Eric Sleichim is a Belgian saxophonist and composer. In the early 80's, he co-founded the famous `contemporock' group Maximalist! which acted as a dynamic laboratory for many major Belgian young composers like Thierry de Mey, Peter Vermeersch (founder of X-Legged Sally), Walter Hus. In 1988, Eric launched Blindman Kwartet (after the title of Marcel Duchamp's magazine based on the dadaistic idea of a Blind man guiding the public through a museum, and commenting on the art works, and Joseph Beuys who looks as a blind man to the world in the performance How to explain the truth to a dead rabbit) with three other unconventional saxophonists. In 1992, their first `unclassical' CD Poortenbos was released by Sub Rosa Records.

80K The music for Blindman Kwartet doesn't rest content with the sounds for which the instrument was designed. Reed, brass, leather and breath: the amalgam exudes something from every pore and curve. The conic body vibrates with intrinsic tension, liberating the sounds of an internal world.
The quartet works with raw materials, forging, moulding, shaping and misshaping. Three men and a woman, four movements, four voices, four pairs of hands elaborate an impressive wall of sound. The quartet breathes its own life into each and every instrument: with different techniques, using the entire surface of the saxophone, rhythmic and thematic structures are developed into a proper sonic world.
The ever changing repertoire of the Blindman Quartet ranges from Karlheinz Stokhausen to Steve Lacy, focusing on precise topics like the aleatoric variations that rythm the history of the contemporary classical music, revisiting masters' works (Xenakis, Cage, etc) as well as new creations of young talents.

64K Apart from Blindman, Eric has initiated Antonyms, a long term project in which the Belgian composer brings together three other saxophonists, each one bringing one original composition to the temporary quartet. For the first volume of this ongoing series, Eric worked with Steve Lacy , Roy Nathanson , Ned Rothenberg . Together, they recorded Antonyms: established mode of speech, a live CD released by Sub Rosa Records.

32K More recently, Eric has started a new collaboration with the German multimedia artist Ulrike Gabriel. In Breath, they create a dazzling body of images generated from the interface between the computer program and the breath variations of the performing musician.

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