German percussionist Vanessa Porter performs tomorrow at Madrid’s CentroCentro presenting her album “Folie à deux”.
German percussionist Vanessa Porter (Laupheim, 1992) performs tomorrow in Madrid at CentroCentro (19:30), as part of the Ausencias cycle curated by Desclasificados. In her performance she will present Folie à deux, the last of the two albums she released last year on the Bhakti Records label, owned by the German composer Wolfgang Lackerschmid.
Porter is considered one of the most versatile percussionists on an international level. After studying at the Royal College of Music in London and the Academy of Music in Lübeck, Porter completed her master’s degree at the Musikhochschule in Stuttgart. In 2009 he formed the PorterPercussionDuo with his sister Jessica. As a soloist, he combines contemporary works with improvisation, electronics and performing arts and works with renowned composers such as Georges Aperghis, Simon Steen-Anderson, Zeynep Gedizlioglu and Jennifer Walshe. With her solo programmes she has performed as a guest at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and the Barbican Center in London, among others.
The title of the album, Folie à deux, “madness of two”, refers to a strange psychiatric syndrome that is shared between two or more people. Its name in French is due to the fact that it was in France where it was diagnosed for the first time in 1856 in two sisters aged thirty-six and thirty-eight, without being able to establish which of the two began the cycle of psychosis, but that both were immersed in a feedback loop that reinforced their delusions. In addition to her own compositions, the album features Porter’s interpretations of percussion pieces by composers such as Salvatore Sciarrino, David Lang, Georges Aperghis, Emil Kuyumcuyan, Michio Kitazume and Alexander Sandi Kuhn. The aim of his performance is to show a kind of soundscape of emotional states, working with a variety of instruments (from the vibraphone to Iranian hand drums, water drums or the nicophone, a metallic percussion instrument designed and developed in 2008 in Basel by Domenico Melchiorre and his father, Nicola) and an electronic sound installation developed by the German composer (and also a percussionist) Daniel Mudrack.