The first album to come out of the collaboration between Jason Kahn (electronics) and Magda Mayas (piano and objects), who have been playing together regularly in concert since 2012.
"I first played with Magda in 2012 in Zürich. Since then, we've had further concerts together in Germany, Australia and Switzerland. It would be fitting that this, our first release, would be recorded at the Werkstatt für Improvisierte Musik Zürich, the same room where we originally first played together thirteen years ago."
Jason Kahn
Each hand-painted sleeve is unique.
Jason Kahn (born 1960 in New York, lives and works in Zurich) is a musician and artist who grew up in Los Angeles, and relocated to Europe in 1990. His work includes sound installation, performance and experimental composition. Kahn has been exhibiting his sound and visual works since the late 1990s, and has had solo and group exhibitions internationally, including Townhouse Gallery of Contemporary Art, Cairo, Diapason Gallery, New York, and Centre d'Art Neuchatel, Switzerland. Originally a percussionist, Kahn later began integrating live electronics into his playing. As a composer, his work draws on electronic and acoustic sound sources to create slowly developing compositions imbued with a sense of timelessness. His work addresses the entity of sound as both a physical and psychological factor shaping our consciousness. Kahn's sound installations seek to enhance spatial awareness through sonic intervention, focusing on expanding our perception to other dimensions of seeing, hearing and feeling a space. Kahn has given concerts at various festivals, art spaces and clubs throughout the world, traveling and presenting extensively in Europe, North and South America, as well as Asia.
Magda Mayas (born 1979) is a pianist and composer performer living in Berlin. She has developed a vocabulary utilizing both the inside as well as the exterior parts of the piano, using amplification, preparations and objects that become extensions of the instrument itself. Mayas has developed a set of techniques that draw on the history of prepared and inside piano vocabulary, but are highly individualized and expand the language for internal piano music making.
She holds a PhD in Music Performance and Interpretation from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Since 2019, she is the program coordinator and teaches improvisation at Luzern University of applied Sciences and Arts.
Mayas performs internationally solo and in collaboration with a large number of musicians and composers. Amongst her projects are
Spill, a duo with drummer Tony Buck, a duo with Christine Abdelnour (sax),
Jane in Ether with Biliana Voutchkova (vl) and Miako Klein (recorders) and the Splitter Orchester Berlin.
She has performed and toured in Europe, the USA, Australia, Mexico and Lebanon and collaborated with many leading figures in improvisation and composers such as Marilyn Mazur,
John Butcher, George Lewis,
Andy Moor, Nate Wooley, Peter Evans, Eddie Prévost,
Phill Niblock, David Sylvian, Zeena Parkins,
Fred Frith, Hamid Drake,
Joëlle Léandre, Paul Lovens, Ikue Mori, Ken Vandermark,
Okkyung Lee, Nic Collins, Elliot Sharp and Maja Ratkje.
