“mazes intricate, Eccentrick, intervolved, yet regular
Then most, when most irregular they seem;
And in their motions harmony divine”
Milton – Paradise Lost – Book V
Aparna Panshikar, based in Pune, India, is a renowned, award-winning Hindustani singer with an international reputation; she has received the Rasikagrani Dattopant Deshpande Award and the Yuva Gayak Puraskar; her CD Shivoham was voted Best Indian Album in 2005 by Virgin Megastores in France. Her work ranges from traditional Indian music to collaborations with a number of contemporary musicians. She is Founder and Director of the Bandish School of Music in Pune. She is a member of the international ensemble Sekunsak, with Curtis Bahn, Ansuman Biswas and Lawrence Casserley, which was formed in Delhi in 2007. http://www.aparnapanshikar.com/
Michael Ormiston is the UK’s leading Mongolian Overtone (Khöömii) Singer/Teacher, and multi-instrumentalist playing Morin Khuur (Mongolian Horse Head Fiddle), Tibetan Singing Bowls, Ney (Turkish end blown flute), Harmonic Flutes etc.. alongside live electronic processing. His music crosses the borders between traditional, contemporary, ambient, free-improv and meditation genres. Michael’s original compositions have been used on TV (BBC and Channel 4), Theatre (Theatre de Complicite), Dance (Ballet Frankfurt Dancers), and performance (London Jazz Festival). His throat singing has been used on Hollywood Films (The Golden Compass, We Were Soldiers), and TV (BBC’s acclaimed series Planet Earth, Last of the Medicine Men). He is one of the principal workshop leaders and performers of Eye-Music’s Colourscape. http://www.soundtransformations.btinternet.co.uk/
Bettina Wenzel is an intermedia vocal artist, composer and improviser. Her research in extended voice techniques started with attending vocal training courses at the “Centre Artistique Roy Hart”, whose teachings are based on the groundbreaking discoveries of Alfred Wolfsohn(1896 -1962), which gave the first impulse to her personal vocal research. Her compositions are a constant exploration of vocal sounds, that reach beyond the limitations of the human voice. As an improvising musician she has collaborated with many artists, among them hans w. koch, Thomas Lehn, Michael Vorfeld, Manual Mota, Simon Nabatov, Josef Novotny, Achim Tang, Joker Nies, Andreas Wagner, Ernst Reijsiger, Jonas Quale, Lasse Marhaug, Michael Francis Duch, Dan Warburton, Pascal Battus, Frédéric Blondy, Bertrand Gauguet, David Subik, Peter Worringer, Hans Schneider, Joachim Zoepf, and others. http://www.wenzelvoice.de/
Ingrid Lode finished her studies at NTNU Jazzlinja in Trondheim in 2006, and also studied at the Kungliga Musikhögskolan, Stockholm, and the Rhythmical Music Conservatory, København. She has studied with Lena Willemark, Lina Nyberg, Lindah Kallerdal, Fredrik Ljungkvist, Fredrik Lundin and Ed Thigpen among others. She is a freelance working musician working with her own and other musicians’ bands and projects. She has released two albums with her bands Kobert, who have received a substantial commission for the 2008 Molde International Jazz Festival, and Eyewaterlillies. She has toured in Norway and abroad since 2003, and is a member of the experimental vocal group Trondheim Voices. Despite her young age she has become one of the most well-known singers in the jazz and experimental scene in Norway. She has performed with many of the leading Scandinavian musicians, including Mats Eilertsen, Øyvind Brandtsegg, Trygve Seim, Per Oddvar Johansen, Eldbjørg Raknes, Solveig Slettahjell, Steve Dobrogoz and Live Maria Roggen.
Lawrence Casserley is best known as one of the leading “instrumental” live sound processors; he has created his own Signal Processing Instrument specifically for live sound transformation in improvised music. A UK based composer and improviser, he has devoted his career since the late 1960s to developing the art of live electroacoustic performance, as composer, conductor, performer and instrument designer. Much of his career has also been spent working with artists across many media; he has worked with poets, painters, video artists, mime artists, actors and dancers. He has worked with a wide variety of improvisers, including Evan Parker, Paul Lytton, Barry Guy, Joel Ryan, Paul Rutherford, Charlotte Hug, Melvyn Poore and the the Evan Parker Electroacoustic Ensemble. He is Project Director of Eye Music Trust, presenter of the Colourscape Music Festivals.
Intervolution performing at dBâle Festival of Electronic Music, Basel, Switzerland - 30 May, 2008.
Left to right: Lawrence Casserley, Aparna Panshikar, Bettina Wenzel, Ingrid Lode and Michael Ormiston
The English poet, John Mliton, the 400th anniversary of whose birth was celebrated in 2008, is famous for his neologisms, creating more than 600 new english words in order to express his meaning more clearly. Many of these have become standard words in English. Some, however, were not adopted so enthusiastically, and “intervolve” – “to roll, wind, or involve, one within another” is one of these. This rolling, winding and involvement with one another – the intervolution of all our very different skills and experiences – is what this group is all about. In addition, I like the near homonym with “intervolition”, which might mean “mutually willing”.
In the fifth book of “Paradise Lost” Milton wrote:
“That day, as other solemn days, they spent
In song and dance about the sacred hill;
Mystical dance, which yonder starry sphere
Of planets, and of fixed, in all her wheels
Resembles nearest, mazes intricate,
Eccentrick, intervolved, yet regular
Then most, when most irregular they seem;
And in their motions harmony divine
So smooths her charming tones, that God's own ear
Listens delighted.”