Public presentation by Anne La Berge

Monday June 23, 2025
5:00pm EDT
Multimedia Room, Western Michigan University

Join us for a talk by SPLICE Guest Anne La Berge.

Some info about Anne:

Anne La Berge’s passion for the extremes in both composed and improvised music has led her to the fringes of storytelling and sound art as her sources of musical inspiration. She performs as a multimedia soloist and in projects both live and online and is one of the composer/performers in the Amsterdam based ensemble MAZE.

She can be heard on the Largo, Artifact, Etcetera, Hat Art, Frog Peak, Einstein, X-OR, Unsounds, Canal Street, Rambo, esc.rec., Intackt, Data, verz, Real Music House, Relative Pitch, Carrier and Splendor Amsterdam labels. Her music is published by Frog Peak Music and Alry Publications; and her Max-patch based compositions are available from her privately.

She is a founding artist of the Splendor Amsterdam collective of musicians who have transformed an old bathhouse in Amsterdam into a cultural mecca, where she regularly produces and shares small scale concerts with international guests.

La Berge is a precursor of some of the important things contemporary composition has now come to mean. The Wire

In 1999, together Steve Heather and Cor Fuhler, she founded Kraakgeluiden, a improvisation series based in Amsterdam, exploring combinations of acoustic and electronic instruments using real-time interactive performance systems. Many of the resulting musical collaborations have have taken on a life beyond the Kraakgeluiden series, which ceased in 2006. La Berge’s own music has evolved in parallel, and the flute has become only one element in a sound world that includes computer samples, the use of spoken text and electronic processing.

The miracle of her sound technique is supported by, among other things, different lip-positions, attacks, ways of breathing, distance from the microphone – everything has been foreseen and elaborated. . . Her textures are often two-voiced. It is all so complicated that it defies description and yet it sounds very natural, like a bird’s song. Muusika, Tallin

Her music is published by Frog Peak Music, Alry Publications, Donemus and many of her Max patch based compositions are available from her privately. She is the Managing Director of the Volsap Foundation that produces innovative music projects. She works as an improvisation and live electronics coach worldwide and is currently teaching and coaching at the Royal Conservatory in the Hague.