Perfect Fit

Grand Mal is Justin Bennett Anne Wellmer Stephie Büttrich With a background of electronic music, performance, and music theatre, Grand Mal fuses improvisation with minimal electronika and bedtime stories where voices, drums, wood and metals are electronically warped, looped fragmented and recycled into rhythm melody bleep drone pure noise masking all communication. Justin Bennett, born 20-07-1964 in the UK., is an artist working with sound and visual media. His solo work has been exhibited and broadcast widely. He has played percussion and electronics solo and with, among others, Grand Mal, Fiber Jelly, MIMEO, Joel Ryan, The Orgone, The Anti Group, Hula, Fabricata Illuminata. He is a founding member of the performance group BMB con. He lives and works in The Hague, The Netherlands. Anne Wellmer is a sound artist, born to be angry in Germany in 1966, raised to be wild in America 1970-1973 and educated to be noisy in the Netherlands 1992-1997. Among her work are performances and installations, music theater pieces and choreographies. She performs as an improvising musician, as a composer and as a singer on various electronic instruments, such as the VCS3 EMS Synthi, the ARP 2600, the STEIM crackle box and the G3 powerbook. She currently lives in MiddletownCT (USA) and in The Hague (NL). Stephie Büttrich was born on the 4th of July in 1968 and decided to become a professional user of her vocal cords right after her first scream. After studying music in Köln, she went to Berlin with the musical group College of Hearts. Besides music, her passion has always been theatre. During the past several years she has performed in various experimental music/theatre works by Piotr Klimak, Matthew Ostrowski, Anne Wellmer, Scott Blick, and Paul Doornbusch. In addition she was featured as a soloist with the Gelsenkirchener Ensemble für Neue Musik. Since October 1997 she has been a member of the Crash Ensemble in Ireland, a group devoted to the promotion of contemporary music involving interactive multimedia. Since1998 she works together with the German director U. Kirsten-Hanne and the Swiss choreographer C. Gehrig-Binder as a singer, actrice and composer. She started in 1999 the Trio Grand Mal with Justin Bennet and Anne Wellmer. In 2000 she performed Spi an electroacoustic cantate by Y. Kyriakides. In conjunction with her performance skills, Stephie Büttrich is an avid organizer and concert producer, directing and managing performances in Holland, Ireland, and Germany.