Austrian, New York-based interdisciplinary artist and vocalist, Luisa Muhr, presents her solo debut album, TEUFLIN/SHE-DEVIL. It is a structured improvisation music project based on a handmade 12-page graphic score. The score allows each player to focus on improvising with positive and negative spaces in each image, variation of angles by rotating score pages, pointillism through the shadow textures of each image, long tones through the outline of individual cutouts on each image, the density of the cutouts, and the player’s volume according to the size of individual cutouts of each image.
The project challenges the concept of “evil” through a woman's perspective while questioning the separation of “good” and “evil”, specifically as found in Western traditions. Muhr incorporates the original German text passages from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust, centering the “spirit that denies”: Mephistopheles (or, in this context, Mephistophela).
In this all woman-trio, Muhr joins forces with two other international masterful improvisers, Emily Suzanne Shapiro (CA/UK), and Adriana Camacho (MX) on bass clarinet and bass, respectively.
Recorded in one take and preserved as such, this album offers a listening journey which invites the listener into a sonic landscape that explores a broad range of vocal and instrumental sounds, as well as imagery and architecture, expanding far beyond the limitations of genre.