November 2022 — Music

Experimental Swiss drummer and composer Jessie Cox will be in Dakar, Senegal for a research trip from 19-25 November 2022 to collaborate with local musicians and record new material.

The research trip emerges from a project Jessie developed with the Frankfurt-based Ensemble Modern and visit to Dakar in 2021 to work with the local five-piece group, The Liberation Orchestra from Dakar. “Working with musicians from Senegal, especially drummers, allowed me to further develop my own conception of music,” Jessie explains. “During my visit to Dakar with Ensemble Modern it became evident to me that there are musical approaches unthought by new music musicians, and the collaboration allowed for new musical practices.”

During his upcoming research trip, Jessie will continue his collaboration with Bada Seck, Mangone Ndiaye Dieng, Ibou Mbaye, Modou Mbaye and Serigne Mamoune Seck of The Liberation Orchestra. He plans to rehearse and experiment for a new piece that he is composing for the 2023 Cresc… Festival in Frankfurt, Germany. Jessie also hopes to use the Dakar session to record music towards an album he is working on with musicians in North America and Europe.

BIOGRAPHY

Renowned as a brazenly experimental composer, Swiss drummer Jessie Cox makes music about the universe – and our future in it. Through avant-garde classical, experimental jazz, and sound art, he has devised his own strand of musical science fiction. For the last decade, his music has been marked by its freeness. Jessie considers his music a form of time travel and space exploration, likening the role of a composer to that of a rocket ship traversing undiscovered galaxies. He is influenced by a vast array of artists who have used their music to imagine futures and takes Afrofuturism as a core inspiration, asking questions about existence and the ways we make spaces habitable. For his striking music and uncompromising vision, Jessie has been widely celebrated. His pieces have received praise from the New Yorker, the LA Times, amongst other publications. It is the subject of thoughtful analysis, with music writer Steve Smith hailing his music as “sound science poetry”, celebrating its “gene-splicing futurties”. His work has appeared at MaerzMusik and has received performances from renowned groups such as Ensemble Modern, LA Phil, the Sun Ra Arkestra, and JACK Quartet.

[Portrait (c) Adrien H. Tillmann]