Sommerkonzert: TLF Trio Poser, Reece Cox

In the organizer's words:

Location: KW courtyard

The summer concert in the courtyard of KW Institute for Contemporary Art is a musical and theatrical encounter between TLF Trio and Reece Cox's band Poser.

The Danish ensemble TLF Trio de/reconstructs chamber music by deconstructing common forms of classical music and its notation through reduced and experimental composition. Staged as musicians sitting opposite each other in a virtuoso exchange, the TLF Trio combines minimalism, free improvisation and Central European classical music of the late Renaissance and early Baroque, resulting in pieces of music that are characterized by sonic plasticity and visuality. Like dancing figures or movement in space, the sound of the instruments gains materiality; they meet, alternate, exchange and disappear again. More sculptural than narrative, the TLF Trio's music oscillates fluidly between the object in the room and the room itself, creating an interplay of presence and absence, between sound, pause and silence.

The project Poser by artist and musician Reece Cox deals with this very question of presence and non-presence. Poser is a fictional music group and a vehicle for the production of art and performance. Their live performance consists of instruments that are not played, half-played or worn as props, microphone cables leading nowhere and performers who qualify for their role primarily through a disinterested stage presence and sparse musical contributions. Poser takes the practice of playback to the extreme and presents a through-cast band that is almost disconnected from its own music. By imitating and ultimately undermining the airs and graces of a stage performance, Poser reduces the familiar setting of a concert to absurdity as a situational readymade. What remains is a soundtrack and his disembodied presence, the substance of which has been lost somewhere in the wiring between the stage and the loudspeakers aimed at the audience. Poser will perform at Café Bravo, which was designed by Dan Graham and opened in 1999.

The TLF Trio is a Danish experimental ensemble consisting of cellist Cæcilie Trier, pianist Jakob Littauer and guitarist M. K. Velsorf. They are based in Copenhagen, Berlin and Los Angeles. The TLF Trio released their first album Sweet Harmony on the French electronic and experimental label Latency in 2022 and a second EP with new material and reinterpretations of German dub techno pioneer Moritz von Oswald, New Songs & Variations, also released on Latency in 2023. They have performed at leading experimental music venues and festivals across Europe, including Berlin Atonal, Rewire Festival, The Hague, and Villa Medici, Rome.

Cæcilie Trier is a Copenhagen-based cellist, singer and composer known for her avant-garde pop and neoclassical cello music as CTM(Suite for a Young Girl, 2016, Tambourhinoceros, 2016, Red Dragon and Babygirl, 2018, Posh Isolation, 2018, 2022, Vind, 2023, 15 Love, 2023) and for her collaborations with musicians such as Soho Rezanejad, Croatian Amor, Coco O, Boli Group and Dawda Jobarteh.

Jakob Littauer is a Berlin-based multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer known for his electronic avant-pop as Yangze(Event Horizon, Escho, 2019) and his work as a songwriter and producer for a variety of pop artists such as Liss(Runaway, Talk to me, Escho, 2019), Varnrable(Crazy Bitch, On Fire, Escho, 2020, 2022) and Mø(Motordrome, Columbia Records, 2022).

2. K. Velsorf is a guitarist, composer and artist based in Los Angeles. He studied Fine Arts at the Malmö Art Academy and Cooper Union in New York and is currently studying music composition with Michael Pisaro at CalArts. He released the solo album 10 Pieces For Guitar And Various Instruments in 2019 and frequently collaborates with artists Calla Henkel and Max Pitegoff, for whom he composed the score to their film series Paradise (2022) and is the musical director of their newly opened New Theater Hollywood.

Reece Cox is a Berlin-based artist and writer. Most recently he has staged performances at House Berlin (Berlin), September Sessions (Stockholm), Shahin Zarinbal (Berlin), Sara's (New York) and Gisela Capitain (Cologne), among others. In 2018, he founded INFO, a label and curatorial project focused on the exhibition and distribution of exceptional sound works by contemporary artists.

Poser at KW Institute for Contemporary Art
Performers: Ewa Awe, Steve Katona, Ivan Krasnov
Percussion contribution: Alexander Iezzi
Bass guitar: Caleb Salgado
Music / scenography / dramaturgy: Reece Cox