Michael Franz Woels, Berimbau, kleine Perkussion
David Karla, Blasinstrumente
Elisabeth Kelvin, Blasinstrumente
Gentle Enquiry (AT/HU) ist ein Ensemble für zeitgenössische Improvisation. David Karla, Elisabeth Kelvin und Michael Franz Woels wechseln musikalische Akzentuierungen wie Hütchenspieler ihre Nussschalen – trickreiches Flüstern von Klängen und Geräuschen, listige Bewegungsmuster, blendendes Bildwerk. Vorsicht: atemberaubend!
Gentle Enquiry is a Vienna-based contemporary improvising ensemble. Sound, movement and visual art align to engage listeners in a subtle dialogue and exchange of ideas and thoughts. The musicians change musical styles like switching accents or hats – each whisper of sound echoes through a performance space as if to softly ask:
how are you going?
what do you do?
Gentle Enquiry was formed in 2018, and is made up of three contemporary post-genre improvising musicians. They perform primarily in small, independent arts venues in and around Vienna.
Elisabeth Kelvin – clarinet, saxophone, composition, visual artist
Elisabeth Kelvin’s creative practice blends the visual with the aural – she paints what she hears and plays what she sees. She received a Bachelor of Music from the Sydney Conservatorium, and a Master’s then Doctorate of Musical Arts from Michigan State University. Early career experiences as an orchestral and chamber musician alerted Elisabeth to the importance and potential of the collective in music making. As a lecturer at Victorian College of the Arts, Tasmanian Conservatorium of Music and later in the regional Australian center of Tamworth and working with contemporary Indigenous artists, she was introduced to the role and meaning of place in social connectivity and symbolic representative art. By being now based in the city of her grandparents, she is rediscovering her own heritage. From upper-story Vienna windows, she imagines she hears long-forgotten snippets of conversation or dampened piano chords still crisscrossing the streets and years. She teaches music, art, and dance and – along with being a founding member of Gentle Enquiry – performs with Ozmosis, Vienna Improvisors Orchestra, Free Form-Just Music and Trio Amacord+.
David Karla – saxophone, clarinet, composition, digital media artist
Budapest-based musician, David Karla, regards jazz and improvised music not as a canonical style, but as a living and breathing art form that reflects contemporary culture. He steps effortlessly back and forth from traditional to digital or software instruments, and custom builds sensors to transform the acoustic into the electronic. His is an interactive music that keeps an ear to the breakbeat, trance, jungle and ambience of the street, while responding to contemporary dance movements or constructing sound installations. He studied composition at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia and saxophone and clarinet with Mark Simmons, Peter Harper and Brigid Burke. He has also studied the classical clarinet and saxophone styles of India with teachers Kadri Gopalnath (Karnatic saxophone) and Narasimhalu Wadawati (Hindustani clarinet). He has designed a number of synthesizer apps for mobile devices, and live algorithmic compositions of his have been heard at the Experimenta and Broome Fringe festivals. Along with creating jazz-electronica for large outdoor dance events – including Earthcore and Rainbow Serpent – David regularly performs live electro-acoustic music in intimate settings in Budapest and Vienna.
Michael Franz Woels – percussion, berimbau, writer
Whether performing improvised music or working as a journalist and writer, Michael Franz Woels’ artistic output stems from quietly observing the connections and conversations between different peoples and cultures. He is a specialist in the Brazilian single-stringed berimbau – an instrument with African origins which produces three basis tonal colours: open, high pitched and a buzz. In Gentle Enquiry, Michael elongates and shapes these different characteristics by answering and reacting to the statements and gaps between the sounds of the other ensemble members, and by introducing discrete electronic filtration. He is a member of The Usonia Ensemble and regularly collaborates with sound artists, spoken word performers and theatre makers. Some of these include: Luiza Schulz (The Logic Of Care, 2018), Lukas Thön (Call Our Shifts, 2014), Gloria Damijan (Barulho, 2017), Oleg Soulimenko (Swimming Pool, 2017), Jan Martens (The Common People at Wiener Festwochen, 2015), and Theater zum Fürchten in Verräterisches Herz (Edgar Allan Poe, Theater im Bunker 2012–11). As an freelance author, his articles appear regularly in Augustin, FAQ-Magazin and skug. He is a graduate of the University of Applied Arts and University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna, where he studied urban planning and architecture.