BL!NDMAN [sax]

Eric Sleichim founded this contemporary music ensemble in 1988. Since 2008 the saxophone quartet shares its 20 years of performing experience with three young quartets BL!NDMAN [drums], BL!NDMAN [strings]" and BL!NDMAN [vox] making it possible for the two generations to exchange ideas.

BL!NDMAN

Eric Sleichim, who had previously been a co-founder of the Maximalist! ensemble, put BL!NDMAN together in 1988. The inspiration for the name came from Marcel Duchamp’s periodical The Blind Man, which he launched in 1917. The title expresses the dadaist notion of a blind man leading visitors around an art exhibition. Sleichim set himself the goal of translating into a musical language those artistic concepts that underlie the work of artists such as Duchamp and Beuys. Starting out from the classic saxophone quartet, Sleichim concentrated on developing unconventional performance techniques in which he ranged over a variety of artistic disciplines and extended the repertoire for the instrument in a highly individual manner.

BL!NDMAN won international acclaim with its multi-disciplinary approach and from the very start received assignments from the dance and theatre worlds, developed multimedia performances and provided live music for several silent films. The artistic people the ensemble has worked with include Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Collegium Vocale Gent, Filmfabriek, Gerry Hemingway, Guy Cassiers, Heiner Goebbels, Ictus ensemble, Jan Fabre, Josse De Pauw, Paul Van Nevel, Peter Verhelst, Steve Lacy and Terry Riley.

CD releases

2000 saw Universal Music’s worldwide release of BL!NDMAN’s extremely unusual interpretation of Bach’s Choral Partitas as BL!NDMAN Plays Bach. This signalled the start of long-term collaboration with this major record company and it also marked the start of a period in which the ensemble concentrated on early music for the first time. As part of this, BL!NDMAN created a trilogy on early polyphony on the saxophone, which resulted in cooperation with the Huelgas Ensemble led by Paul Van Nevel.
In 2003 Universal Music put the first part of this trilogy out on CD. It was called Multiple Voice and was a bold vision of the early polyphonic oeuvre created by the electronic multiplication of the saxophones. It won the 2003 Klara Music Prize.
In 2004 Universal Music added a third release to the list: on the CD MAX!MAL BL!NDMAN, saxophones, percussion, pianos and cello brought the legendary Maximalist! repertoire back to life again. In the eighties this Brussels sextet had been part of the ‘Belgian wave’, whose pioneers were Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Wim Vandekeybus.
2006, Mozart Year, gave rise to the _Mozart Machine_CD. On this fourth Universal Music release, BL!NDMAN threaded together vocal canons and instrumental fugues. The exceptionally beautiful fusion of crystal-clear female voices with the brassy sounds of the saxophones once again opened up a whole new dimension in the ensemble’s range of sounds.

theatre/musical theatre

In 2003, Eric Sleichim wrote and played the music for The Angel of Death, a video installation and performance by Jan Fabre that has in the meantime toured the world. These two artists’ appreciation of each other’s work led to Fabre writing an original script for the musical-theatre production Men in Tribulation in 2004, the first part of the ‘trilogy of the tragic fate’ that Sleichim will work on for Muziektheater Transparant over a six-year period. In the first part, the main character is the French writer and theatre-maker Antonin Artaud, who is played by Phil Minton and Viviane De Muynck.
A year later Fabre asked Sleichim to write the music for L’Histoire des Larmes, the opening performance at the 2005 Avignon Festival. In 2007 Sleichim composed the second part of the Intra Muros trilogy, which centred on Pier Paolo Pasolini. Peter Verhelst wrote the script, Jan Versweyveld designed the set and the leading parts were played by two star actors from Toneelgroep Amsterdam, Hugo Koolschijn and Kitty Courbois. The trilogy will be completed in 2013 with a piece on the writer Sylvia Plath.

joint ventures

BL!NDMAN has worked in a number of joint ventures with other ensembles, each time shedding new light on the combination of the saxophone with another set of instruments. In 2004 and 2005, for example, BL!NDMAN made appearances with the Dutch Mondriaan String Quartet, the young Duo XXI ensemble (together they won the prestigious KBC Music Prize), the Ensemble Musique Nouvelles chamber orchestra and the Goeyvaerts Consort choral group. In 2006 the two main alliances were with Collegium Vocale Gent and the Quatuor Danel string quartet. It was with the latter that BL!NDMAN first performed a work Helmut Oehring wrote specially for the two ensembles on commission to deSingel. In 2008 BL!NDMAN is compiling a programme focusing on James Tenny and other Spectralists together with Champ d’Action. Another programme is also being put together with the BL!NDMAN [vox], exposing the political influences on music and concentrating on William Byrd. In 2010 a collaboration between BL!NDMAN [sax] and Huelgas Ensemble is set up to perform repertoire that is based on improvisational techniques between 1400-1600.

educational project

In 2005 and 2006 BL!NDMAN set up four young quartets under the name BL!NDMAN [4×4]. The intention is to share more than 20 years of performing experience with these up and coming young saxophonists, singers, string-players and percussionists, thereby enabling cross-fertilisation between two generations.

To give an example, in 2005 [4×4]sax were given a prominent position in the Klara Festival with their performance Single Body Noise, in 2007 [4×4]strings and [4×4]voice were incorporated into the musical-theatre production Intra Muros, and in the same year [4×4]drums played music by Eric Sleichim in Ivo Van Hove’s substantial Shakespeare trilogy The Roman Tragedies for Toneelgreop Amsterdam, coproduced by La Monnaie opera house.
In 2007 BL!NDMAN [4×4]strings were selected for the final of 'Gouden Vleugels' (Golden Wings), Flanders largest biennial contest for ensembles making their debut.

20×20

In 2008 BL!NDMAN is celebrating its 20th anniversary with all 20 musicians in the collective, in cooperation with the artists Jan Fabre, Anouk De Clercq and Kris Verdonck. From then on, BL!NDMAN continues as a collective of three adult quartets: BL!NDMAN [sax], BL!NDMAN [vox] and BL!NDMAN [drums] while BL!NDMAN [strings] is part of the educational mission of the collective.

media