“Partial to onstage sparks and explosions…”
Jez Nelson, BBC Jazz on 3
“the album release next year will be symptomatic of what freedom of thought and musical instinct can create”
John Toolan, Jazz Yorkshire
“the opening sentence of their press release – ‘Shatner’s Bassoon sound like nothing you have heard before’ – is (unusually) no exaggeration”
Chris Parker, London Jazz News
“Shatner’s Bassoon are funny without being silly and musically intricate without being introspective. Chris Morris would be proud.”
David Murphy
Bolide
Bolide don’t actually sound like “six drunken tramps having a fight in a school music room cupboard” anymore, but it’d be a shame to let truth get in the way of a good simile. Here’s how they sound of late anyway…
Note: this is an extra show in the Safehouse programme jointly presented with Uneasy Music, and is on at The Rosehill, Rose Hill Terrace, Brighton BN1 4JL
The duo work of Jacques Demierre, voice, and Anouck Genthon, violin, is poetic and musical. They perform pieces influenced by the European experimental sound poetry and by the vocal and instrumental poetic touareg tradition. Both voice and violin draw on the poetic expression of speech and on the sung poetry with accompaniment by anzad (touareg one string fiddle from Niger).
Together they play a heterophonic soundscape of voice and strings, an intense and clear
interweaving verbal and musical stuff, where sounds, breaths, frictions, silences, vowels and consonants trace their own way.
Jacques Demierre is a pianist, composer and improviser. Whether acoustic or electro-acoustic, respectful of traditional music writing or embracing free improvisation, his experimentation feeds into music as well as sound poetry. It is all driven by the same constant search for consciousness of sound. Author of numerous pieces for ensemble or voice, he also explores the power of everyday noises. Extending the possibilities of the piano, he also interrogates the ways in which it can approach the sphere of language.
Anouck Genthon is a French violinist improviser and ethnomusicologist based in Geneva, Switzerland. Using her instrument, the violin, in both traditional and extended techniques, her work delves deeply into her own improvised language through sound experience. She is particularly interested in the process of listening, focusing on the listening experience be it with an electro- acoustic set up or while acting out a listening walk.
Ingrid Plum
Gorgeously atmospheric vocal techniques woven around field recordings and electronics – The Guardian
Ingrid Plum uses her voice with extended technique, improvisation, field recordings and electronics, to create layered soundscapes, spoken word and songs. Having performed and exhibited installation sound art and visual art since 2002, she creates work that sits between sound art, improvisation, multi-media installation, neo-classical and contemporary Nordic folk music. Incorporating her research into extended technique and folk traditions with field recordings and site-specific work Plum’s performances developed an improvised spatial responsiveness before going on to study directly with Meredith Monk.
Plum formed the free improv group Susurrations with Legalliene in 2011 and in 2012 she
launched Plum Records and released her solo EP The Tunnel Recordings followed in 2015 by her debut album Plangent. In 2016 this was followed by Everything Is Becoming Science Fiction – a collaboration with Graham Dunning, Ian Stonehouse and John Harries and Unsung, a collection of early sound works from installations and films. In 2016 she formed PlumPyneThornton, a free improv trio with Andy Pyne (Map 71) and composer/pianist/writer Timothy Thornton and joined The Larsens all female noise choir as a founding member. Plum is a visiting lecturer in Interdisciplinary Practice,
Sound and Media at Goldsmiths University Of London and the University of Brighton. She is the founder of Bechdel, a DIY event platform for female experimental/noise/spoken word/improv/free folk/free jazz/folk/Neo classical acts and is based between the UK and Denmark. Her current project Taut features scores by artists including Graham Dunning, Helen Frosi, Áine O’Dwyer, Tania Chen, Stephan Barrett, Iris Garrelfs, Jez Riley French, Nick Hudson, Kev Nickells, Bobby Barry, Lisa Busby, Lia Mazzari, Greta Pistacecci and more.
Gus Garside
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 playing in many one off improvising or contemporary music situations he regularly performs in Arc (a string trio with Sylvia Hallett and Danny Kingshill), 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 –including Alison Blunt, Benedict Taylor, Marcio Mattos and David Leahy) and Collective Stories (a commission in Quebec with Grand Groupe Régional d’Improvisation Libérée).
Adam Pultz Melbye – double bass Simon Rose – baritone saxophone Paul Stapleton – bonsai sound sculpture (BoSS)
Ens Ekt features the experimental musical inventions of Paul Stapleton (Californian born, Belfast-based) placed in dialogue with the circular breathed multiphonics and harmonic textures of Simon Rose (English born, Berlin-based) and the resonant gestural and spectrally focused playing of Adam Pultz Melbye (Danish born, Berlin-based). The group explores emergent timbral, dynamic and social musical structures through improvisation. The trio configuration offers an opportunity to explore new modes of interactions in part facilitated by purpose built technologies that intertwine metallic, wooden and electronic resonances in real time.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
‘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/Websterto 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“Perambulations, hitherto: procedures of coping, or cobalted errata. Blanched mouldy harmonic relations. File under: improv, but your Mum might find it tolerable.”
Andrew Lisle: drums Dirk Serries: electric guitar Colin Webster: alto and baritone saxophone
“These musicians are far too talented to simply go hell for leather or indulge in macho noise grandstanding. Instead, their noise-making has an intricacy and control while still sounding spontaneous and raw. Webster tends to avoid the obvious low end raunch of the baritone, using its sheer physicality to lend force to high register squalls and breath effects. His introduction of the alto sax halfway through the third side is an unexpected delight, as he embarks on a bright, Eastern European tinged solo over some of Lisles’s most energetic and inventive drumming. The long drones and deconstructed funk of the final side bring further evidence of this trio’s resourcefulness and imagination.” The Quietus – UK
London based saxophonist Colin Webster is quickly establishing himself on the European avant garde scene. Working with a broad range of collaborators, Webster is known for working from extreme sonic palettes – from minimal to maximal, constantly pushing boundaries. Webster first worked with Serries on the landmark ‘Endless Voids’ performance led by Dead Neanderthals at the 2014 Incubate Festival. Since this initial meeting, the two have worked on different collaborations both live and in the studio, a number of these encounters involving the drummer Andrew Lisle.
Also based in London, Andrew Lisle’s quick and highly textural playing is making him highly in-demand in the fertile improvisation community. In turns both propulsive and abstract, Lisle has worked with a number of key UK-based improvisers including Alex Ward, Daniel Thompson, Seymour Wright, and also plays in Roland Ramanan’s Tentet, and punk-improv band Shatner’s Bassoon.
Dirk Serries – curator of the A New Wave of Jazz label – is hardly your average improvising musician. Even though the man has a fondness for the classic free jazz of the sixties and seventies and the current updates, his own talents lie elsewhere. As a master of texture, a skill which he’s been able to forge and refine for more than 30 years (as vidnaObmana, Fear Falls Burning, Microphonics, with collaborative projects and, more recently, under his own name), he has always been involved in the more abstract, or sound-oriented wing of experimental music. Serries is now less reliant on his trademark effects and loops. A new ‘naked’ language that veers from gentle strumming to scribbling, pointillism and occasional outbursts of disjointed howls. Pulling from his great experience in the worlds of ambient and industrial music, as well as from masters like Derek Bailey, Serries’ approach is improvisation that relies purely on his relationship with his electric guitar, prepared or not.
Kodian Trio … blast through five tracks, mashing free improv clicks and clatters with free jazz-inspired hoots and hollers, all wrapped up in a waistcoat of gimlet-eyed punk attitude. – Paul Margree, We Need No Swords
Adam Bushell + Alice Eldridge
Adam Bushell: vibraphone and percussion Alice Eldridge: cello
An exciting duo featuring two stella players that will be familiar to Brighton improv fans.
Grassy Noel & APE are a band that create improvised somewhat abstract cinematic sound-scapes with vocalisations.
They are often joined by guest musicians, most recently playing with the internationally renowned saxophonist Trevor Watts and wizard of the keyboards, Veryan Weston.
Their inspiration is often from the cinematic & literary world and are currently working on an album with Lu Edmonds as Sound Sculptor.
Grassy Noel – Vocalisations; has performed on radio shows with a huge array of poets, comedians, politicians & musicians from Mark Thomas to Lol Coxhill, Tony Benn to Jazzman John Clarke.
Big Mike Walter – Saxophones & Flutes has enormous experience playing in several bands and with several improvising musicians. Big Mike has spent many years playing with the Late, Great Saxophonist, Lol Coxhill.
Paul Shearsmith – Trumpet, Pipes, Percussion; Paul is one of the original improvised musicians in England and has spent many years playing and making instruments with the Legendary Echo City.
Keisukei Matsui – Guitar & Amplified Found Sounds. Keisuke Matsui has been in numerous improvised line-ups & bands and is currently playing with one of London’s most surreal bands, Fear Of Fluffing.
Mark Rathmell – Symphonic Sounds on IPad. Mark has spent years playing music in Japan and is also an amazing artist, actor & vocalist. He was part of the famous mash-up band known as the “WhoBoys” and is currently vocalist with Dismembered Sound Booth.
Plus
Simon Mclennan And Joshua Simpson
Simon Mclennan And Joshua Simpson – guitar and drums. Working together since 2012 in various guises the duo explore sonic/rhythmic and textural landscapes. Both members of the more structured trio Solid Birds Flying, they come together tonight to perform a fully improvised set.
Plus
Wildcard Quartet
Gus Garside – bass Ron Caines – sax Matt Finucane – guitar Marc James Muir – voice
A first-time combo featuring four of the best UK improvisors that have emerged in the last 20 years or so….
ALEX WARD
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. His current work includes the avant-rock duo Dead Days Beyond Help, Item 10, and improvising collaborations both regular and ad-hoc with musicians including Steve Noble, Dominic Lash, Kay Grant, Joe Morris and Weasel Walter.
HANNAH MARSHALL
Hannah Marshall is a cellist who is continuing to extract, invent, and exorcize as many sounds and emotional qualities from her instrument as she can. She has been a regular member of Alexander Hawkins’ Ensembles and has toured in Europe and South America with Luc Ex and Veryan Weston’s ensembles – SOL 6 & 12. She plays with ‘String Terrorists’ – Barrel (a trio with Violinist Alison Blunt & Violist/poet Ivor kallin). And has been invited by Fred Frith and Suichi Chino in their residencies at café Oto. She also plays with Terry Day, Tim Hodgkinson, Roger Turner, Paul May, Kay Grant, and the London Improvisers Orchestra.
ANDREW CHEETHAM
Drummer from Standish, Lancashire based in Manchester since 2004 with a special interest in improvisation. He appeared on numerous releases with free rock group Desmadrados Soldados de Ventura and offshoot duo Yerba Mansa. He plays and tours regularly with Irma Vep and has performed one-off gigs with Rhys Chatham, Damo Suzuki and others. He toured the UK with Nate Wooley (& H Trio) in 2018 and Alan Wilkinson (as a duo) in 2017.
DAVID BIRCHALL
David performs with many Manchester based/related improvisors including Sam Andreae, Andrew Cheetham, Otto Willberg, Greta Buitkute, THF Drenching, Richard Scott, Philip Marks, Adam Fairhall, Luke Poot, London based Colin Webster and Amsterdam native Rogier Smal. One-offs and random stage/studio collaborations have involved working with figures such as Marshall Allen, Rhys Chatham, Mick Beck, Phil Minton and Mark Sanders.
Al Strachan / Paul Khimasia Morgan / Jules Arthur
Al Strachan is a musician with a special interest in brass and electronics. He has recorded with a wide range of artists over the last 20 years, resulting in numerous releases . Along with song-based groups such as Hamilton Yarns and Chop Chop, he plays in a number of electro-acoustic improv outfits, such as Psanck. As an organiser he is a key member of two notable arts collectives: Lost Property and Safehouse.
Paul Khimasia Morgan is an improviser, currently working with acoustic guitar body, objects and electronics. He runs The Slightly Off Kilter Label and Aural Detritus Recordings; imprints releasing new improvised music. He is also a curator of improvised music, live cinema and sound art-related events in St. Leonards and Brighton, UK under the banner aural detritus concert series.
Jules Arthur is a producer and classical pianist, viola player and synth obsessor. His route to composition came through art: trained in sound art and installations at Oxford University, he went on to found the Beatabet Collective, a multidisciplinary coalition of artists, musicians, film-makers and dancers. He also is the co-founder of Brighton’s coolest venue – the Rose Hill.
The Wildcard Quartet
Chris Parfitt: sax and wind instruments Tim Sheinman: pedal steel guitar Dave Allen: electric guitar Clive Craske: percussion
Chris Dowding – trumpet, piccolo trumpet, flugelhorn & electronics Sylvia Hallett – violin, voice, bicycle wheel, saw & electronics
Sylvia & I use overlapping loops and other effects to create a sonic dream-world, both haunting, beautiful, with excursions into the dark side. The music unfurls slowly, drawing the listener into an immersive sea of melodic fragments and dreamy soundscapes.
Over the last three years Sylvia & I have performed at improvised music nights and venues
around the UK, such as The Vortex, Hundred Years Gallery, The Klinker, Flimflam, and in
Norwich. They launched their album “the holding breath” with a performance at Wymondham Music Festival, in South Norfolk, and will be touring Britain in 2019.
Chris Dowding is a moving force on the Norwich experimental music scene, and co-founded the Norfolk and Norwich Sonic Arts Collective. He performs regularly in the bands Natural Causes (recently reviewed by the Wire), Rude 2.0 (with the trombonist Annie Whitehead), and leads the Moonrise Trio. He has toured the UK with these bands, performing at Union Chapel, Dartington, and regularly at The Vortex Jazz Club. In 2010, he performed on flugelhorn for ‘Songs at a Year’s End’ – an Opera North production about the miner’s strike, composed by Hugh Nankivell, with words by Ian McMillan. Since moving back to Norfolk (where he grew up) in 2014, he has explored a wide range of projects, often with brass, including performing with The Brass Monkeys, the “arresting trumpet duo” some things, and was featured at BBC Radio 3’s Exposure event in Norwich with the “immersive textures” of hymn. www.chris-dowding.co.uk
Sylvia Hallett is a multi-instrumentalist and composer. Her work grew out of the London
Musicians Collective, where she played in a trio with Lol Coxhill and Susannah Ferrar, and was a regular contributor on NATO records with British Summer Time Ends. Recently she has collaborated with Evan Parker, David Toop, Anna Homler (The Many Moods of Bread and Shed CD), Clive Bell (The Geographers CD) Mike Adcock (Reduced CD), and regularly plays with the London Improvisers Orchestra. She also performs solo and has released 3 solo CDs on MASH and EMANEM. Site specific commissions include a semi-composed work which she performed for the Livio Felluga Wine Company on a hillside vineyard in Italy.
As a composer she has worked extensively with the choreographers Miranda Tufnell, Jacky
Lansley, h2dance, Wonderful Beast Theatre Company, and has composed music for many BBC Radio dramas. www.sylviahallett.co.uk https://www.facebook.com/sylvia.hallett
Graham and Ed have a new album of trumpet & turntable free improv recordings coming out on Italian label tsss tapes.
Graham Dunning‘s live work explores sound as texture, timbre and something tactile, drawing on bedroom production, tinkering and recycling found objects. He regularly performs with saxophone player Colin Webster, and a host of other improvising musicians.
Ed Lucas is co-organiser (with Daniel Kordik) of the Earshots label – their long running trombone and synth duo led to the beginning of the concert series and label. He has had many associations with improvising musicians in London and beyond. http://earshots.org/
Jacques Demierre is a pianist, composer and improviser. Whether acoustic or electro-acoustic, respectful of traditional music writing or embracing free improvisation, his experimentation feeds into music as well as sound poetry. It is all driven by the same constant search for consciousness of sound. Author of numerous pieces for ensemble or voice, he also explores the power of everyday noises. Extending the possibilities of the piano, he also interrogates the ways in which it can approach the sphere of language.
Anouck Genthon is a French violinist improviser and ethnomusicologist based in Geneva, Switzerland. Using her instrument, the violin, in both traditional and extended techniques, her work delves deeply into her own improvised language through sound experience. She is particularly interested in the process of listening, focusing on the listening experience be it with an electro- acoustic set up or while acting out a listening walk.
Ingrid Plum uses her voice with extended technique, improvisation, field recordings and electronics, to create layered soundscapes, spoken word and songs. Having performed and exhibited installation sound art and visual art since 2002, she creates work that sits between sound art, improvisation, multi-media installation, neo-classical and contemporary Nordic folk music. Incorporating her research into extended technique and folk traditions with field recordings and site-specific work Plum’s performances developed an improvised spatial responsiveness before going on to study directly with Meredith Monk.
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
