Arvind Ganga
Solo improvised guitar music. In the words of Frans de Waard: “Arvind Ganga plays sometimes with the energy of a punk rock musician (..) but also when it’s a bit more introspective (..) he maintains something that is haunted and strange. This is certainly not easy listening music of any kind, but raw and untamed power stuff. I wonder what the guitar looked like after this was recorded? For those seeking out the more adventurous, noisy bits from the world of improvisation.” Or, as a girl shouted after a show in Bremen: “Crazy happiness!!!”
Performance at De Bakkerij in Castricum, on 21 june 2019
Performance at the Grey Space in the Middle in Den Haag, 2 juni 2019
Juzaga
Philipp Ernsting on drums and me on guitar. Crazy spacey groovey rocking improvisations.
Live set at Helicopter in Den Haag
Live set at Butcher’s Tears in Amsterdam
Leo Svirsky and Arvind Ganga
Silent slowly moving tense and exciting ethereal improvisations on accordeon and guitar.
Live set at Helicopter in Den Haag
Maria Mavridou and Arvind Ganga
“tzZiiiY, are we in heaven yet? is a performance that starts with two individual beings and their two distinct languages (movement and sound) that gradually find a way towards each other in order to create a common ground for play. Adding layer after layer to their relationship, through playfulness and confrontation, entanglement and separation, gentleness and friction, they both (ab)use their respective media in all ways imaginable in the (sometimes desperate) attempt to reach a common plane and create a shared dream that everyone can be part of.
Performance in Amsterdam, 13 december 2018
Pulpy Blossom
Duo with Marialuisa Capurso (it/de) on voice and electronics.
Put down your fears, your tears are falling, dark is quite intense. what about my dreams? Acid dark atmosphere crossed by voices, punk sounds, imaginary blossoms, words, movements, poems.
Excerpt from performance in Berlin, De, on july 9, 2015, with added dancer Daniela Marcozzi.
Help Me To Crash
HELP ME TO CRASH consists of dancers Malgorzata Haduch (Poland) and Maria Mavridou (NL/Greece), with guitar player Arvind Ganga and drummer Onno Govaert (of Cactus Truck). They met in the fertile jazz and improvisation scene in Amsterdam where, during the last decade, they have been developing their own individual artistic pathways and shared interest about investigating a performance with free improvised music and free improvised dance. The band focuses on new possible relations between music and dance, where they would like to keep independence, yet with the question about togetherness at the same time. The performers are seeking for unique language that is personal and intimate, looking for expression that is firm, free and rocking. How deep can we go with this? Help Me To Crash is moved by a desire to go beyond the limits of oneself supported by trust, tenderness and rawness. The band goes for an adventure on stage and aims to make visible what lies deep while it keeps on falling.
Excerpt from performance at TO301, march 2014
Excerpt from performance at KRoki Festival in Krakow, march 2014
See Press section for reviews.
El Otro
Duo with dancer Manuela Tessi. Two individuals mix the mood of the space and the energy of the audience with their own temperament and intensity and express that through improvised music and dance. A journey to their inner souths, where the sun is blistering hot and the loins call the shots, transforming a dusty sleepy town into a desperado inferno in a matter of seconds. They love to be in between and close to the public, breaking the wall between audience and performer.
Performance at the Zwischenwelt Festival in Berlin, may 2015.
Deep Dreaming Dry Desert
“I went to the desert last night.
And I ate it all.
I ate all this vast, silent, beautiful, wild desert.
I was eating for hours.
But in the end,
I ate it all.”
Arvind, a guitar player from the Hague, and Electra Kikk, a Greek dance artist from Amsterdam, found themselves in the desert last year. Coming back- one from the salty desert of Chile and the other from the far west desert landscapes of California- they realized that they were profoundly altered. In their performance, they recreate sound and movement landscapes inspired by the sand, the rocks, the wind, the silence, and the things that cannot be seen, but can only be felt. Full project description at https://www.arvindganga.net/deep-dreaming-dry-desert/
Soft Is
Rogier Smal on drums, Helena Sanders on voice & electronics, and Thale Rosien on guitar. We’re playing kind of improvised space rock, or as Helena puts it: “our drummer doesn’t like playing recognizable beats, one guitarist plays his instrument with a brillo-pad and no shoes on while drinking tea, while the other would probably be happy doing an all-pedal steel death metal set, so you see what we’re up against without even going into my questionable overuse of the Small Stone pedal on the synth”.
Arvind Ganga / Rogier Smal Duo
Duo with Rogier Smal on drums. Rogier experiments with free drum & percussion sounds, refuses to be pushed into boxes or genres, takes his drums on a quest for liberty. Together, we create free improvisations that live and breathe, and interpret old obscure favorite songs in our own unique way. We released a cd on Toztizok Zoundz, which got a great review from Vital Weekly (see press section).
Arvind Ganga / Malgorzata Haduch duo
Polish dancer Malgorzata Haduch and Arvind investigate a performance with free improvised music and free improvised dance, and the possible relation between music and dance, where we want to keep independence, yet create togetherness at the same time. We look for expression that is something that stands firm, is free and rocking, yet controlled and not simply freaking out. Both music and dance can be quiet or loud but it should always be strong. How deep can we go with this?
Performance at Studio Loos, Den Haag, somewhere in february 2013
The Mud and the Blood
Free noise improvisation trio with Caetano Carvalho on electronics, and Stephen Doyle (of Dagora) on drums.