Duo concert with Ellen Fullman performing on a 26 meter long installation of her Long String Instrument together with Okkyung Lee on Cello.
Recordings from this concert performance became the LP release 'The Air Around Her'
Ellen Fullman has been developing her installation, the Long String Instrument, for nearly 30 years; exploring the acoustics of large resonant spaces with her compositions and collaborative improvisations. She has been the recipient of numerous awards, commissions and residencies including: a 2015 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award; two Center for Cultural Innovation Grants (2008 and 2013); a Japan/U.S. Friendship Commission/NEA Fellowship for Japan (2007); and a DAAD Artists-in-Berlin residency (2000).
Fullman has recorded extensively with this unusual instrument. Releases include: Through Glass Panes (Important Records, 2011); Fluctuations, with trombonist Monique Buzzarté (Deep Listening Institute), selected as one of the top 50 recordings of 2008 by the Wire and awarded an Aaron Copeland Fund for Music Recording Program Grant; and Ort, recorded with Berlin collaborator Konrad Sprenger (Choose Records), selected as one of the top 50 recordings of 2004 by the Wire.
Fullman’s work was cited by Alvin Lucier in his Music 109: Notes on Experimental Music (Wesleyan University Press, 2012) and by David Byrne in How Music Works (McSweeney’s, 2012. Ellen has been invited to give the Distinguished Alumni Lecture for 2016 at her alma mater, the Kansas City Art Institute.
Lee is one of the most dynamic forces in improvised music today, a fearless and compelling musician whose playing incorporates a love of noise, extraordinary technique and elements from the outer fringes of contemporary composition.
Lee has collaborated with many of the leading figures in creative music today, including Christian Marclay, Thurston Moore, Wadada Leo Smith, Ikue Mori, Evan Parker, C. Spencer Yeh, Carlos Giffoni and Maja Rajtke. In 2013 she released 'Ghil' an LP of solo improvisations recorded direct to dictaphone by Lasse Marhaug that was widely hailed as the 'noise record of the year'.
“Okkyung Lee distorts, disturbs and even deconstructs her instrument, to the point of rendering it unrecognisable. And the results are simply amazing.” – Joseph Burnett, The Quietus