Serge Modular 50th Anniversary: Thomas Ankersmit

Fri, Feb 17 - Fri, Feb 17  2023

Dutch musician and sound artist Thomas Ankersmit celebrates the 50th anniversary of Serge Modular Synthesizer with a special appearance at the Brooklyn Music School on Friday, February 17, at 8 PM in New York, that will include a new commission specifically for this unique instrument.

To celebrate the anniversary, ISSUE Project Room has commissioned Thomas Ankersmit to create new music exclusively using the Serge Modular (with no digital effects or other equipment). Following a recommendation from Maryanne Amacher, the Serge Modular has been Ankersmit’s main instrument since 2006. With this new project, he’ll be exploring the boundaries of its capabilities to create an almost organic, musique concrète-like sound world, but he’ll also be going “back to the essentials” with a more purely electric/electronic sound. The music exists in the tension between abstraction and a more cinematic sound: noise, crackle, hiss, pulsation become thunder, fire, rain, heartbeat – with Ankersmit trying to “breathe life” into the electricity.

About Thomas Ankersmit

Thomas Ankersmit is a musician and sound artist based in Berlin and Amsterdam. He plays the Serge Modular synthesizer, both live and in the studio, and collaborates with artists including Phill Niblock and Valerio Tricoli. His music is released on the Shelter Press, PAN and Touch labels, and combines intricate sonic detail and raw electric power, with a very physical and spatial experience of sound. Acoustic phenomena such as infrasound and otoacoustic emissions (sounds emanating from inside the head, generated by the ears themselves) play an important role in his work, as does a deliberate, creative misuse of the equipment.