"Two Duos" is pressed from cellist Okkyung Lee's OTO Residency; the first side a duo with Jérôme Noetinger on Revox B77 and the second with Nadia Ratsimandresy on ondes Martenot. Cut together, the two meetings seem to raise three cellos in the search for expressive voice: the cello, it's magnetic reproduction, and the dual controls of the machine invented to expand on its musical qualities.
Recorded live at Cafe OTO, London, on Thursday 28th March & Friday 29th March, 2022, by Paul Skinner and Shaun Crook.
Okkyung Lee (born 1975 in Daejeon, South Korea) is a cellist, composer, and
improviser who moves freely between of artistic disciples and contingencies. Since moving to New York in 2000 she has worked in disparate contexts as a solo artist and collaborator with creators in a wide range of disciplines. A native of
South Korea, Okkyung Lee has taken a broad array of inspirations—including noise, improvisation, jazz, western classical, and the traditional and popular music of her homeland—and used them to forge a highly distinctive approach. Her curiosity and a determined sense of exploration guide the work she has made in disparate contexts.
Okkyung Lee has appeared on more than 30 albums and has collaborated with Arca, David Behrman, Chris Corsano,
Jacques Demierre, Mark Fell, Ellen Fullman, Douglas Gordon, Jenny Hval, Vijay Iyer,
Christian Marclay, Ikue Mori,
Phill Niblock, Bill Orcutt,
Marina Rosenfeld,
John Zorn, among others.
Jérôme Noetinger (born 1966 in Marseille) is a composer, improviser and sound artist who works with electroacoustic devices such as the ReVox B77 reel-to-reel tape recorder, analogue synthesizers, mixing desks, speakers, microphones, various electronic household/everyday objects and home-made electronica.
In his long career as a sound experimenter, he has collaborated and performed with many artists, including
Sophie Agnel, Angelica Castello, Antoine Chessex, Tom Cora,
Michel Doneda,
eRikm,
Giuseppe Ielasi,
Lê Quan Ninh,
Lionel Marchetti, MIMEO,
Anthony Pateras, Anne-Laure Pigache,
Aude Romary, Keith Rowe,
Mathieu Werchowski as well as ensembles such as Cellule d'Intervention Metamkine, Le Un, Hrundi Bakshi, Les Sirènes and Proton.
From 1987 to 2018, Jérôme Noetinger was the director of Metamkine, a non-profit organisation dedicated to the distribution of improvised and electroacoustic music. Until 2014, he regularly contributed to
Revue & Corrigée, a quarterly journal of contemporary sound, poetry and performance, which he had co-founded in 1989. He was also a member and programming co-ordinator of exhibitions, gigs, and experimental cinema at le 102 rue d'Alembert, Grenoble from 1989-1999.
See also
Thymolphthalein (Natasha Anderson, Will Guthrie, Jérôme Noetinger, Anthony Pateras & Clayton Thomas).
Born in Paris, musician, composer and performer Nadia Ratsimandresy discovered (at the age of 9) her fascination with music and the Ondes Martenot in the class of Françoise Pellié Murail in Evry, France. After graduating from the Conservatoire de Paris (CNSMDP) in 2002, she is dedicated to chamber music and the performing arts. She developped, simultaneously with her work as a chamber musician an original solo répertoire for her instrument and electronic processing in real-time: Mimetic (aka Jérôme Soudan), Sarah Wéry, Matt Collins and Zeena Parkins dedicated some of their pieces to her. She composes for the theatre and for dance, and many instrumental works with or without electronic systems complete her catalog, which reflects its incarnated energy. A true improviser, Nadia Ratsimandresy has shared the stage with Cécile Thévenot,
Okkyung Lee,
Maria Chavez or Paul Pignon. She is Professor of Onde at the Regional Conservatoire of Boulogne-Billancourt. In 2020, she was appointed president of Futurs Composés, a national network for musical creation.
