Yaman Palak
Borough of Queens, NY | Established. Jan 01, 2013 | SELF
Music
The best kept secret in music
Press
Article translation from German to English:
Name of the newspaper: Neue Zuger Zeitung
Date: April 27, 2010
Title of article: Es gluckert, rumort und gruchst, It gurgles, rumbles and jangles
Author: Julia Häcki
"Rooms are dreams" a series of events at Burgbachkeller Zug
Is this still music or just noise? Three artists on a tightrope walk
That Tuesday evening was initiated by the curators of Burgbachkeller Hildegard Kleeb and Roland Dahinden and it was set in a promising way:
They brought together three artists of different age and background:
The young gifted guitarist Yaman Palak, the experienced and well-known improvisation professional and music teacher Gerry Hemingway on drums and the London based Zugborn artist Charbel Ackermann who was responsible for a state of the art lightshow. It was a great blend of the local and the international scene.
The sound floated from music to noise and back again supported by the light-installation, which motivated the musicians to move into a great variety of directions.
Glitter ball effect
The performance began in complete darkness. Electronically set quiet sounds were heard from behind the drums, then buzzing and humming sounds were added which filled the room with echoes. Nervous scratching sounds similar to those of a night active rodent, came from the guitar strings. Gradually the musicians were on the way through a labyrinth of strange sounds and abrupt rhythms to find some common ground of improvisation without losing their individuality. The clearer this became,
the more light came into the darkness.
An ingenious construction of a kind of discotheque mirror system produced spectacular light scenarios in the vaults of Burgbachkeller. Especially prepared record players with kitchen sieves and ladles, which had numerous small mirrors on them, were glittering like rock crystals in the dimmed golden light of spotlights and when the record players were started the lights and shadows swirled like snowflakes on the walls and around the musicians.
Critical but audible
Gerry Hemingway made full use of his virtuosity, experimenting with rubber tubes, wooden sticks which produced rattling sounds and with CDs that sounded like glass. At one time he was stamping on stage and kicking parts of his battery on the floor thus producing clanking effects. Yaman Palak on the other hand developed epic sound moments. In addition to precise staccato excursions and fragmented elaborations, he calmly created an atmosphere that compares to an ambivalent expedition through a uninhabited American film landscape. The beauty of the uniform gestures climaxed in melodic sunset moments, which would not dissolve.
Magical moments
After the performance Yaman Palak said: It is of great importance to me to walk on the tightrope between audible and critical music. For this performance the curators gave him "carte blanche". He managed to persuade teacher Gerry Hemingway from Lucerne University of Music to perform with him. In order to rehearse they improvised together to find a common approach. As a kind of third improvisator Charbel Ackemann added his light installation live. The trio achieved to create real magical moments by mirroring eruptive, flitting about like a will o'- a-whist, repetitive and smooth passages. - Neue Luzerner Zeitung
Discography
Still working on that hot first release.
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Bio
Yaman Palak is a Swiss Expatriate, born in Zug Switzerland to a Turkish-born father and a Swiss/Russian mother. Heritage, uprootedness and migration inform and inspire his music.
Artist Statement
Getting acquainted with the realm “music practice” as an autodidact in my early youth enabled me to explore my creativity without boundaries. My environment at that time did not impose any musical trajectory; rather it challenged me to strive for creative retrieval. My involvement as a guitarist and singer in a rock band was an important exposure that influenced the forming of my musical perception. We created our pieces by composing and arranging together, thus the process of creating music and performing music was inseparable. Equally, my early involvement with “music practice” combined creating and performing music simultaneously.
I have maintained this deductive approach towards my music creativity. It enables me to compose music while maintaining my role as a performer and perform music while maintaining the role of a composer. In order to voice a composed thought I have to be able to express/ perform it. This interconnectivity is represented in the term “music practice” that I have introduced above.
The term “music practice” also voices my aspiration to approach music with its integrity. In order to encounter my “music practice” without judgment, I try to disintegrate musical idioms. The composite palette of musical options liberates me to choose material intuitively. However, the challenge is to distill the appropriate material for every practice anew.
I consider the forming of my musical perception dynamic rather than static. It can be described as a fluctuation between anticipation and regression, a negation of progress, the flourishing of the ever-present, and an affirmation of the atemporal.
Band Members
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