The Liz (2014 – 2023)

The Liz is a power trio. The three Berliners swim the currents of experimental, improv, jazz, beat-based electronic and text-ridden musics, coupling it all with multi-media forays into video, puppetry, and performance, among other things. They have been playing together since 2014 as an improvising trio as well as a compositional team. Recent works include 2019’s “Dipper” and 2016’s “Book of Birds”.

The Liz are funded by Musikfonds in 2021 to develop their new project “No Comet”, which is a speculative take on how dinosaurs would develop into sentient beings if the comet/asteroid had never hit the Earth 66 million years ago. The Liz will create an installation and concert, imagining a planet with no humans but dinosaurs as the intelligent species.

After 8 years, three productions and numerous concerts in Germany, Turkey, Switzerland and Brazil, The Liz will part ways. Their last concert will be at Ausland (Berlin) on March 25, 2023.

Past concerts

December 3, 2014: Debut concert in KIM concert series at Salon Tippel, Berlin
March 20, 2015: Improvised concert at Sowieso, Berlin (video)
April 30, 2016: “Book of Birds” premiere at Quiet Cue
May 15, 2016: “Book of Birds” at moers festival in Moers
September 27, 2016: “Book of Birds” at Urban Acoustic Tribe, Villa Elizabeth, Berlin
October 23, 2016: Improvised concert at Ausland, Berlin
December 9, 2016: “Book of Birds” in KIM FEST at Prachtwerk, Berlin
April 30, 2017: Improvised concert at Spektrum, Berlin
May 5-7, 2017: “Book of Birds” and workshops for teenagers at Sojuz 7, Monheim am Rhein
November 16, 2018: “Book of Birds” at Borusan Music House, Istanbul
December 15, 2018: Concert and Panel Discussion (gender in jazz and experimental music) at Donau115, Berlin
January 11, 2019: Premiere of “Dipper” at All Ears Festival, Oslo
January 25, 2019: “Dipper” at WIM Festival, Bern
May 10, 2019: “Dipper” at XJazz Festival, Berlin
July 16, 2020: “Dipper” at Heroines of Sound Festival streamed by ARTE from Radialsystem, Berlin
July 4, 2021: Improvised concert at Heroines of Sound Festival at Radialsystem, Berlin
October 8-9, 2021: Premiere of “No Comet” at Sowieso, Berlin
April 2, 2022: “No Comet” at Kontraklang, Villa Elisabeth, Berlin
July 9-17, 2022: Concerts and workshop at CHIII Festival, Sao Paulo
March 25, 2022: The Liz’s last ever concert at Ausland, Berlin (sharing the bill with Ephemeral Fragments)

No Comet

The Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) extinction event was a sudden mass extinction of three-quarters of the plant and animal species on Earth, due to the impact of a massive comet or asteroid approximately 66 million years ago. It has been speculated that had this event not occurred, certain dinosaur groups would have had the potential to evolve into intelligent beings.
With their newest production No Comet, The Liz present a work of non-humanist speculative fiction, positing a world where the dinosaurs didn’t become extinct and are, in fact, highly sentient beings. As a species, humans tend to take for granted our place in the world, forgetting that evolution – that life itself – is predicated upon chance and contingency. In No Comet, The Liz consider these chance events and imagine other possible pasts, presents and futures, in order to hopefully acquire a wider lens through which to view ideas of sapience and societies.

Stage Design by Nathalie Snel
Costume Design by Lisa Simpson
Camerawoman: Tuçe Erel

Dipper

Dipper dips a toe into the world of online text generators and artspeak. The Liz sinks to new levels, wrapping her digital tentacles around your oxygen-starved brain in this audio-visual odyssey from the heavens down to the depths of the seas and back.

Cast of characters:

Liz Kosack– synths, video editing, voice
Korhan Liz Erel – sampler, electronic drums, sound design, voice
Liz Allbee – quadraphonic trumpet, reverb tank, voice

Book of Birds

In her production, “Book of Birds”, The Liz tells the story of transformations and multiples: a maiden Sphinx, Anubis the dog of death, and Oedipus, as narrated by Kathy Acker.

Drawing from traditional Greek myth, as well as Cocteau’s ‘Infernal Machine’ and Acker’s ‘Blood and Guts in High School’, The Liz translates the riddles of the Sphinx into an engine for the musical re-production of resistance, and of subliminal and mythic resonance.

“Book of Birds” is kindly supported by Initiative Neue Musik Berlin in 2016.

Liz Allbee – Oedipus / Kathy Acker amplified trumpet, voice, text, video
Liz Kosack – Anubis / synthesizer, voice, masks, puppets, light design
Korhan Liz Erel – Sphinx / computer, electronics, sound design, voice, light design