Youran (発祥地, cradle or where something originated or was nurtured in its early existence in Japanese) is Belgian reed player-composer Joachim Badenhorst (of Carate Urio Orchestra) site-specific, electr0-acoustic composition, inspired by Japanese Noh theatre, commissioned by North Sea Around Town, Rotterdam, as the opening concert of the 2023 Festival, and performed by a new international ensemble, and later arranged and edited into an album format. This eleven-movement suite reflects on the uncertainties of the present moment as we persist in the vibration of possibilities.
This composition was premiered in a three-hour concert in July 2023 at a former Margarine Factory in Rotterdam. The musicians – Japanese percussionist and koto player Tsubasa Hori, Irish guitarist-bassist Simon Jermyn, Scottish trumpeter Alistair Payne, Belgian trombonist Nabou Claerhout, Dutch electronics player Rutger Zuydervelt, and church organist Hayo Boerema, and Badenhorst on clarinet, bass clarinet, tenor saxophone, who also sings three songs of Bei Wen Tan and Alix Meulemans (and did the cover artwork) – were placed in different spots, moved among and around the audience, and allowed the sounds to flow in from all sides, in a way that quoted noh plays. They were encouraged to find their own interpretations of this loosely arranged composition and to make full use of the unique sonic qualities of the grease-infused industrial space. The following summer, the ensemble played another three-hour-long concert in Laurenskerk, a medieval church in the center of Rotterdam. The musicians walked amongst the audience, engaging with the expansive cathedral-like reverb, while the different pipe organs were played by the church’s organist, Hayo Boerema.
The album’s 41-minute version of Youran enjoys a post-production process that fuses new studio recordings with the Laurenskerk church recording, focusing on the elusive, melancholic song pieces, sung with Badenhorst’s Nick Drake-tinged voice, that exist somewhere between the known and the unknown. Zuydervelt, who is also a prolific sound artist (and graphic artist), edited and processed all these recordings into ethereal, dark, and mysterious, decomposed compositions that offer a deeply immersive listening experience. Badenhorst calls it «an attempt to carve and hold inward space for broken down emotions, anchored by radical corrosion».
Eyal Hareuveni
Joachim Badenhorst (clarinet, bass clarinet, tenor saxophone, voice), Tsubasa Hori (taiko. Japanese percussion instruments, koto), Simon Jermyn (electric bass, guitar), Alistair Payne (trumpet), Nabou Claerhout (trombone), Hayo Boerema (church organ), Rutger Zuydervelt (electronics)
