Victor Gelling
Victor Gelling (*1998 in Berlin) is an improviser and composer who uses stringed instruments including but not limited to upright bass, tenor banjo, Pedalsteel- and Nonpedalsteel-Guitars in addition to pedals, synthesizers and barely working self-coded computer programs to create sounds. Their work spans genres from jazz to noise to electric cowboy songs to complex music, which culminates in their large ensemble works with Trash & Post-Chaotic Music, their alt-country/post-punk alias Slowklahoma, solo works, the experimental endeavour NOW MY LIFE IS SWEET LIKE CINNAMON or their playing in the Jorik Bergman Trio.
Victors own work currently focuses on the tonal and indexical framework developed by the U.S.-American composer Harry Partch, in which they combine Partchs microtonal fabric with a contemporary approach to improvised music in various ensemble sizes and instrumentations. For this purpose Victor built modified electric versions of some of Partchs instruments.
Concert tours have taken them across Europe, North and South America. Festival appearances include the Acht-Brücken-Festival Cologne, the Warsaw Autumn Festival, Darmstädter Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, Cologne Jazzweek and the Festival de La Habana de Música Contemporánea (Cuba). Texts written by Victor have been published in the German magazine Jazzpodium. In 2023, they crafted a documentary about Eastern German perspectives in today’s unified Germany They are part of the board of the Cologne Jazz Conference e.V. and a member of the cologne based collective impakt.
Solo Work
An assortment of musical solo works, mostly improvised on self-built instruments in relation to Harry Partch.
NOW MY LIFE IS SWEET LIKE CINNAMON
An absurd combination of rogue musicianship, mad science and cosmic horror gone wrong. An uncontrollable force sprawling into music, performance, media and technology, stubbornly refuses clear-cut characterization while being grounded in the traditional band format.
