We close Ten Years Alive at Weld with the simultaneous performance by Rebecca Lane and Jon Heilbron of two solo works by German composer Jakob Ullmann. Often at the threshold of audibility yet thrumming with a vibrancy and exquisite tension unique in contemporary compositional practice.
We've paired this with two 16mm film works by Tony Conrad — his legendary, but all-too-rarely seen structuralist classic 'The Flicker' and a shorter, later flicker film 'Straight and Narrow' (made in collaboration with his then wife Beverly Conrad).
Jakob Ullmann —
Solo I (1992/93-2010) for flute
Solo IV (2013/14) for low string instrument
Rebecca Lane, quarter-tone flutes
Jon Heilbron, double bass
Tony Conrad —
The Flicker (1966)
Tony Conrad, Beverley Conrad —
Straight & Narrow (1970)
Jakob Ullmann is a German composer and university professor.
Jakob Ullmann was born in Saxony, East Germany in 1958. After refusing to undergo military service in East Germany, Ullmann worked as groundskeeper, boilerman and house painter from 1978 until 1982. He studied Church Music in Dresden, and received a Doctorate in Philosophy. He studied composition privately with Friedrich Goldmann.
From 1982 onwards he worked as a composer and writer in Berlin, and since 2008 has been part of the music staff at the Academy in Basel.
Most of his recent works have been published by Edition RZ and Antoher Timbre.
Spanning six decades, Tony Conrad’s prodigious career roamed across a boundless array of disciplines and roles, including visual artist, filmmaker, violinist, composer, cable access activist, and professor.
He made major contributions in the emergent fields of minimal music composition and structural film in the 1960s, and then carried his pioneering work into the realm of rock and drone music, video and performance art, and cable access television.
Influencing the development of multiple artistic movements as both a collaborator and outside agitator, Conrad evaded any singular classification, and yet had a profound influence on his contemporaries and subsequent generations.
(Lux)
The duo project of Berlin-based Australian musicians Rebecca Lane (quarter-tone flutes) and Jon Heilbron (double bass) focuses on long-form works at the vanguard of microtonal and Just Intonation practice. Noted for their “precision, concentration and sympathy” (Gramophone), their recording of Catherine Lamb’s Muto Infinitas (Another Timbre) was named one of The Wire’s “Top Ten Contemporary Classical Albums” of 2021. Their subsequent album, a simultaneous realisation of Jakob Ullmann’s Solo I and Solo IV, was released at the end of 2025. They have premiered new microtonal works for their unusual instrumentation across Australia and Europe, including appearances at Louth Contemporary Music Festival (IE), Audible Edge (AU), Himera (FI), and Archipel (CH).
Lane and Heilbron are both active composer-performers within the fields of contemporary and experimental music. Outside their duo project, they are members of the Berlin-based Harmonic Space Orchestra (HSO), a performance and research collective focusing on extended Just Intonation; the quartet Asterales with Fredrik Rasten and Léo Dupleix; Anthony Pateras’ Dread of Voids quintet; and the European/Australian collective Phonetic Orchestra.
Rebecca Lane is a musician who explores intonation as a social and perceptual practice, focusing on just/rational intonation and the relational aspects of sounding/activating this material with others.
Her practice is informed by ongoing relationships with composers (such as Catherine Lamb), collaborations (like distances bending with Clara de Asís) and within various duos and ensembles (including Harmonic Space Orchestra), utilizing various flutes (in particular, Kingma System quarter-tone flutes).
Jonathan Heilbron is an Australian composer and performer active in the fields of contemporary, improvised and experimental music. In addition to performing his own compositions, Jonathan composes music for and with interpreters of contemporary music, improvisers, untrained musicians, and performers specializing in various world folk music traditions.
Jonathan is the founder and Artistic Director of the Phonetic Orchestra. He is also a member of the Harmonic Space Orchestra and Ensemble KNM Berlin and also works regularly with some of Europe’s most renowned ensembles for contemporary music, including Ensemble Musikfabrik, Klangforum Wien and Apartment House.
Beverly Grant (1936 – 1990) was an actress and filmmaker who appeared in films by Andy Warhol, Jack Smith, Gregory Markopoulos, Ira Cohen, Ron Rice, and Stephen Dwoskin. She appeared in the off-off Broadway stage in works by Ronald Tavel and LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) and collaborated with her one-time husband, experimental filmmaker and musician, Tony Conrad. Smith, the avant-garde filmmaker of Flaming Creatures and Normal Love, in which Grant appeared, called her "the queen of the underground – both undergrounds."
(Film Makers Co-op)
