Kaffe Matthews is back live on stage. A pioneering music maker who works live with space, data, things, and place to make new electroacoustic composition, her past has taken her through things such as midi violin, theremin, star maps, NASA scientists, sharks, children, solo walks and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra to create a massive body of works for sites such as concert halls, city streets, basement clubs, radio, galleries, deserts, living rooms, and the human body. The physical experience of music is also key to her approach so she also invents unique interfaces such as the sonic armchair, the sonic bed and a range of sonic bikes which offer new paths into composition for makers, and ways in to listening for wide ranging audiences worldwide.
Today she is focused on dangerous unknowns improvising with space, audience and a new modular instrument, the Ripley. A noise filter system designed through the 12 Gates of alchemical discoveries made by the 15th century alchemist George Ripley, backfeeding and live sampling throughout.
Concerned with community and the environment, Kaffe has also established the collectives ‘Music for Bodies’(2006) and ‘The Bicrophonic Research Institute’(2014) where ideas and techniques grow within a pool of coders and artists using shared and open source approaches, publishing all outcomes online.
Kaffe has been performing, collaborating and teaching worldwide since 1992, receiving awards such as the NESTA Dreamtime Fellowship; Honorary Professor of Music, Shanghai Music Conservatory; a Scottish BAFTA with Mandy McIntosh & Zeena Parkins; Distinction Prix Ars Electronica Sonic Bed_London and Honorary mention for cd cécile. She is the first woman to have received the Edgar Varèse guest professorship, computer music, TU Berlin. and has been releasing solo works on Annette Works since 1996.
kaffe explains – a short interview, Muzičiki Biennale Zagreb 2019
IMAGE : Recording singing sand dunes, Mongolia, 2023
https://www.kaffematthews.net
http://www.annetteworks.com
http://www.sonicbikes.net
http://www.musicforbodies.net
@kaffematthews