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ANNE LA BERGE

Interviewed by Analog Tara via email, 2000.
Photo by Anko Wieringa.

Flutist and composer Anne La Berge grew up in Minnesota and is now based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, where she organizes weekly electro-acoustic improvisation sessions. In performances and recordings, using her flute in combination with electronic effects processors, she creates a complex spectrum of textures that sound simultaneously organic and industrial, like breathing machinery. Here, Anne discusses current projects and her methods of working.

Q: Tell me about your composing and performing process. Is it usually improvisational?

A: My own pieces, at this time, are usually partially composed, partially improvised. I make CD recordings of flute sounds, sometimes manipulated and sometimes just extended techniques, which are very structured but still sound somewhat improvised. I then perform with the CDs, playing the flute through effects. The flute parts have a lot of room for improvisation, although after I perform the piece a number of times, I start to find a set of solutions that work best for the piece. Then I know that it's time to perform the piece less and move on to make a new one. Some pieces never take shape and eventually need discarding. Others take many performances to find themselves. Most pieces have slightly different performance solutions depending on the space, the PA system and the audience.

I often use concepts for my inspiration. For the last ten years they have been related to finding a way to shed my personal and musical baggage by setting up conflicts which are (in my imagination) barely resolvable. I made a lot of pieces and improvisations in which I never played melody. For a flutist, that is almost impossible. In all the repertoire, classical, jazz, rock, folk, we play the melody. Recently, my sources of inspiration have changed. I've entered a more poetic phase. I am gathering material at this time about the anatomy of the human body, flowers, and sound (acoustic principles) and am going to make a big piece using this material as inspiration.

Q: What are your current recording and performance projects? Are you still organizing weekly improv sessions in Amsterdam?

A: I am, with two other improvising musicians, still organizing weekly improv sessions for electro-acoustic music in a squat in the center of Amsterdam. I make CDs of all the sessions and usually about 20 minutes of digital video with hopes to make a web site where I can upload some of the music every week.

As far as other projects go, I just returned from a tour of South Africa where I was performing new flute and piano music with pianist/composer Michael Blake and in a "structured improv" duo for amplified flute and electric guitar with my husband David Dramm.

Next I'm flying to Vienna, Austria to play in an electro-acoustic improv project put together by composer Karlheinz Essel. Then I am giving a concert with a bass clarinetist who plays with samplers and effects. We'll be playing three new short works of mine which include both written and improvised materials. We'll also be playing solo works by other composers. Usually we start and end our concerts with free improvisations.

I am going to be playing a newly commissioned work by New York composer Nick Didkovsky in the US at a festival this summer. The piece will be for multiple recorded flutes and amplified flute with effects. Nick and I are just beginning to work out the details of how we'll go about putting the piece together. He'll be generating the material I need to record from a new computer language he's developing and then I'll be free to improvise with it once he gets it onto CD.

I have an active amplified flute with effects duo with my husband David Dramm as I mentioned above. We'll be performing in Holland with a drummer a few more times this spring.

And for next year, I have a couple of big projects to go with all of the improv gigs that pop up. One is a concert in two parts, each created by a different woman composer for flute with interactive video and effects. Both pieces are based on the concept of immigration and/or geographic displacement and how they effect one's language and one's ability to communicate. The pieces are called Native Tongue and Travelling Barefoot.

I am also working with an improvising dancer, Lily Kiara, who makes sounds while she dances. With the use of a wireless mic, I send her through my effects which expands our dance/music duo into more visual and sonic dimensions. We've been performing for 6 months and will be doing a residency in northern Holland to develop our duo material next season. We need to rehearse in spaces which have floors she can dance on. We have been struggling to find a good location where we can set up and work for uninterrupted periods such as a two week run of 6 hours a day. That way we can experiment more deeply and take our time working out our material.

I play regularly in an electro-acoustic group called Aardvark which consists of flute, violin, keyboards, bass and drums. We all use effects and various analog equipment. Our repertoire varies from completely improvised to partially written pieces.

Q: Is your album United Noise Toys typical of your work? Or, if you have other albums that cover different musical territory, could you briefly describe those?

A: I have an older CD called Blow, which is available on the Frog Peak label. I have gone though some changes since it came out in 1994 but portions of it represent what I've been doing lately. I use amplified flute articulation as percussion in many of my works. I also use the more noisey extended techniques. Most of my structures sound improvisational. Compared to the classical and jazz flute traditions my music both sonically and structurally sounds raw and aggressive to many ears. Others think it has its own style of energy that relates more to electronic music.

Q: What sort of arsenal of equipment to you use (flutes as well as electronics), and is there a particular instrument or machine that most inspires you to create, or to which you are most attached?

A: Right now my full setup includes a Mackie 1202 mixer; a Shure 4.1 microphone on a boom stand so I can change my distance from it; a Digitech Studio Quad effects unit with the volume out going through a volume pedal; a Boomerang loop sampler with the volume out going through a volume pedal; a Flashback Fuzz guitar pedal as a plug in in the mixer; a Clavia Micro Modular Digital Synth which acts like an analog synth and filter; and a CD player with the volume out going through a volume pedal. If there is no PA system I send the Mackie out through a Trace Elliot Acoustic Cube.

My flutes are a Brannen Kingma System (quarter-tone) flute, a Kingma (quarter-tone) alto flute, and an August Hammig piccolo.

Right now I've grown tired of the digital effects and have just purchased the Clavia Micro Modular to find more analog-type sounds.

Q: Was United Noise Toys performed live before an audience, or in a studio? I'm also wondering about the history behind the monosyllabic song titles, if perhaps each song is perhaps intended to function like a sound painting, evoking a "duct," "yolk," "moat," etc.?

A: In United Noise Toys, I am using most of the equipment listed above, but the flute is also being processed by the radios of Gert Jan Prins. Gert Jan builds radios that are capable of manipulated very low frequency radio signals that can act as filters for other sounds and when mixed, create incredibly interesting feedback.

In our duo setup for United Noise Toys, we sent our signals through each other's mixers and we manipulated one another's sounds when we wanted to. We didn't always. Sometimes you just hear amplified flute, sometimes you hear radios going through my digital effects, sometimes you hear just radios, sometimes you hear our performance from the day before mixed in with our live performance. It was basically Mackie mixer linked to Mackie and a lot of fantasy.

Gert Jan and I were a sound installation during the Dutch Music Days in Utrecht last year. We recorded everything we performed during the installation days and chose some short pieces for the CD. The short titles were my responsibility. They seemed to sonically represent the music well, if you say them one after each other or repeat one very fast.

Q: When listening to United Noise Toys, I can't help but focus on the coexistence of human and machine elements - how the music is at once driven by human breath, but constantly evolving due to digital and electronic forces. I wonder if you have any thoughts on this, on creating music that seems to exist simultaneously as both human and electronic.

A: I think the combination of noisy flute with the highly controlled white noise created by Gert Jan's radios is a fantastic sound. As you said, it sounds like machines that breathe. During our installation we developed a fluid improvisation/ensemble communication that worked well. We also influenced one another in some nice ways. Since our collaboration, Gert Jan has added a microphone to his setup so he can use his own vocal sounds and I am searching for still more ways to amplify and control the very high noisy partials in my own work. I'm hoping the Micro Modular will lead me there. Otherwise I may have to start building radios!

More info at www.annelaberge.com.