LOOS artistic researchers 2022
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Leslee Smucker (1986) is a musician utilizing violin, voice, synthesizers, electronics, film, and poetry. Her work focuses on ideas surrounding sound perception, phenomenological spatial relationships, anachronisms, language, and the human/machine relationship. Solo performances include The Scottish Library (presented by University of Edinburgh’s Cantos Project), the Andriessen Festival in Arnhem, NL, Project Audire in Portugal, and Interference Series in Flagstaff. For composition, she was awarded a commission from Gaudeamus for Michela Amici in 2022 for harp and transducers. She has presented her research at the 20th Biennial International Conference on Ninetheeth-Century Music in Huddersfield, UK, and given artistic research lecture-performances at Brancaleoni International Festival and University of Virginia. She is lecturer in music at University of Colorado Boulder. Fellowships include a Barnes Fellow in Philadelphia with artist in residence JACK quartet, as well as a fellow in Ensemble Evolution 2021 with International Contemporary Ensemble.
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Suzana Lașcu’s work, mostly chamber in size, strives to address political and cultural realities, despite leaning towards crafting sonic fictions of her own. She graduated from her bachelor studies at Prins Claus Conservatorium in 2017 and completed a master research paper in jazz improvisation at Codarts in 2019. In 2022, thanks to a transformative one-year course at The Institute of Sonology, she’ll incorporate algorithmic composition, microtonal treatment and field recording to her artistic practices. Invested in the inventive aspect of music, she variably switches hats as a curator, conductor, radiophonist or songwriter for projects other than her own.
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Elisabeth Lusche is a trumpet player. She has had numerous festival performances: the Holland Festival, the Grachtenfestival, Rewire, the Opera Forward Festival, the Stockhausen Courses Kürten, and the Klangspuren Festival. She is a resident artistic researcher at Studio LOOS The Hague and a member of the research team for the Global Breath project.
Elisabeth starred in the Dutch National Opera’s 2019 aus LICHT production of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s opera cycle. She is a current member of the award-winning Nevis Ensemble in Scotland and the electro-acoustic improvisation group Oktopus Connection Ensemble in the Netherlands.
Elisabeth is a Van Laar Trumpets and Flugelhorns Artist.
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Baidar Al Basri is an Iraqi singer residing in The Netherlands. She comes from a large musical family of are composers, singers, and musicians. She studied Arabic singing, ballet, and theater in Syria. Her studies opera she finished at the Royal Conservatory in The Netherlands. Baidar Al-Basri has received many honors and awards, most notably the title Voice of Religions, which was granted to her by the younger sister of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, princess Margriet. She also won the International Peace Prize in Germany. Baidar has perfomed solo concerts with many international Orchestras of which the most important is the Metropole Orchestra, where she sang four musical works that were specifically composed for her by the Dutch composer Theo Hoek.
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Active as an autonomous artist since 1984. Mainly focusing on animation, video, drawing and graphical arts.
Co-operating with musicians, composers, ensembles: a.o. Chiel Meyering, Maarten Altena, Delta Ensemble, Oene van Geel, ERAX, Peter van Bergen, GJ Prins Thomas Lehn, Loos, pdq^d.
During live-(impro)performances making use of film-projectors, beamer, live-drawing, installation. Animation work has been shown and awarded internationally. Occasionally teaching a.o. : G. Rietveld Ac, Film Ac, Vrije Ac, NIAF, Ac v Bouwkunst, Cal Arts and in workshops for children. Future plans: sound & image (streaming)project at LOOS studio. Develop new animations in combination research old & new media.
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Lucie Nezri (FR/NL) is is drawn to abstraction and simplicity. her work bridges different contexts and disciplines pertaining to musical composition, tuning theory, computer science, and, at times, choreography. she enjoys exploring probabilistic methods of composition in a diversity of ways, from pieces for computer and classical instrumentation, to fixed media, multichannel compositions, and dance performances.
She holds a Bachelor's in music from the Institute of Sonology where she is finishing her Master's degree.
Since 2021, nezri carries out her compositional activities at Studio Loos in collaboration with other instrumentalists and expands her recording/ sound engineering skills during concerts.
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Composer, performer and radio-maker raised in Germany and the US, now based in The Hague, Netherlands. Leonie captures her environment through field recordings, which she uses for electronic live sets, sound installations, and compositions for soloists and ensembles. She had recent residencies at New Media Society and Limited Access Festival (Iran), Forum Wallis (Switzerland), and The Story of Space Festival (India), and Berlin Circus Biennale (Germany), and Altes Finanzamt (Germany), and at LOOS (Netherlands). Her works have been released through Musica Dispersa (Spain/UK), and Noise á Noise (Iran,) Biodiversità Records, and Syrphe Label, and have been physically archived in the British Library. Leonie established the radio branch of LOOS with the Radio LOOS program and is creating features about different aspects of sound art and art radio, and with that connecting communities.
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Christina Schönbach is a soprano based in The Hague and Berlin. She completed her Bachelor of Music for Classical Voice at the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague in 2015.
She has performed various operatic roles, such as Agathe, Ariadne (Strauss), Almera (Dark Sisters/Muhly), Sieglinde and Eurydice at several locations, including the Trentino Music Festival and the Opera Patras. Next to this traditional repertoire, Christina has also been working in the contemporary music scene.
Since 2020, Christina has been involved with Studio LOOS. She performed in Cristiano Melli’s opera Persephone, directed by Frank Scheffer. She was also part of the New LOOS Ensemble and LOOS received a stipend from the council of The Hague for her to work on her Voice Noise Catalogue in 2021 to further her improvisation skills.
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Kaðlín Sara Ólafsdóttir is an Icelandic artist recently graduated from the Institute of Sonology in The Hague. Mostly she works with cassettes and cassette players, exploring the possibilities of low-quality sound and obsolete materials. Kaðlín has made several sound installations using hacked cassette players and old cassettes, exposing the fragile materiality of the cassette and the recorded stories that it holds. Recently, she has made compositions and live performances focusing on nostalgia and deterioration by bringing to light the imperfections of the cassette player and connecting it to the imperfections of memory.
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As both a composer and singer, Kristin Norderval is inspired by hybridity, interactivity and the idea that everything we do is site-specific. She blends acoustic and electronic sound, is fascinated with de-tuned instruments, machines, and ambient sound. In her solo works for voice and electronics she processes her voice in real time often combining it with prerecorded sounds to create complex sonic layers and unusual soundscapes.
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Elizaveta Kuzyakova is an experimental musician and composer from Moscow, currently based in The Netherlands. Continuing her studies in the Institute of Sonology in The Hague, she is active in the field of electro-acoustic composition and live performance. Her solo project Sáof evolves around drone /noise/ experimental electronics.
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Peter van Bergen is artistic and business director of LOOS. He is a composer, improviser, interpreter and PhD researcher at the Free University of Brussels in the field of interdisciplinary experimental new music. He founded LOOS in 1982 and Studio LOOS in 2005. His research concerns "Improvisation, Interactivity, Instability: Artistic Transformations" (IOMAIM Research) in which improvisation between people is transformed into collaboration between man and machine. As an improviser, he worked with musicians such as Cecil Taylor, Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, George Lewis, Roscoe Mitchell, Anthony Braxton. As a composer he wrote for mainly the legendary LOOS Ensemble, various soloists, ASKO Schoenberg, the Volharding. He also worked closely with numerous composers and artists such as Louis Andriessen, Cornelis de Bondt, Huib Emmer, Martijn Padding, Gilius van Bergeijk, Guus Janssen, Paul Koek, Johan Simons, Krisztina de Chatel, Karin Post, Wim T. Schippers, Titus Muizelaar.
Photography by: Marijn Goes
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The Brazilian interdisciplinary composer Cristiano Melli (1980) studied in São Paulo with Almeida Prado, Osvaldo Lacerda and Jocy de Oliveira. Since 2010 in The Hague, he holds a Bachelor and Master degrees in Composition, having Yannis Kyriakides, Calliope Tsoupaki, Cornelis de Bondt, Gilius van Bergeijk and Peter Adriaansz as teachers. Since 2019 he is part of the Senior Researcher Artistic team of Studio LOOS in The Hague, producing HERTZ, PERSEPHONE ZOOMED, a concert portrait and instalments of the EROLA series. Further projects are the queer multimedia cycles QUEENS and LEENDERT, both in production phase.
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Johan van Kreij is a sonologist. His practice covers the fields of composing, improvising, making and executing in the field of experimental electro-acoustic music. Both working independently and in cooperation with various artists, he has been involved in a wide variety of projects in the field of improvised music, music theatre, dance, architecture and installation-art. His current collaborations involve the research into quasi-autonomous improvisation systems, the rethinking of generative synthesis models and the development of stepper-motor control approaches. Furthermore, he teaches at the Institute of Sonology and is member of the new LOOS Ensemble.
Photograpg by: Marjolein van Rotterdam
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Olaf Tarenskeen is one of the few Dutch musicians to have been trained in classical music as well as in jazz and improvised music.
In addition to being a classical guitarist in the beginning, he has an extensive background as a performer of modern music. During his career jazz playing and modern notated music existed simultaneously but separately. In a later stage trying to find blending these genres which seemed more possible using the adjusted classical guitar. This blending, not particularly as borrowing material and putting them together but in a sense of transforming materials and executing attitude allowing popular elements in complex settings and classical sensibilities in popular settings.
Seeing the guitar as a ‘multi-faced’ instrument but rooted in an inescapable background of jazz.
Performing in these separate genres and teaching on all levels and ages, became the agent of conduct to start a research of the Classical Guitar in contemporary Jazz at this moment in the context of research Lab : Loos Artistic Research Group in The Hague.
Latest activity : A Voice and Guitar CD Projekt titled 'Blue Light' containing 10 original compositions by Yvonne Smeets and Tarenskeen, with lyrics by Smeets and (guitar) arrangements by Tarenskeen.
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Cornelis de Bondt Composer [from 1975], teacher of music theory at KC [from 1987], research, aesthetics and composition [from 2004]
Composition, research, education and political activism ultimately come together under the heading "The Technique of Beauty". The central question is "Is it possible to formulate criteria for an artistic quality judgment beyond the personal taste judgment?" This question is addressed in all facets of my practice, composition, research, text, education, political action. [Politics ”seen in a broader context: concerning the policy.]
Current project: "The Man of Sorrows", a double opera in which all my work comes together.