caroline kraabel

I grew up in Seattle, USA, and came to London as a teenager, just too late to realise my punk dreams. Instead I discovered the saxophone and expressed my love for it via indie bands and street performance. As I gradually became aware of London’s vibrant improvised music scene, I got more involved with the physicality of the instrument, extended techniques, and eventually with acoustics. This more attentive listening led me to continuing research into electricity and music: reproduction (recording, amplification), synthesis and their overlooked implications, which is documented on my website: carolinekraabel.free.fr

I increasingly make art: Taking a Life for a Walk, a weekly wander through London streets with my child(ren) and sax, broadcast live on Resonance 104.4fm for nearly five years. Music In Your Head – a live acoustic performance that takes place inside the head of its audience of one. Recording an Impression, a piece of radio and postal art, also broadcast on Resonance 104.4 fm. Some of the Hearing Reproduction series, notably Hearing Reproduction 4, which was 10 women listening to the same piece of music (“Keep On Pushing” By Curtis Mayfield) on headphones, and singing along. “My Foolish Machine”, a half-hour radio art piece, broadcast across Europe in August 2006. All of this work comes from a desire to make explicit the uniqueness of each way of making and receiving sound, which to me also relates to trying to live and work with integrity in the literal sense.

some recordings, work and groups:

http://carolinekraabel.free.fr  website, including  ”This Recorded Music is for the Ears of Dead People Only”.
Resonance Magazine issue 10.2: Locality and Reproduction published October 2005. During 2005 Iedited this magazine, commissioning writers and musicians and a film from Matt Wand, doing interviews with John Butcher, John Tilbury and Joe Banks. The subject area is the interface of music, place and technology, and the manifold ramifications (physical, ecological, theoretical) of this.

Saxophone Experiments in Space Site-specific ambulant composition for the Queen Elizabeth Hall, for 55 young saxophonists (aged 9-19). Realised in November 2005.

Taking a Life for a Walk Once a week or once a fortnight since January 2002 I’ve been going for a walk in London (usually) with my son, (later with my daughter) and my saxophone, and broadcasting the sounds live on Resonance 104.4fm (since May 2002, when Resonance FM came on the air). I walk through different parts of London (usually – I have also done live versions from Seattle, Lausanne, Liverpool and the Devon countryside. A recent version was broadcast live from the London Wetlands Centre as part of the Pestival there, and featured frogs and lots of different birds as well as my sax and my daughter’s and other visitors’ comments) pushing the pushchair with my right hand and playing the saxophone with my left hand.

Mass Producers
A 20-piece saxophone/voice orchestra, all women. I’ve made 4 pieces for this group since 1998 – all primarily meant to be heard live in a particular sort of space - large resonant hall or corridor/tunnel. This is a reaction to the predominance of electricity, specifically its use in live performace. I’m looking for a way of making music that celebrates the things that are impossible for electricity - I mean the specificity of a sound to the space that makes it, possibilities of movement, of authentic and varied dynamic relationships and of shifting the points of ‘view’ by actually shifting performers. We have recorded one CD (‘Performances for Large Saxophone Ensemble 1 and 2’, on the Dark Beloved Cloud label) and one analogue LP featuring guest Maggie Nicols on one piece (Performances for Large Saxophone Ensemble 3 and 4). I’m working on a new piece for Mass Producers, featuring the recorded voice of Robert Wyatt singing a words and music by me, underpinned and punctuated with live moving saxophones.

Shock Exchange
This is my long-standing duo with John Edwards. He plays contrabass and sings, I play the saxophone and sing. In the years that we’ve been playing together we have played our own songs and other peoples songs, but now we improvise, aiming for intuition and communication. We try and go deep, because we know and trust each other enough to take big musical risks. We have never released a recording because this group is so close to our hearts that standards of performance and of ‘how to record the dynamic and locational extremes of acoustic music with integrity?’ have never quite been fulfilled. Instead, we’ve done a great deal of live playing and touring. We’ve also occasionally played as a trio with drummers Charles Hayward or Richard E Harrison.

The London Improvisers Orchestra
This is a large group of improvising musicians that has been meeting and performing on the first Sunday of each month at the Red Rose club to try and find ways of improvising in large groups. We play completely improvised pieces and we also play pieces devised and/or conducted by members of the group, including myself. This is a great forum for making pieces because the musicians are exeptionally good, and committed to trying things out - and we meet regularly - I feel really lucky and blessed to be able to work in and with this group, particularly on a series of pieces entitled ‘Hearing Reproduction 1-8’, some of which feature on CDs of the orchestra which are available on the Emanem label.

Kraabel/Weston
A duo with pianist Veryan Weston. One CD, ‘Five Shadows’, of live location recordings available on Emanem.

Kraabel/Hug/Nicols
Trio with Maggie Nicols (voice) and Charlotte Hug (viola). Sometimes an exploration of three different alto instruments... CD “Transitions”, also available on Emanem.

Liverpool Shadows
This is a recording project that went on for a couple of years - Phil Hargreaves and I  recorded saxophone duos in a variety of different-sounding spaces in Liverpool - a road tunnel under the Mersey, an anechoic chamber, a huge dome, George’s Hall, etc. We have released a CD, ‘Where We Were, Shadows of Liverpool” on the  LEO label of these recordings in which the acoustic space becomes a part of the group.

Now We Are One Two. 1995-1997.
A solo performance work, using tapes, a giant sheet of newspaper, dance, song, blood, speech as well as written and improvised saxophone parts. Toured across Europe and the USA, released as a CD, “Now We Are One Two” on the Dark Beloved Cloud label. Some listeners told me that this piece changed their lives - it certainly changed mine, and was a precursor to Mass Producers.