David Krakauer & Kathleen Tagg:
Breath & Hammer: The Ties That Bind Us
An Immersive Concert and Video Art Experience
with video design and projections by Jesse Gilbert
Clarinetist/composer David Krakauer and composer/pianist Kathleen Tagg come together in a passionate, eclectic and highly personal musical journey called Breath & Hammer: The Ties That Bind Us. Krakauer and Tagg share a constant quest to redefine the sounds and roles of their instruments and push far outside the boundaries of the traditional clarinet and piano recital by including extended techniques, loops and samples (all generated from either the piano or the clarinet) in a program of pieces by the duo and a host of performer-composers from around the globe.
The starting point of the program is made up of their arrangements of songs by composers who are friends and close associates. The program includes pieces by creators as diverse as New York-based visionary John Zorn, Syrian clarinetist Kinan Azmeh, Cuban percussionist Roberto Rodriguez, as well as their own original compositions that contain influences ranging from interlocking drumming patterns and romantic symphonic music, to minimalism and klezmer.
Through the use of live cameras and videographer Jesse Gilbert’s original audio-reactive visual instrument, SpectralGL, the audience is invited to form a more immediate and intimate relationship with the performers and their creative process as it unfolds. The original video design, projected onto a translucent hexagon of scrims surrounding the performers, was custom-made for the in-the-round performance space of Berlin’s Pierre Boulez Saal. However, Breath & Hammer: The Ties That Bind Us is able to adapt to the unique needs of each performance space and is equally at home in a proscenium or in-the-round hall.
Kathleen Tagg & David Krakauer. Photo by Tasja Keetman. Hi-res download available here.
Jesse Gilbert. Photo by Peter Adamik. Hi-res download available here.
Photo by Peter Adamik. Hi-res download available here.
Photo by Peter Adamik. Hi-res download available here.
The Ties That Bind Us Promo Video:
Live at the Pierre Boulez Saal, Berlin, Germany
November 22 by Kinan Azmeh (arr. Tagg):
Live Performance at the Pierre Boulez Saal, Berlin, 2019.
Demon Chopper by Rob Curto, in 360º:
Live at the Pierre Boulez Saal, Berlin, Germany
Accoustic Versions
Body and Soul by John Green
Livestreamed from home, 2020
Offering Nigun by David Krakauer
Livestreamed from home