Making architectural music to feel through your body as well as your ears.

by Miyako Narita (2010)

Kaffe Matthews was born in Essex, England and lives and works in London.

Since 1990 she has been making and performing new electro-acoustic music worldwide with a variety of things and places such as violin, theremin, Scottish weather, desert stretched wires, NASA scientists, melting ice in Quebec and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Currently she is researching 3D composition through  Hammerhead sharks in Galapagos and sustainable vibratory interface design with ‘music for bodies’. Acknowledged as a pioneer in the field of electronic improvisation and live composition, Kaffe has released 6 solo  CD’s on the label Annette Works.

Often collaborating, her present projects are with Mandy McIntosh to make a sonic intervention for a Star Gazing Shelter in the Galloway Forest, Scotland,  with Laura Harrington, the river Tyne and Northumberland school children on the opera ‘Where are the Wild Ones?’,  and with timelab, Belgium, on Marvelo_Gent,  a bicycle opera for TRACK, 2012. Recently back to the stage after 4 years making sonic furniture works, Kaffe will have her long awaited seventh solo release out on Annette Works summer 2012.

Recent works include: Where are the Wild Ones?(2010), 12 channel composition, The Sage, AV Festival 10; In clean air we fly(2009), bicycle powered 8 channel installation for London’s Gillett Sq; The Marvelo Project(2008), Folkestone Sculpture Triennial; Sonic Bed_Marfa(2008), Texas; Sonic Bench_Mexico (2007), Laboratorio Arte Alameda Mexico City, 2007; Body Abiding, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Glasgow ; Sonic Bed_Shanghai,(2006) Xuhui Art Museum, Shanghai, China, 2006; This is for you,(2005) work for chaise longue, Arnolfini, Bristol, 2005; Three Crosses of Queensbridge, work for bicycles + radios, Drawing Room, London, 2005; No-one here but us chickens, 2005 The Starr auditorium, TATE Modern, London, UK, 2005.

Her 2004 collaboration Weightless Animals was awarded a BAFTA, she received a NESTA Dreamtime Fellowship  in 2005 and an Award of Distinction, Prix Ars Electronica 2006 for the work Sonic Bed_London. In February 2006 she was made an Honorary Professor of Music, Shanghai Music Conservatory, China and in 2009, a patron of the Galapagos shark conservation society.

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Background:

Playing classical violin from the age of 7, singing badly in one band but getting further with bass and drums in the next, in 1985 she discovered electricity, listening and with that, her current trajectory. Since then, acid house engineering, electrically reconstructing the violin, Distinction for a Masters in Music Technology, introducing and running a Performance Technology course at Dartington College of Arts, establishing label Annette Works and in 2009 launching the audio research lab, AudRey in London’s east End.  She also set up a collective wholefood shop  and did a Zoology degree along the way.

2010