Pioneering music maker Kaffe Matthews is back on stage. With a 30 year site specific practice working live with data, things and place to make new electroacoustic compositions worldwide, her past research has included live sampling with the midi violin, theremin, star maps, conversations with ex-astronauts, shark journeys, solo walks, wild salmon and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Presenting a massive body of works for installation and performance in 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 central to her approach and so she has invented unique interfaces such as the Sonic Armchair, the Sonic Bed, the Sonic Bike, the Environmental Bike and now the Buzz Bike, that not only enable new approaches to composition but give immediate ways in to unfamiliar music for wide ranging audiences.
In order to share and enable the development of these practices, Kaffe also established collectives Music for Bodies(2006) and The Bicrophonic Research Institute(2013) where ideas and techniques are developed within a pool of coders and artists worldwide, using open source approaches, publishing all outcomes online.
Currently based in Berlin, she is again focused on making solo performance, improvising live with The Ripley, WORM and Caput Draconis. Modular electronic instruments designed using alchemical discoveries occupied with the generation and processing of all colours of noise. This practice has also led to her research into alchemy, specifically the writings of George Ripley (15thC), the principle ideas of which she is applying to new compositional techniques and approaches.
Awards include a NESTA Dreamtime Fellowship, UK; Honorary Professor of Music at the Shanghai Music Conservatory; a Scottish BAFTA with Mandy McIntosh and Zeena Parkins; Distinction Prix Ars Electronica Sonic Bed_London, Honorary Mention Prix Ars Electronica cd cécile. Kaffe was also the first woman to receive the Edgar Varèse guest professorship in computer music at TU Berlin(2016) and in 2024 was awarded the Foreign Artist Award for outstanding achievements and artistic attitude of the Maria Anto and Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven Art Prize, Poland.
She has been releasing solo works on Annette Works since 1996
kaffe explains – a short interview, Muzičiki Biennale Zagreb 2019
https://www.kaffematthews.net
http://www.annetteworks.com
http://www.sonicbikes.net
http://www.musicforbodies.net
@kaffematthews