reiheM präsentiert: Bob Ostertag Nicolas Collins & Birgit Ulher

In the organizer's words:

Bob Ostertag - Gamepad, Software

Nicolas Collins & Birgit Ulher - !Trumpet + Trumpet!

Bob Ostertag's musical practice since the 1970s is legendary for the early use of sampling in the field of free improvisation. Often politically charged and activist-oriented, his activities are not limited to music alone, but also include lyrics, books, media guerrilla (The Yes Men), film, journalistic work and teaching. Bob Ostertag has been involved in numerous collaborative music projects with Fred Frith, John Zorn, Kronos Quartet, Mike Patton, Phil Minton, Shelley Hirsch, Rrose and Otomo Yoshihide, among others. In the Loft he will present an improvised solo set with a software synthesizer and gamepad controller.

In the duo !Trumpet + Trumpet! by Nicolas Collins and Birgit Ulher, two variants of "extended" trumpet playing come together. While Nicolas Collins has designed his sensor- and loudspeaker-equipped trumpet as a hybrid of a hardware and software modification, Birgit Ulher expands her instrument in a purely acoustic-mechanical way. The sonic results are often astonishingly similar, merging hacked "Trumpelectronics" with the technically conventional wind instrument.

Nicolas Collins, known worldwide as the author of "Handmade Electronic Music - The Art of Hardware Hacking", published his memoir "Semi-Conducting - Rambles through the Post-Cagean Thicket" in Feb. 2025.