Finally I am allowed to tell the news that we’re booked to play at the North Sea Jazz festival on July 8. The Erdem Helvacıoğlu and Per Boysen Duo has more than an hour to perform our live extension of the album Sub City 2064. I like the format of this duo, we’re picking the best parts of precise electronic sound design and healthy risk taking by improvisation as the music happens on stage. Click the link to check out the full artist line-up over the three festival days, there are many acts I’d love to see if I just had some time off! Right after our concert I hope I will get a chance to run over and see Wayne Shorter Quartet and Archie Shepp Quartet.
At NSJ in Rotterdam I will be playing the Grand Chapman Stick with electronics extension. That will happen on July 8 but much earlier than so another big thing is about to rock my world; I just got word from Japan that my new fretless electric harp guitar is about to ship! Designed by the the great Tim Donahue himself that has been playing this wonderful instrument since 1984. Myself, I ruined my first electric guitar in 1978 by defretting it in a clumsy way. Since then I have defretted two more guitars “clumsy but good enough” searching for that special sound I keep hearing in my head from my future self – hopelully I will get there soon. Finally I realized that a good fretless really has to be build from the ground up as a fretless and I tried to buy a Vigier Sufragette from France. Luckily they never answered my emails and it turned out I got a Stick instead and stayed with my old clumsily defretted fretless guitar wrecks. By playing the Chapman Stick for two years I learned how much more fun it can be to use both your hands independently. 
Playing two-handed opened up a lot of new musical inspiration, I became able to enter poly rhythm territories traditionally dominated by instruments like the piano, harp and drum kit. So when I heard that Tim Donahue is starting up manufacturing of his harp guitar I just had to get one! A really good fretless guitar for tapping plus six harp strings for plucking by the other hand, all in the same instrument and instantly playable!
A closed corporate Stick concert is coming up in late May and in June it’s time for the the Bleking Jazz & World Music Camp. I just finished the second post production media music album for AMG Scandinavia and will now put more time into mixing the second album with The Erdem Helvacıoğlu and Per Boysen Duo. BTW, the TogaMan GuitarViol Erdem plays is also a fantastic instrument. TogaMan and Stick is such a perfect sonic match!
This album is a live recording of a musical duo improvisation session that took place in Rome on June 5 2009. Fabio Anile plays the Piano and the Synthesizer and Per Boysen plays the Alto Flute and the EWI (Electric Wind Instrument). Both musicians simultaneously play also interactive electronics, particularly utilizing the technique known as Live Looping.
Among other things, under the Music header, the recent album release Sub City 2064 is also offered in the physical CD format. That feels a bit odd and I need to get used to it ;-) Some people still like CDs and buy them even though a 24 bit FLAC download may sound better than the 16 bit CD audio.
