Phil Minton: voice

Phil Minton is a master vocalist and we’re excited to have him play a solo show at Safehouse. He started out in the ’60s playing trumpet with dance bands, then progressed to touring the world with Mike Westbrook’s big band as a singer and hornsman. For the past 30 years he has focused on improvised vocalising, emitting forth deep burbles of sound on stage with the likes of Roger Turner, Fred Frith, Veryan Weston and many more. He’s also known for his Feral Choir, an ongoing workshop and performance piece in which he conducts volunteer singers in a chorus of hellish grunts and whimpers.

“Minton’s stomach, throat and face stretched and strained, as he extruded hisses, screeches, ticks and hums, interspersed with mere whispers and the carefree freedom of bird calls. Porcine snuffles and snorts, and animal utterances suggested marsupial territoriality and human frailty, conveying echoes of a deep, unspoken sorrow. ” – Geoff Winston, London Jazz News

Plus

Sun Music

Brighton composer Martin Messent presents a performance of his piece Sun Music.

“Sun Music is derived from tones generated inside the sun, revealed by the science of helioseismology; recordings of these sound waves made by Alexander Kosovichev at the Stanford Solar Centre reveal distinct pitches. The musical material is developed from combining these pitches with compositional techniques analogous to real, physical characteristics of different processes inside the sun. Part composed and part improvised, it is performed by a sextet and trio.” – Martin Messent

Ian Price: bass clarinet
Martin Messent: organ, singing bowls
Alistair Strachan: trumpet
Adam Swayne: piano
Mark Treffel: synthesizers
Christine Diallo: bolon, krin
Alice Eldridge: cello

Plus

The Wildcard Quartet
At the end of every Safehouse open session four members are picked at random to form a one-off quartet to play at the show at the end of the month. This is them.