Monthly Archives: January 2019

Two trios: Hervé Perez, Gus Garside, Johnny Hunter + Kim Macari, Gus Garside, Johnny Hunter

Tickets:  https://www.wegottickets.com/event/460862

Two trios of mainly Northern musicians. Both feature the poly rhythm section of Johnny hunter and Gus Garside. The trio with Kim Marcari promises free jazz, while the trio with Hervé Perez a more reflective/meditative approach.

KIM MACARI – trumpet

“Kim is one of the young players who will promote jazz and push it to its limit. Her energy is boundless.” – Duncan Lamont

Kim Macari is a musician and composer immersed in the jazz and improvised music scene. Whether as a performer, teacher or a producer, her passion lies in the strength of improvised music as a means of expression and a form of empowerment and freedom.

Photo Credit: Steven Cropper (http://www.transientlife.uk/)

Announced as one of 8 recipients of the Take Five initiative run by Serious for 2017, she is recognised for her work both as a performer and as an industry professional. She is currently Chair of Jazz from Scotland, on the teaching faculty of the National Youth Jazz Collective and a core team member of the Jazz100 project.

She is a member of many bands including Family Band “one of the best modern jazz groups performing at the moment” (Bebop Spoken Here) and perform regularly across the country. The improvising Deep Tide Quartet also featuring Laura Cole, Martin Archer and Walt Shaw

Kim was awarded over £30,000 by Arts Council England to produce The Orpheus Project in 2016/17, to run a series of tours featuring international artists in collaboration with UK artists. She and her co-director Riley Stone-Lonergan ran the Orpheus Project from its inception and produced tours featuring Ingrid Jensen, Seamus Blake and Ellery Eskelin.

HERVÉ PEREZ – saxophones and shakuhachi

Credit: Heddy Boubaker

Hervé is an improviser and sound and visual artist. He performs spontaneous compositions with saxophones and laptop, using processed field recordings. His work is influenced by practices such as jazz, electro-acoustic, contemporary music, experimental electronics, free improvisation, immersive sound art and ancient techniques of sound therapy alike.

Playing the saxophone, Hervé focuses on extended techniques and abstract peripheral sounds structural to the instrument as a physical resonant object – although he has been known to play melodies at times.

Hervé has performed with musicians and dancers whose practice is immersed in free improvisation, closely working with Mick Beck (sax, bassoon), Martin Archer (winds, electronics), Peter Fairclough (drums), Philip Thomas (piano), Jez Riley-French (el.), Shaun Blezzard (electronics), Ian Simpson (electronics, guitar), Charlie Collins (vibraphone, drums and percussions), Constantin Popp (live processing, diffusion), Adam Woolf (piano), Aysegul Balkose (dance, paint) etc. in the UK and also Michel Doneda (sop sax), Jonas Kocher (accordion), Simon Berz (dr, electro), Christian Muller (electro), Rodolphe Loubatiere (dr), D’incise (electro, objects), Cyril Bondi (dr), Heddy Boubaker (alto and bass sax), Sebastien Cirotteau (trumpet, electronics), André Darius (ebass), Cia Barbet (dance), Anastasia Hvan (dance), Joe Formanek (dr, el), Roger Mills (trumpet, el), Henri Herteman (p, trombone), Guy Bayssac (dr), Marin Beranger (p), Mark Alban Lotz (fl) in Europe.

JOHNNY HUNTER – drums

Johnny Hunter is a northern UK-based drummer and composer who comes from a background of both the Avant-Garde and the more mainstream Jazz. His own “chordless” quartet, set up to explore the freedom and limitations of having no chordal instrument, has been recorded and broadcast by BBC Radio 3, and has performed across the country in notable venues such as London’s Ronnie Scott’s, the Manchester Jazz Festival, Birmingham Jazzlines at Symphony Hall, Liverpool International Jazz Festival, among many others.

Photo credit: Manchester Jazz Festival

Outside of jazz he is a member of or has played with Cath Roberts’s Sloth Racket; The Spirit Farm, an Improv group with Adam Fairhall, Christophe de Bezenac, Corey Mwamba, Anton Hunter and Dave Kane; the Newcastle-based John Pope Quintet; Nat Birchall; Engine Room Favourites, AACM inspired Free Jazz; the Blind Monk Trio, sax/bass/drums trio playing heavy rootjazz; London- based Word of Moth; Beck Hunters, an Improv trio with Mick Beck and Anton Hunter.

GUS GARSIDE – double bass

Photo credit: Agata Urbaniak

Gus has worked in a variety of musical settings – jazz, contemporary music, rock, cabaret, dance, theatre and, most importantly, improvised music where he has performed with many leading players.

As well as performing in a number of one off improvising or contemporary music situations he regularly performs in his long standing string trio Arc (with Sylvia Hallett and Danny Kingshill); The Static Memories, an electronic duo with Dan Powell (on laptop and processed percussion and guitar) , a trio with Ron Caines and James Parsons and the New Interpretations Orchestra.

He also creates structured improvisational compositions including The Star Field, The Sleepwalkers (featuring 10 of the leading improvising string players in the UK) and Collective Stories (a commission in Quebec with Grand Groupe Régional d’Improvisation Libérée).

Among the musicians he has played with are Marcio Mattos, Lol Coxhill, John Russell, Alice Eldridge, Kay Grant, Luo Chao Yun, Shih-Yang Lee, Guy Evans, Adrian Northover, Marcello Maggliochi, Maresuke Okamoto, Matthias Boss, Jacques Demierre, Paul May, Martin Archer, Phil Minton, Cath Roberts, Evan Parker, Alison Blunt and Roger Turner.