Chris Swithinbank

This se­mes­ter I am as­sist­ing Hans Tutschku with a class at Har­vard Uni­ver­sity on im­pro­vi­sa­tion with elec­tron­ics. I asked sev­eral im­pro­vis­ers to choose pieces of music that are im­por­tant to them and their prac­tice.

For the third edi­tion of this se­ries, Ute Wasser­mann has kindly agreed to share some of her favourite music. Wasser­mann has achieved recog­ni­tion as a vocal artist, com­poser, and sound artist, with her per­sonal, highly char­ac­terised, non­ver­bal sonic lan­guage. In ad­di­tion to a richly de­vel­oped range of vocal colours, she masks her voice with bird calls, res­o­nant ob­jects, and de­vel­ops sound in­stal­la­tions. She ap­pears reg­u­larly as an im­pro­viser in Lon­don and Berlin, and has also premièred works by com­posers such as Ana Maria Ro­driguez, Michael Maier­hof, and Chaya Cz­er­nowin.

Wasser­mann’s se­lec­tions in­tro­duce di­verse vocal worlds, in­ter­sec­tions of voice and tech­nol­ogy, and var­i­ous im­pro­visatory prac­tices.

Demetrio Stratos, ‘Flaut­o­fonie ed altro’ (1978)

Derek Bai­ley, ‘Im­pro­vi­sa­tion’ (1975)

Janis Joplin, ‘Ball and Chain’ (1967)

Lau­rie An­der­son, ‘O Su­per­man (For Massenet)’ (1981)

Orchèstre Baka Gbiné, yelli (2008)

Kathy Keknek & Janet Aglukkaq, ap­pli­ca­tion for the 2008 Arc­tic Win­ter Games (2007)

Thanks so much to Ute for pro­vid­ing these in­sights into her lis­ten­ing world. Below is an ex­am­ple of her own live per­for­mances and you can find more on her Vimeo page.

Pre­vi­ously: Richard Scott, Vijay Iyer