NOTE: THIS EVENING WILL RUN EARLIER THAN USUAL – DOORS ARE AT 7.30PM, WILDCARD AT 8PM

Alex Ward solo

Alex Ward is a composer, improviser, and performing musician, working primarily with clarinet and guitar. His involvement in freely improvised music dates back to 1986, when he met the guitarist Derek Bailey. He subsequently took part regularly in Bailey’s Company events, and has gone on to become a major figure in British improvised music.

“Alex Ward [is] a compulsively creative polymath of indiscriminately omnivorous appetite … a reliably unpredictable axe-hero for collaborators of all backgrounds.”
Stewart Lee, The Sunday Times Review

[Sibyl Madrigal can no longer make this show due to illness]

Rough Work

Rough Work is a new electro-acoustic improv duo of Rachel Cohen and Kev Moore.  Playing together at Safehouse collective, Kev and Rachel found they shared a playfulness and an interest in visual performance as well as sound.  Rachel plays with voice and movement, domestic objects and found texts, Kev with electronics, voice and percussion.

Wildcard Quartet

Ron Caines
Matt Finucane
Clive Craske
Andrew Greaves

Tony Bevan : Soprano, Tenor and Bass Saxophones, flute
Dominic Lash : Double Bass
Phillip Marks : Drums
Paul Obermayer : Electronics

A meeting of the ecstatic jazz of Sunny Murray saxophonist Tony Bevan and the industrial rumble of Furt/Barks Phillip Marks and Paul Obermayer, with Steve Reid bassist Dominic Lash holding the groove in the middle.  “Like a Sonny Rollins Trio in a tumble-dryer, or Maceo Parker with Kononos No. 1.”

Tony Bevan started playing soprano saxophone in the early 1970s, inspired by Captain Beefheart and Terry Riley. Lol Coxhill gave him his first lesson and a sense of the instrument’s potential. Subsequently Bevan has also taken up tenor and bass saxophones. In 1988 he played with Derek Bailey’s Company and issued his first CD on Incus. Bevan now runs his own Foghorn label, which has issued recordings of his work with John Edwards in Sunny Murray’s European trio and performances by Bruise, the quintet Bevan has run with Edwards, Mark Sanders, Orphy Robinson and Ashley Wales.

Dominic Lash is an Bristol based double bassist. Important long-term musical collaborators include Angharad Davies, Bruno Guastalla, Alexander Hawkins, Tim Hill, Steve Noble, Samantha Rebello, Pat Thomas, Philipp Wachsmann and Alex Ward. He has also performed with saxophonists John Butcher and Evan Parker and violinist Tony Conrad.

Phillip Marks and Paul Obermayer have collaborated for nearly twenty years in the electro-acoustic groove band bark!

Plus a new trio of:

Ron Caines: sax
Gus Garside: Double Bass
James Parsons: Drums

Tickets: http://www.wegottickets.com/event/447278

Nate Wooley : Trumpet
Mark Hanslip : Tenor Saxophone
Andrew Cheetham : Drums
Otto Willberg : Double Bass

HTrio with Nate Wooley

Nate Wooley is one of the rising stars of the American experimental scene, a trumpet virtuoso whose musical explorations have taken him through ecstatic jazz, free improvisation, drone composition, and noise into a place very much his own, characterised by intense dynamics, an acute awareness of space, and a complex and organic sense of structure. Recent collaborators include Mary Halvorson, John Zorn, Chris Corsano, Akron/Family, Peter Evans, Wolf Eyes, Joe Morris and Evan Parker.

Image: Peter Gannushkin

Comprising three improvisers with contrasting backgrounds in jazz, modern classical music, and rock, HTrio are known for their strong, unified group sound honed through hours of jamming at their studio in Manchester’s Northern Quarter. Together they create long-form improvised pieces that range from abstracted sounds to high-energy free jazz, whilst retaining a strong sense of melody and structure.

Daniel Spicer & Paul Khimasia Morgan

Daniel Spicer is a writer, broadcaster, improviser and poet based in Brighton, UK. He writes about music for The Wire and Jazzwise magazines. His book on Turkish psychedelic music, The Turkish Psychedelic Music Explosion: Anadolu Psych 1965 to 1980, was published by Repeater Books in 2018. He is currently working on a book about Peter Brötzmann. He presents a weekly radio show of improvised music, The Mystery Lesson, on Brighton’s Radio Reverb 97.2FM. He is founder and director of Brighton Alternative Jazz Festival. As an improviser, he has worked with artists as diverse as Adam Bohman, Dylan Nyoukis, Alan Wilkinson and Konstrukt. He has published three collections of poetry: Osshole Accidents in 2012, Notes For Colour in 2015 and From The Bottom Of The Tower in 2018.

Paul Khimasia Morgan is interested in detourning familiar musical instruments in improvised music settings. He currently uses amplified guitar body. He has performed in regular and ad-hoc groupings with Steve Beresford and Blanca Regina, Richard Sanderson, Simon Whetham, Seth Cooke, Dimitra Lazaridou-Chatzigoga, Ryu Hankil and Charlotte Keefe. His latest solo album, Peoplegrowold was released on Mark Wastell’s Confront label.

In 2016, he collaborated with artists Joseph Young and Kay Aplin to produce a series of sound-art concerts and talks featuring Beresford and Regina, Cathy Lane, Felicity Ford, John Kannenberg and Brambling which resulted in his piece, slow kiln, being included on the Landscape : Islands cassette compilation. His previous work appears on labels including Linear Obsessional, Absence Of Wax, Crónica, engraved glass and Con-V. Paul curates Aural Detritus Concert Series, runs the Aural Detritus and TSOKL labels and writes for The Sound Projector.

Wildcard Quartet

Line-up TBA

Tickets: https://www.wegottickets.com/event/452239

ARC

Sylvia Hallett – violin and electronics
Danny Kingshill – cello
Gus Garside – double bass and electronics

The improvising electro-acoustic string trio Arc was formed in 1988 has performed since then with the same line up and has released three albums.

REMEMBERING (Uneasy Listening, 1992)
“A fantastic band who have assimilated much from contemporary classical music and have developed a sharp, intuitive common aesthetic”.. Resonance.

OUT OF AMBER (Slam, 1993)
“Indispensable for its profound beauty” Impro Jazz, France.

the pursuit of happiness (Emanem, 2009)
“teeming with subtle surprises” All About Jazz, New York.
“..creative immediacy in dialogue with historical echoes, a stimulating space where spontaneity and
evocation coincide”. The Wire.

The group’s music has been described as ‘dramatic’, ‘sinister’, ‘witty’ and even likened to ‘a satanic horror movie score’ (though the person who described us thus also said “it was the best thing I’ve ever seen at Sonic Imperfections”). Their music is at times influenced by classical music, contemporary composition, Eastern European folk and improvised music

Sylvia Hallett works as improviser and composer, often collaborating with theatre (RSC, Wonderful Beast) or dancers/choreographers (h2dance, Jacky Lansley, Miranda Tufnell),and Japanese silent film, accompanying screenings of Walk Cheerfully (Ozu) and A Page of Madness, in collaboration with shakuhachi player Clive Bell and benshi Tomoko Komura Recent musical collaborations include “Sweet Tooth”, a music-dance piece by Elaine Mitchener, alongside Jason Yarde and Mark Sanders. Musical contexts range from Cafe Oto (with David Toop, Rie Nakajima,) iklectik arts space (London Improvisers Orchestra, Catherine Pluygers, Adam Bohman), Hundred Years Gallery (Douglas Benford, Mark Brown, Chris Dowding) and The Old Dentist (the London Hardingfelelag, and poet Amy Cutler).

Danny Kingshill has worked as a player and musical director for Cyclops Theatre Company and the Amici dance company. He has wide experience as a workshop leader and is musical director at his local church and a choirmaster. He has been a member of improvising groups Boyg and In Sand and is a member of Tonbridge Philharmonic and the Medway quartet.

Gus Garside 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 playing in many one off improvising or contemporary music situations he regularly performs in The Static Memories, an electronic duo with Dan Powell) and the West Hill Blast
Quartet, a free jazz quartet with Ron Caines, Dan Spicer and Andy Pyne . 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).

Phil Durrant/Martin Vishnick

Phil Durrant

Phil Durrant is a London based multi-instrumentalist, As a violinist (and member of the Butcher/Russell/Durrant trio), he was one of the key exponents of the “group voice approach” style of improvised music. In the late 90s, his trio with Radu Malfatti and Thomas Lehn represented a shift to a more “reductionist” approach.

As a modular synth player, Durrant performs regularly with the acoustic/electronic group Trio Sowari (with Bertrand Denzler and Burkhard Beins) and Mark Wastell’s The Seen. As a mandolinist, he has been performing regularly with guitarist Martin Vishnick whome he met at the twice monthly ‘Skronk’ events.

https://www.facebook.com/philsowaridurrant/
https://www.facebook.com/sowarimodular/

Martin Vishnick

Martin, is a performer, composer, researcher and teacher. As a performer, concert tours have taken Martin all over the globe where he continues to promote his albums with radio and concert appearances; this includes varied Classical guitar and Electric guitar concerts and engagements. Commissions include music for the theatre, concert hall, film and media.

Martin is currently involved in post-doctoral research, propagating his work in the contemporary ‘sound art’ music scene, providing guitarists and composers with a sound repertory for compositions and improvisation based on extended techniques that comprise both developments of existing techniques and techniques invented by the author.

www.mvish.co.uk
https://www.facebook.com/mvishguitar/

Wildcard Quartet

Chris Parfitt
Clive Craske
Jay Bee
Z*qhygoem

NOTE VENUE CHANGE: THIS IS NOW AT THE ROSE HILL

Tickets: http://www.wegottickets.com/event/455232

Luís Vicente is a Portugese trumpet player, improviser and composer. He has recorded several times for the Clean Feed label and works with the likes of John Dikeman, Rodrigo Amado and Wilbert De Joode. This tour will be Luis’ continues a collaboration with Olie Brice and Mark Sanders that began in 2017.

“Trumpeter Vicente is a significant emerging talent, a brassy, forceful trumpeter with a quick mind…”
Stuart Broomer, Point Of Departure

Olie Brice is not just an innovator of the new generation of bass players and as a foundation of bands such as Entropi, but also as a leader of his own band, and also bringing into to the Vortex some musicians who don’t (but should) play here enough, such as with Achim Kaufmann, Kirk Knuffke and others.
“Versatile and slinking” (Peter Margasak, Downbeat)

Mark Sanders has worked with a host of renowned musicians including Derek Bailey, Henry Grimes, Mathew Shipp, Evan Parker, Roswell Rudd, in duo and quartets with Wadada Leo Smith and trios with Charles Gayle with Sirone and William Parker.
“Ubiquitous, diverse and constantly creative, drummer Mark Sanders always outdoes himself, whether playing with restraint or erupting like a dynamo.” Bruce L Gallenter, Downtown Music Gallery. NY

ACZ

Andrew Greaves: keyboards
Clive Craske: percussion
Z*qhygoem: electric guitar / electronics

Wildcard Quartet

Rachel Cohen: movement and voice
Simon Mclennan: guitar
Greg Mckella: clarinet
James Parsons: drums

Tickets: https://www.wegottickets.com/event/457447

Charlotte Keeffe

‘Fresh on the scene, trumpeter Charlotte Keeffe is a whirlwind of extended techniques and tactile puzzles, removing the mouthpiece to elicit a windy howl, using her left hand as a mute in the bell of the horn and revelling in restless possibilities.’
– Daniel Spicer, Jazzwise Magazine

Born in Boston, Lincolnshire, Charlotte Keeffe graduated with a Bachelor of Music specialising in Jazz Performance on the Trumpet from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. She then completed her Masters as a Scholarship Recipient at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and is a Help Musicians UK Award Winner.

​Charlotte’s unique approach to trumpet playing and passion for improvised/experimental/jazz music has led her to performing regularly across the UK and internationally. Her own latest project explores the blurring of lines between her compositions and improvisation. Charlotte will be performing and recording this new material in November 2018 alongside Alex Ward on guitar, Ashley John Long on double bass and Ben Handysides on drums. Her collaboration with Alex Ward extends to his own Item Series projects, performing regularly alongside Bassist Otto Willberg and Drummer Andrew Lisle in Item 4 and Item 10.

Charlotte assisted Guitarist John Russell with establishing the Mopomoso Workshop Group/MoWo for Improvisation. She arranges for special guests from all around the world to feature at MoWo’s monthly gigs, and is co-creating a new regular night for women improvisers in alignment with her passion for nurturing inclusivity in the arts.

Charlotte is a Board Member of the London Improvisers Orchestra/LIO and helped in securing funding for the LIO’s 20th Anniversary Celebrations taking place in December 2018. Charlotte will perform alongside renowned improvisers John Edwards, Maggie Nicols and Steve Beresford in this special event.

This September 2018, Charlotte played trumpet/flugelhorn as part of the Sheffield-based, Discus Music’s new Anthropology album, headed by Martin Archer, also featuring Chris Sharkey, Corey Mwamba, Dave Sturt, Pat Thomas and Peter Fairclough. Charlotte is also part of Martin Archer’s Downtown & Uptown Quintet, which will be recording in 2019, also including Dave Kane, Graham Clark and Laura Cole.

Andrew Lisle

Andrew Lisle is a drummer from Northumberland, UK, currently based in London. In 2008 he began studying Jazz at Leeds College of Music and soon discovered a passion and talent for free improvisation. It was during his time at LCoM that he co-founded the band Shatner’s Bassoon with five like-minded musicians (and fellow graduates) Johnny Richards, Michael Bardon, Oliver Dover, Craig Scott and Joost Hendrickx. To date the band have recorded two studio albums (receiving wide-spread critical acclaim) and have toured the UK extensively.

After graduating in 2011 he moved to Lisbon, Portugal where he had the opportunity to further develop his musicianship. He spent much of his time at the Clean Feed Records’ base of operations Trem Azul playing with the city’s veteran improvisers including Rodrigo Pinheiro (Red Trio), Hernani Faustino (Red Trio), Rodrigo Amado and Luis Lopes among others.

Since moving to London in 2013 his virtuosity and musicality has established him as a sought-after drummer on the Jazz and improvised music scene, performing and recording with some of the most innovative musicians in the UK and beyond. These include Colin Webster, John Edwards, John Dikeman, Alex Ward, Dirk Serries, Alan Wilkinson, Matthew Bourne, Rachel Musson and Mark Sanders.

On-going projects to date include: Orbits, Kodian trio, Colin Webster/Andrew Lisle, ​Ales Ward Item 10, Alex Ward Item 4, Dikeman/Lisle/Serries/Webster to name a few.

Monty Oxymoron – solo piano

As well as his main gig – playing keyboards with The Damned – Monty Oxymoron has cultivated a rich musical life that takes in a wide range approaches, from psych improv with The Sumerian Kyngs, to accompanying Eugene Chadbourne on drums, to recording with the Vitamin B12, and much more besides. He has worked with contemporary dance classes and performances, poets and with theatre companies. Personal study researching the phenomenon of synaesthesia has led him to a deep interest in the interplay between visual and aural phenomena, art and music.

+ Wildcard Quartet

Kev Moore: electronics
Al Strachan: cornet
Z*qhygoem: guitar / percussion / electronics
Matt Finucane: guitar

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Richard Scott – viola, mandolin, objects
Tapiwa Svosve – alto saxophone, objects
Samuel Rodgers – piano, objects

Richard and Tapiwa have been playing as a duo since they met in 2014 and have collaborated with a wide variety of musicians, individually and together, including Eddie Prévost, Phil Durrant, Christian Weber, Mark Sanders, Rachel Musson, William Parker, Hamid Drake, Carlo Costa, Silvan Schmid, Sarah Farmer, Joe Wright and Samuel Rodgers. Samuel has recorded Richard and Tapiwa playing together on two occasions, but this will be the first time they play as a trio.

ergod released their debut album, Macrotonality, on their own label, Physical Correlate, in December 2018.

https://ergod.bandcamp.com/releases

Samuel Rodgers is an artist and musician whose practice encompasses performance, composition, installation and phonography. Working primarily with prepared piano and metal and glass percussion, Samuel’s performances explore a haptic relationship with materials, playing with the weighting, balance and micro-adjustment of objects and the consequent effect on the morphology of sound. Samuel is a member of contemporary music group the Set Ensemble, and co-curates the Consumer Waste record label.

http://samuelrodgers.info/

Richard Scott is a musician and visual artist based in Birmingham, UK with interests in pattern, liminality and varying modes of perception and control. His musical activities are split between improvising, composing and performing contemporary scored music and playing traditional Scandinavian music for dance.

https://soundcloud.com/richard-md-scott
http://richard-md-scott.tumblr.com/

Tapiwa Svosve is a Swiss-Zimbabwean saxophonist living in Zurich. He plays various musics, with various people, and is a founding member of the Gamut Kollektiv. He holds a BA degree of music from the Zurich University of Arts, failed to live in London after a short period and started to make drawings again.

http://www.tapiwasvosve.net

PSANCK

Kev Nickells: violin
Chris Parfitt: wind and electronics
Al Strachan: cornet, electronics and objects

PSANCK have released a CD through Chocolate Monk and are currently working on their second.

“Perambulations, hitherto: procedures of coping, or cobalted errata. Blanched mouldy harmonic relations. File under: improv, but your Mum might find it tolerable.”

Wildcard Quartet

Line-up coming soon