Laia´s Phantasmophon

It was a great pleasure to work together in a little tour with Matthias Mainz who is responsible for the contents of the "Plattform Für Neue Transkulturelle Musik" and researches in many different directions. Matthias Mainz organized three "discussion concerts" for us.  We were two groups. The corporate idea of these evenings was to combine the very European instrument piano with a duo partner from another cultural background.  Our main interest was to show, how intercultural communication can be started. And how you can manage to communicate, exchange and finally enrich the growing music on eye height. What special challenges you encounter between the traditions. And what you learn as soon as you start to listen to the other partner. https://www.facebook.com/pg/Plattform-für-Transkulturelle-Neue-Musik-1695933867387017/about/?ref=page_internal "The Platform for Transcultural New Music is a coalition of musicians and composers from Germany with Persian, A...

We were invited by the one and only wonderful Prof. Dr. Ilse Storb to play a concert at the "Labor Für Weltmusik" at the Folkwang Musikschule.  We could invite Jan Klare for some tunes, that was a great honor!  Find out more about Ilse Storb:  http://www.ilse-storb.de She is still the only female professor for jazz research in Europe.  Photos of the concert by Anne Barth.  That was the presswork of the music school (in German):  Labor für Weltmusik: Asien trifft Europa. Konzert mit Hein Tint und Laia Genç Am Freitag, 10. November, 20 Uhr, in der Aula der Folkwang Musikschule, Thea-Leymann- Straße 23. Der Eintritt kostet 8 Euro, ermäßigt 5 Euro. 03.11.2017 Das nächste Konzert des Labors für Weltmusik an der Folkwang Musikschule steht unter dem Motto "Asien trifft Europa". Am Freitag, 10. November, 20 Uhr, trifft Hein Tint, virtuoser Spieler des burmesischen Trommelkreises Pat Waing, die deutsch-türkische Pia...

30.10.2017 Autumn last year Thaung Htike and I had the chance to play some concerts in Germany, one of those concerts took place in the Linden-Museum Stuttgart. It was a great pleasure to present our music in Stuttgart! Someone in the public collected these impressions.  https://www.facebook.com/events/154748515130377/?active_tab=discussion Before and after the concert... The program... Hawai was their main focus or still is at the moment.

Thaung Htike playing Burmese Piano.  In Stuttgart before our concert at the "Linden Museum".  The piano had just arrived. Thanks to Schoke Pianos Köln!!! Listening to the Burmese piano style for the first time, what did it reveal to my ear? What does it reveal to your ear? The piano is one beautiful example of how cultural exchange has affected Burma  from earlier times on. And this is not only from western music. There were influences of Thai music on the classical music of Burma for example.  Back to Sandaya, the Burmese piano. When you listen to Thaung Htike you hear Pentatonic elements, western harmonies, dominant colors, some little flavors of bluesy motives even. Basically this piano style copied the playing of the burmese music ensembles to the piano and added some flavors and bits. I hear the music of the Hsaing Waing ensembles a lot in the piano figures.  You hear a lot of intervallic playing, not so muc...

There are different traditional music ensemble forms in burmese music.  Burmese music. Can be devided roughly in three different categories: 1. Hsaing Waing music.  Hsaing Waing is the name of the big ensemble, that consist of the Pad Waing (a tuned drum circle and the leader of the ensemble), a bass drum position, a cymbal, clapper and wood-block position, the gong circle (cromatic or diatonic) and of oboe and flute instruments. This music is open-air music and is played in festival contexts, like pagoda festivals, marriages and also at puppet plays. A Hsaing Waing Ensemble consist of minimum 6 musicians, but it can also contain a lot more. This ensemble plays at all the social festivities. Pagoda festivities, marriages, novice consecration and "welcome to the new house parties".  "Hsaing" means hanging and "Waing" is the circle. The ensemble has the name from its main instrument, the drum circle.  "Pad Waing" is another name for Hsaing...

Who wants to investigate even more about Burmese music finds a wonderful platform here: http://waing.org Upcoming news, researches and so on. There are some Burmese living in Germany. And there are few people in Germany who speak burmese as a foreign language. I had the chance to meet some of them last year, one of them is also responsible for the platform waing.org: Friedlind Riedel, M.A. | Bauhaus University Weimar. She is very interested in fostering the knowledge and the research about burmese music. She wants to bring more understanding about this music to Europe, as far as I understood her.  Below you see Friedlind Riedel, Thaung Htike and me at the music store Cologne. We did this a an "excursion" for fun in October 2017.  Friedlind also came to our concert at the Loft and contributed some indeed interesting knowledge. She speaks Burmese. 

This is Meike Goosmann´s composition Puppets Grace, that she wrote for our trip in 2014.  The drum circle Pad Waing is tunded basically in a C Major scale. Or in tone rows that can be derived from C major.  We can see, that Meike stayed to the tones, that fit a C Major scale, for some time before she turned to some extra notes. In total she restricts herself to the alterations of Bb, Eb and Ab. And I don't really remember. But it is possible that the Hsaing Waing didn't play all the parts of her composition. One possible solution to collaborate: Create different parts for the ensembles. One part where everybody can join. Another part where one of the groups doesn't play, but that brings more harmonic color to the song.  A lso on the rhythmical level she imagined the way Burmese music sounds.  She included improvisation parts on some riffs, that always repeat and therefor give the players some freedom.  ...

I collected some videos of the time and work I spent together with the Anne Paceo band in NOV 2015.  I was invited again by the Goethe Institute Yangon. Goethe Institute and Institute Francais collaborated. Which was great.  This is a rehearsal of the Anne Paceo band and Hein Tint´s Tsaing Waing to prepare our concert at the World Music Festival Yangon 2015. It is a rehearsal for her song "Myanmar Folk Song". Beautiful how the two ensembles blend into one sound! Here are some more really cute impressions of the general atmosphere of the evening: https://youtu.be/rGznuw4AGs8 This is the composition "GONGS". Now in 2015, the second time to Myanmar I was more confident and ready to write an own tune for the combination of the Tsaing Waing and a European Jazz ensemble. https://youtu.be/HOZYjM7urTI This is the song "Spazieren Gehen" composed by Thaung  Htike.  A version that starts in the beginning. ...

These puppets show a Tsaing Waing ensemble with dancers and singers. I found these arrangements by chance in a museum of musical instruments in New York.         

In Gitameit in 2014 I met Thar Nge during our jazz workshop week for the Gitameit music center.  He is a young and very talented singer, I remember him as so eager.  He just wanted to learn as many things as he could. He tried to find a way to broaden his knowledge and develop his talents as a musician. We were thinking about Germany/Europe. But these plans excelled my power to help him. He found another way and i n the meantime he studied composition in Bangkok.  facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/07thar.nge He is famous in Myanmar! ;-)  If you follow more of his videos you'll find he is more of a pop singer.  In 2014 he offered me to do a video. There was no time left, our schedule was too busy. But in 2015 I remembered my promise and we videotaped two tunes. Tagu Films, a young burmese film team did the wonderful job. And that day was fun!!!  His own composition:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFuynNDEbKw Someon...

Music School in Yangon/Myanmar.  The Gitameit Music Center does an impressive work in the middle of Yangon. It is very close to real life, promotes the young talents, some even find a place to live in the housings of the center for some time.  And it connects the Burmese eager young people with both Burmese professional musicians as well as international artists. Some artists repeatedly take a period of time, travel to Myanmar and teach at Gitameit. It is a wonderful team!  Youtube channel of Gitameit Music Institute:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAdAgla3T88pgxOvtcV-B2A facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/gitameit/ This is a taste of the workshop week we did at Gitameit Music Center. Christoph Hillmann is explaining 2 against 3. A rhythmical parameter classical Burmese music does not use. He has an indeed funny method and is using the German word "Pfannekuchenteig" to connect words with the right accents for the 2 against 3 beats. ;-)...

This is my arrangement of "Spazieren Gehen". An original composition from Thaung Htike.  Just me and the Hsaing Waing Ensemble. Originally I arranged it for the collaboration with the Meike Goosmann band.  Here we played it in 2015. During the concert with Anne Paceo.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8N5yb8IHjQ Unfortunately the video taping didn't start in the beginning. So you can only hear a part of my intro improvisation on the piano. 

Anne Paceo from France does an enormous work. Impressive. She was the drummer during the first period in 2010 in Tim Isfort´s band.  And she continued the work and lifted it to another level.  She fell in love with "Birmanie".  Follow the links.  Teaser of Fables of Shwedagon:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQyKldFjoHk Live Concert  Fables of Shwedagon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4alABT_ny0 Myanmar Folk Song. Studio version:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lTaDXxKEic Live Version in another context, with her project "Circles" and the amazing singer Leila Martial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55HLJCTfusU Although you cannot see me, I am on the piano in this concert video from 2015:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHk2FiIJgR0&t=28s

It began in 2010.  The two musicians Tim Isfort and Jan Klare were working at the project first.  Together with Xaver Augustin , the head of the Goethe Institut Yangon/Myanmar .  As far as I understand another very important role was played by Daphne Wolff . Who came to Burma first in 2004 to learn about Burmese music as an music-ethnologist. In 2010 she was working for the Goethe Institute Yangon, organized and created collaborations between Burmese musicians and European musicians. That is how Tim Isfort and Jan Klare first met Thaung Htike .  And that was also how Daphne and Thaung Htike met. Daphne is a very important linking role. She speaks Burmese, she knows the people and their music and she can translate during the process of rehearsing.  Wich is quite important, otherwise sometimes there is no understanding in words and alas no chance to work at musical details. Tim Isfort (former festival manager of "Traumzeit" Duisburg, recently f...

This is a post of the opening of the new Goethe Institut in Myanmar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kn3SDiO2_dY That happened half a year before I came there for my first time.  I still saw Goethe and the Institute Francais collaborate in the same building, elsewhere in Yangon. Also a good neighbourhood, for co-works. I post this, because there are some nice and general impressions of Myanmar in short.  The band you can see is Hein Tint´s Tasing Waing ensemble together with Tim Isfort (bass),  Jan Klare (saxophone) and Michael Vatcher (drums).

It was one of these things, that came straight out of the blue.  I was not actively heading into this kind of musical direction. On the contrary at that moment of time I was preparing for an artist in residence in Istanbul, my head was more searching for oriental approaches of music when the Goethe Institut Yangon/Myanmar invited one of my fellow musicians. And Meike Goosmann chose to invite me into her band to travel to Myanmar.  Meike Goosmann is a German saxophonist who lives in Berlin. And we have met in different contexts so far.  And now she asked me to be part of a very special trip. What a challenge!!! So we were invited to travel to Myanmar in November 2014. I remember I traveled from Istanbul to Yangon and then back to Germany afterwards for some beautiful classic jazzmusic on a tour with the legendary American jazz singer Sheila Jordan and the wonderful band "Lines For Ladies". So this trip to Myanmar for ...