The first broadcast of our new programme Portamento is on Sunday 22 July at 20:00 CET.
Portamento, waving…..between a whisper and a scream, is a new programme on the Concertzender. The complier and producer of the programme is Dirk Serries, a Belgian who is well-known to many of our listeners for his own adventurous music. Serries has been active as a composer and musician since the 1980s and has a reputation for following his own path through the fascinating world of electro-acoustic sound manipulation.
Dirk Serries music was issued under the artist name vidnaObmana until 2007, and subsequently under the name Fear Falls Burning. He has also released a lot of work in the last few years under his own name, often in collaboration with other musicians. Serries composes and plays music that combines ambient, improvisation and minimal music.
His work in the 1980s was issued on music cassette, a format that was used by many musicians producing electronic music at that time. The underground music cassette networks were responsible for distributing and promoting his music. It was only at the 1990s, with the increasing popularity of ambient music and the lower costs of producing CDs, that his work began to appear on CD.
Serries has worked with many artists in the world of ambient music, the best known being Steve Roach. He has also worked with Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree, who produces his ambient music under the name Bass Communion. At the moment, Dirk Serries is becoming increasingly active in the world of free-jazz, a style of music which now incorporates many influences from ambient, micro-tonality and metal-sound-eruptions. Under the name New Wave Of Jazz Serries is now producing different music and collaborating with different musicians including Colin Webster, Martina Verhoeven, Otto Kokke, John Dikeman and René Aquarius.
The new programme Portamento will be a guide to ambient, minimal, micro-tonality and improvisation, music in which the focus lies on the power of each individual note within the full spectrum of sound that develops during real-time compositions.
Click here for the programme guide for part 1 of Portamento.
