About the Concert
James Chance & Les Contortions live in Berlin
A key figure in No Wave, James Chance has been playing a combination of improvisational jazz-like music and punk in the New York music scene since the late 1970s, in such bands as Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, James Chance and the Contortions, James White and the Blacks, The Flaming Demonics, James Chance & the Sardonic Symphonics, James Chance and Terminal City, and James Chance and Les Contortions. His music can be described as combining the freeform playing of Ornette Coleman with the solid funk rhythm of James Brown, though filtered through a punk rock lens.
Born and raised in Milwaukee and Brookfield, Wisconsin, Chance attended Michigan State University, then the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music in Milwaukee, dropped out and moved to New York City in 1976. He quickly became active in both the free jazz and no wave punk rock scenes.
His first band in New York in 1976 was an instrumental quartet with violin, drums and bass called Flaming Youth. After studying for a short time under David Murray, Chance formed The Contortions, who fused jazz improvisation and funk rhythms. The Contortions reached a wider audience with their contribution to the Brian Eno-compiled No New York collection of No Wave acts.
Known for violent and confronting live shows, razor tight musicians and jagged compositions, as well as a knack for jazz and bubblegum reinterpretation, James Chance has produced increasingly progressive and unnervingly agitated live shows. The Les Contortions have been his European tour group since 2006.
Support: Jimmy Trash and Big Daddy Mugglestone
Australian-Berliner Jimmy Trash (+ The Gunpowder Temple of Heaven, Jimmy Trash Orchestra, Trashfest, Analog Africa) and American-Berliner Big Daddy Mugglestone (+ His Cheap Paper Toys, The Mugglestone Review, Sacred Travelers, The Ass-Droids) have developed a project together out of a shared love of African, Arabic and Vodou rhythms, the use of sacred texts, performance art and creating unsure and chaotic spaces for a live audience.Working out a system to deliver fervent messages from ancient occult texts in a form of music that synchronizes the dirty synths of Suicide with mad live Vodou rhythms of West Africa, South America and the islands of Cabo Verde, and the vocal and performative stylings of Southern Baptist church services, we have dually terrified and pleasured audiences throughout Germany, Switzerland, Poland, Greece, Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria and Turkey.
Tickets: only at the door. 15€
