Charles Cohen is a pioneer of live performance using analogue modular synthesizers, and has inspired a community of experimental, avant-garde, and improvisational musicians in his home region of Philadelphia (US) through his mastery of the rare Buchla Music Easel.

Cohen’s music combines the spontaneity, energy, and rhythm of free jazz with the sonic possibilities of synthesizers. Recently, Rabih Beaini aka Morphosis released a retrospective trilogy of his works on his own Morphine Records – the first extensive documentation of Cohen’s over four decades making music.

Following two years of communication, Cohen and Beaini will meet and perform together for the first time at CTM 2014. Within the Un Control programme, both artists perform solo and, subsequently, in collaboration with the Upperground Orchestra, Beaini’s collective of self-described “jazz nomads” who explore the intersection of jazz and analogue electronics in improvisation.

Charles Cohen will also present a workshop on his own creative practice as well as the recent reissue of the Buchla Music Easel on Thursday, 30.1. at Schneiders Büro.

Philadelphia-based noise duo Metasplice, Morphine label artists who have collaborated closely with Cohen as part of the East Coast experimental scene, will also make their German debut at the festival as part of the De Compress programme at Berghain on Friday, 31.1.