A rare 3-hour concert by the legendary avant-garde improvisation collective Marginal Consort – their first ever appearance in Germany, in the dramatic setting of Berlin’s St. Elisabeth Kirche. Marginal Consort is a Japanese avant-garde improvisation collective composed of sound and visual artists who were all students of Takehisa Kosugi at the radical Bigaku school of aesthetics in Tokyo in the ’70s.
Founded in 1997, the collective, which plays just one concert per year, is a reformation of the East Bionic Symphonia, a large improvisation ensemble in the spirit of Kosugi’s Group Ongaku and Taj Mahal Travellers projects. Marginal Consort’s current line-up includes Kazuo Imai, Tomonao Koshikawa, Kei Shii and Masami Tada. The group also featured previously artists Yasushi Ozawa, bassist in Keiji Haino’s Fushitsusha, and Chie Mukai, from dreamy psychedelic group Che-Shizu. Marginal Consort’s extended set explores forms of sound and ways of playing that never coalesce into music, but create a group dynamic of ebb and flow, exploration and fluidity.
A Marginal Consort show has a fixed start and end time, but otherwise nothing else is predetermined. All is temporary, flexible. Accidental or deliberate unison. The musicians are physically separated in the performance space like individual actors. The audience is encouraged to move around to experience different aural perspectives of their dense, kaleidoscopic and immersive performance.
Kei Shii has studied music from Takehisa Kosugi and art from Genpei Akasegawa at Bigakko between 1973-1975. He has made sound installations based on sound system and physics. He has been working as an engineer at ACAC in Aomori prefecture.
Masami Tada has worked in a group named “GAP” between 1974-1979. He has also joined Takehisa Kosugi’s Ongaku Dojo at Bigakko in 1975. He has had many exhibitions as a photographer, too. He shot the same tree for 365 days and made the prints 20 years later for a solo exhibition at Pennings Gallery in Netherlands in 2000. In 1996 he had an exhibition Majime na circus (Serious Circus) where the audience would look into a tent placed in a gallery.
[vimeo 72401784 w=640&h=360]Tomonao Koshikawa has joined Takehisa Kosugi’s Ongaku Dojo at Bigakko in 1975. He had made some tape music with radio’s tuning noise and analogue synthesizers. Later he has played in rock and jazz (big band and combo) bands, and been studying Indian music, Japanese singing songs, Baroque music, also collaborated with dancers till now.
Kazuo Imai has studied under Masayuki Takayanagi and Takehisa Kosugi and has been working mainly as an improviser since 1970 and started his “solo works” from 1991.
This event is presented by Digital in Berlin. Check out our Facebook page to win tickets.
Marginal Consort
Monday, 6th June 2016 | Doors 19:00 | Concert 19:30—22:30
St. Elisabeth Kirche | Invalidenstraße 3 | 10115 Berlin-Mitte
Marginal Consort@Soundcloud | elisabeth.berlin | Event@Facebook
