Jaap Blonk
Jaap Blonk (born 1953 in Woerden, Holland) is a self-taught composer, voice performer and sound poet. His unfinished studies in physics, mathematics and musicology mainly created a penchant for activities in a Dada vein, as did several unsuccessful jobs in offices and other well-organized systems. At present, he has developed into a prolific writer/composer and a specialist in the performance of sound poetry, supported by a powerful stage presence and an almost childlike freedom in improvisation. He performed in many European countries, as well as in the U.S., Canada, Indonesia, South Africa and Latin America
Jaap Blonk (born 1953 in Woerden, Holland) is a self-taught composer, voice performer and sound poet. His unfinished studies in physics, mathematics and musicology mainly created a penchant for activities in a Dada vein, as did several unsuccessful jobs in offices and other well-organized systems. At present, he has developed into a prolific writer/composer and a specialist in the performance of sound poetry, supported by a powerful stage presence and an almost childlike freedom in improvisation. He performed in many European countries, as well as in the U.S., Canada, Indonesia, South Africa and Latin America
Rune Kitchen
*2024 stock*
Jaap Blonk - voice, electronics Damon Smith - double bass Ra Kalam Bob Moses drums, percussion Recorded by Ryan Wasoba at Birdcloud Studios, Collinsvile, Il November 1st. 2022 Mixed & Mastered by Weasel Walter Design by Alan Anzalone Cover art by Damon Smith Untitled micro-collages 2003-2004 Oil, graphite, bass rosin, collage & objects on graph paper 3" x 3.5" Concrete Poem / liner notes Ra Kalam Bob Moses / Jaap Blonk All Titles from text messages from Ra Kalam
Soliloquies – Selbstgespräche
Everyone just talked to himself, said the prince, "we are in an age of soliloquy. The art of soliloquy is also a much higher art than the art of conversation," he said. "But talking to yourself is just as pointless as talking," said the prince, "although much less pointless." - Thomas Bernhard
Hugo Ball: Six Sound Poems, 1989 & 2013
*2023 stock* "This recording is a modern interpretation of sound poems written and performed by German Dadaist Hugo Ball more than a century ago. Those familiar with Ball know him as the author of these innovative works and founder of the Cabaret Voltaire, Dada’s Zurich birthplace. Despite the sound poems’ artistic legacy, they constitute only a small part of Ball’s creative output. The purpose of these liner notes, then, is to consider the complex life and work of the man behind the sound poems…
Five Men Singing
'It was a match made in heaven, or rather on earth, at last year's 20th Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville. Five vocal artists on one stage—Dutch Jaap Blonk, Japanese Koichi Makigami, Canadian sound poet Paul Dutton, Englishman Phil Minton, and German new music singer David Moss—was indeed one of the highlights of the '03 Victoriaville Festival. Only mad vocalist Mike Patton was missing.
These five men had never performed together on one stage, though they have worked wi…
Antonin Artaud
**100 copies** In hardbound embossed special package (like previous edition in this series), numbered & signed. The work of Antonin Artaud (1896-1948), the French dramatist, poet, essayist, actor, and theatre director, was a great inspiration and stimulant for me when I started out as a vocal performer. His pioneering writings on theatre gave me the freedom to venture much further into madness on stage, while still being perceived as authentic and powerful. In Artaud’s French writings short frag…
Monopiece & Jaap Blonk
"The improvising trio Monopiece lists its instrumentation as guitar, percussion, and electronics, but electronics describes far more than one third of its texture, since both guitar and percussion are amplified and electronically processed. On this release they are joined by the Dutch vocal artist Jaap Blonk in recording spontaneously generated music, edited and subtly processed to reflect the communal nature of its creation without interrupting the strong, improvised narratives of each piece.In…
Kochspuren - Traces of Cookery
**100 copies** Jaap Blonk is a self-taught composer, voice performer and sound poet. His unfinished studies in physics, mathematics and musicology mainly created a penchant for activities in a Dada vein, as did several unsuccessful jobs in offices and other well-organized systems. He took up saxophone and started to compose music, at first mainly jazz pieces and music for experimental theatre. In reciting poetry, especially the works of Antonin Artaud, Lucebert and Kurt Schwitters, he discovered…
Fehlberliner U-Wirr
**150 copies** Jaap Blonk is a self-taught composer, voice performer and sound poet. His unfinished studies in physics, mathematics and musicology mainly created a penchant for activities in a Dada vein, as did several unsuccessful jobs in offices and other well-organized systems. He took up saxophone and started to compose music, at first mainly jazz pieces and music for experimental theatre. In reciting poetry, especially the works of Antonin Artaud, Lucebert and Kurt Schwitters, he discovered…
Thirsty Ears
Jaap Blonk (born 1953, Woerden) is a Dutch avant-garde composer and soundpoet. He is primarily self-taught, both as a sound artist and as a visual/stage performer. One of his early influences was Kurt Schwitters, whose Ursonate he first heard in 1979; he memorized the entire work, and it became one of the cornerstones of his repertory; he has recited portions of the piece hundreds of times in various public places. His performances of sound poetry are unique and world renowned, making use…
4 contemporary sound poets
Pogus and the IMRC Center of the University of Maine at Orono are very proud to release this 5.1 surround sound disc 4 Contemporary Sound Poets. The technology embraced here is on two levels, the immersive technology of surroundsound, which now fifty years later is still struggling to move beyond its origins in cinema, and the powerful transformations availed by digital audio signal processing. These technologies combine to form a new frontier, a place to explore and expand the vocabulary of con…
Polyphtong
Polyphtong was conceived as a live quadraphonic composition for voice and computer. It was premiered at Stanford University in March of 2012. In August of 2013, Blonk radically reworked the piece to create the stereo version presented on this album. All sounds heard in it are derived from Blonk's vocals. Spatial placement and movement are extended by electronic means. The phonetic concepts of diphtong and approximant are an important focus in the more meditative sectons of the work. It also uses…
Lifespans
Lifespans is a mesmerizing and hallucinating piece of electronic music. Listen to it at a fairly loud volume, or with headphones, and you will hear myriads of voices and melodies, never repeating themselves
Keynote dialogues
voice + electronics. Making music out of words, making words out of music.
Deep Fried
Now this a strange one. I never would've thought I would be paired with Jaap Blonk... it seems an unlikely combination. But when Tijs van Trigt asked us to perform at his AMPsnacks event in Arnhem, we had such a blast that we decided to do some recording together. This cd is a selection of three hours of improvisation we recorded at STEIM in Amsterdam. Quite a rollercoaster I'd say!
Majaap
Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje, voice. Jaap Blonk, voice. 18 duo improvisations. Recorded in Amsterdam, 2001 and Oslo, 2002.
Bek
Recorded and mixed August 6-10, 2001 at Extrapool, Nijmegen, Netherlands.
Flux De Bouche
Jaap Blonk is a self-taught composer, voice performer and sound poet. His unfinished studies in physics, mathematics and musicology mainly created a penchant for activities in a Dada vein, as did several unsuccessful jobs in offices and other well-organized systems. He took up saxophone and started to compose music, at first mainly jazz pieces and music for experimental theatre. In reciting poetry, especially the works of Antonin Artaud, Lucebert and Kurt Schwitters, he discovered the directness…