Ex Luc

Born as Luc Klaasen in 1958 in Holland.
For many years he was one of the driving forces behind the band THE EX.
The Ex received large international recognition for there unconventional and fresh interpretation of music and its different styles, their consistent political attitude, their ‘organic way’ of making music and the fact they kept their independancy from the big commercial musicbusiness.

In 1996 Luc Ex and Tom Cora continued their collaboration which had started in THE EX with a group called ‘ROOF’ (1996-1998). A 4tet with vocal virtuoso Phil Minton and drummer Michael Vatcher.
After Tom’s tragic death the group decided to continue but under a different name, ‘4WALLS’, and with pianist Veryan Weston. (1999-2006).
After Phil Minton decided to stop with 4Walls Luc Ex continued this mixture of written music and free improvisation with his project SOL. (2007-2012) . It emerged in 2 shapes and sizes: SOL6 & SOL12. The musicians in both SOL’s were europe’s finest improvisers and are -more by coincidence than intention- also an equal balance of genders.
Both groups had their own character and repertoire. Sol6 was leaning towards chamber music but with a sometimes ‘punk’ energy and had special attention to vocals, songs and ensemble-playing.

Sol12, on the contrary, was a small 12 piece ‘bigband’ were the full dynamics, excitement and huge sounds play a more eminent role. Both had different repertoires and, as in the tradition of Roof & 4Walls, combined composed and tightly rehearsed pieces with related or free improvisations that link and reflect the composed material. It were also the first groups were Luc Ex specially started to write and compose his own music.

In that same period he was also invited in other groups like: ‘Regenorchestre XII’ (w/ oa. Franz Hautzinger, Otomo Yoshihide, Christian Fennesz), ‘SPEEQ’ w/ Hasse Poulsen, Sidsel Endresen and Mark Sanders. And started the dada-free-improgroup: ‘TRIOLEX’ (w/ Phil Minton, Tristan Honsinger, Serigne McGueye)

On invitation of Han Buhrs (voc.& text) , they started together the free-pop-group ‘RUBATONG’ (2008) with Tatiana Koleva on vibes and percussion and René van Barneveld on guitar.
In 2013 he was invited by french singer and clarinettist Isabelle Duthoit to join her with trombonist Johannes Bauer. Bouge, a free-improvisation group, was formed.
With young musicians from all over the world but all living in Amsterdam he started the group called Naked Wolf.
His last project is the 4tet ‘Luc Ex’ Assemblee’ with Hamid Drake, Ingrid Laubrock and Ab Baars.

 

Luc always made/wrote music but always in collaboration with other musicians. In an organic way, as he like to put it. First in The Ex and later with Tom Cora (Roof) and Veryan Weston (4Walls)
From 2003 his writing took a prominent step and started t write for ensembles like SOL6/12.

In 2009 he was granted a subsidy by the dutch NFPK to write pieces for SOL12. After that followed many pieces for differentb groups. ‘Contemporay blues’ in groups like Rubatong or Langston Project. ‘Adventurous music’ for Naked Wolf and recently his ‘own interpretation of jazz-4tet’ in Luc Ex’s Assemblee. Also supported by NFPK.

In 2012 he wrote theatre-music for the production ‘Ik, Een Eiland’.
Now he is working on writing comtemporary music for his new project ‘Music of Ineviatbles sounds’ (premiere in ‘Wien Modern’ nov 2016).