrate unique expression and exploration in music. We cherish improvisation and one-of-a-kind experiences it brings to the audiences. We strive for freedom. Our policy is also to aim for an equal presentation of both female and male improvisers.

The festival will take place at KoncertKirken, Cinemateket, and Insulamusic.
Supported by Statens Kunstfond, Københavns Musikudvalg, Nørrebro Lokaludvalg, Oticon Fonden, and Knud Højgaards Fond.
Partners are KoncertKirken, Cinemateket, and Insulamusic.
Thanks to Dansk Musiker Forbund – DMF.
The festival is brought to you by Gotta Let It Out.

Tickets:
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1 concert : 100 DKK / students: 50 DKK
1 day ticket : 200 DKK / students: 100 DKK
Festival pass : 600 DKK / students 400 DKK

The tickets can be purchased at the venue before concerts.