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January 2016 – upcoming gigs – Kiran Leonard’s UK mini-tour; in London, a Julian Dawes fundraiser at The Forge; in New York, Legs play the Manhattan Inn and Rough Trade NYC with Blank Paper, Tropic of Pisces and SKP

Born in Oldham, currently Saddleworth-based, but occupying a wayward and exciting multi-instrumental/multi-genre orbit (which takes in, among many others, Todd Rundgren, spangled electronica, Dirty Projectors, Van Morrison and Nancy Chodorow) teenage wunderkind turned twenty-year-old psych-pop pioneer Kiran Leonard embarks on a quick British tour this coming week. For a sampling of what’s on offer, have a listen to Kiran’s most recent single, which examines the panicked, unwilling misogyny of pubescent boys and uses it as a launchpad for sixteen minutes of charging, spontaneous-sounding twist-and-turn musical quest. Spattered with snippets of radio, cut’n’paste ADHD changes and lo-fi turnarounds, it sounds like Lou Reed and Jim O’Rourke grappling over the steering wheel of a gawky teenage Yes.

For the tour, Kiran’s four-piece band features three other flexible Manchester music luminaries. Guitarist Dan Bridgewood Hill also plays as dbh and with NASDAQ, Irma Vep Band and Seatoller), bass player Dave Rowe is from Plank and Andrew Cheetham drums with acts including Desmadrados Soldados De Ventura, Easter, Butcher The Bar, the Birchall/Cheetham Duo and experimental rock duo Yerba Mansa. Support across the dates comes, variously, from Yerba Mansa, introverted Manchester singer-songwriter Tom Settle, Marc Rooney (taking a solo break from his usual band, Glaswegian “past post-modern bug-eyed beatniks” Pronto Mama), Edinburgh rock juveniles Redolent and inventive Sussex girl duo Let’s Eat Grandma.

The Victoria, 451 Queensbridge Road, Hackney, London, E8 3AS, England, Monday 11^th January 2016, 7.30pm – £8.50 – information – tickets
The Prince Albert, 48 Trafalgar Street, Brighton, BN1 4ED, England, Tuesday 12th January 2016, 7.30pm (with Let’s Eat Grandma)- £8.80 – information – tickets
The Eagle Inn, 18 Collier Street, Salford, M3 7DW, England, Wednesday 13th January 2016, (with Tom Settle & Friends + Yerba Mansa) – information – tickets
The Hug & Pint, 171 Great Western Road, Glasgow, G4 9AW, Scotland, Thursday 14th January 2016, (with Marc Rooney + Redolent) – £9.00 – tickets and information

Something of what to expect from the support bands is below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-AXT_BW0M0

This gig info was added to the top of this post at the last minute, and these gigs are selling out fast, so move quickly.

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The past week’s death of Pierre Boulez cast an overwhelming shadow over the classical and avant-garde worlds. Under that pall, it’s easy to forget that breed of composers that the post-war work of Boulez and his acolytes sometimes eclipsed – working at a humbler altitude, often inclined to traditional tonalism and craftsmanship and generally writing for the vast and undersung body of working musicians and small regional music groups, their work’s left out of the big conversations. It may break fewer boundaries, or no boundaries at all, but (to my mind, at least) it doesn’t necessarily have a lesser value. Not only does it often demonstrate an empathy for the musician over the concept, it demonstrates music’s quality of constant giving, showing that the older schemes which a younger and more intemperate Boulez once dismissed as being played out are anything but: revealing an ever-renewing, ever-fertile grain to be worked with and against even in well-mined territories.

To my ears, the work of Julian Dawes fits into this category. Five decades of his composing has produced chamber and keyboard music, theatre compositions, youth pieces, assorted works on Jewish themes (including Kaddish songs, Exodus cantatas and Holocaust pieces) plus an acclaimed mandolin concerto. All of it displays a lambent, empathetic feel for subject, performer and musician; and this coming Wednesday sees some of it compiled for a dedicated concert in London.

A Concert of Commemorative Music by Julian Dawes (The Forge, 3-7 Delancey Street, Camden Town, London, NW1 7NL, England, Wednesday 13^th January 2016, 7.30pm) – £9.00 to £12.00 – information & tickets

This is an evening of music which Julian has written to celebrate people and events. The night is also in memory of Emma Daly, and the proceeds of the concert will go to the Rosewood Chemo Ward at the Darenth Valley Hospital.

Programme:

Love Life and Lyric (for soprano and piano)
Reflection on Psalm 43 (for piano) – first concert performance
Homage (for string quartet)
Wedding Song (Louisa) (for soprano, violin & piano) – world premiere
Piano Sonata – world premiere
Bagatelle for a Wedding (for string quartet)
Songs from ‘The Song of Solomon’ (for mezzo soprano, tenor & piano)
String Quartet (slow movement)
Sonata for Violin and Piano

Performers:

The Holywell String Quartet
Vivienne Bellos, Helena Massip (sopranos)
Camille Maalawy (mezzo soprano)
Cantor Jason Green (tenor)
Sophie Lockett, Louisa Stuber (violins)
Mitra Alice Tham, Stephen Dickinson, Andrew Gellert, Alex Knapp, Julian Dawes (piano)

Soundclips of Julian Dawes’ music on the web are few and far between, but I’ve managed to dredge up these two videos – one of Cantor Jason Green performing one of Julian’s vocal pieces, and a low-key one of Julian talking about his work (on behalf of the publishing service Tutti). You can also listen to soundclips of some of his work at the page for Omnibus Classics’ release of his ‘Chamber Music’ CD.

Julian’s most recently completed project is ‘Pesach Cantata’ with a libretto by Roderick Young telling the story of Passover. This will be premiered at the New London Synagogue in April 2016: I’ll post about that closer to the time.

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Lastly, there are a couple of New York gigs (this week and towards the end of the month) by a ‘Misfit City’ favourite of recent years, Brooklyn-based groove-pop band Legs, who mix irresistible New Wave dance grooves with twitchy emotional neurosis and a verbose, occasional waspish Steely Dan-esque approach to songcraft under the double-keyboard licks.

Legs + SKP (Hypnocraft @ The Manhattan Inn, 632 Manhattan Ave, Brooklyn, New York 11222, USA, Monday 11th January 2016, 8.30pm) – free event (suggested $5.00-$10.00- information

This pay-what-you-like gig is a Legs headliner, at which they’re supported by SKP – a.k.a. Sarah Kyle, frontwoman of Brooklyn psychedelic pop band Lip Talk. Sarah is also a member of recent Interpol tourmates Cosmicide, which features most of Lip Talk plus ex-Secret Machines leader Brandon Curtis.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OOftZU_krg

Blank Paper + Tropic Of Pisces + Legs (Rough Trade NYC, 64 N 9th Street, Brooklyn, New York, NY 11249, USA, Friday 22nd January 2016, 8.00pm) – information here and here – tickets

This latter one’s a bottom-of-the-bill show for Legs. Swings and roundabouts, but they can play on both. At least they get to perform at Rough Trade (should be a natural audience booster) and they also get to act as warm-up and gig primer for two other stylish and eminently compatible Brooklyn acts. Keytar-wielding Blank Paper mix up classic hip hop rhythms, distant glimmering-city synthpop tones and vocals with just the right degree of hauteur for detached explorations of love and obsession sheathed in immaculate tunes. Tropic of Pisces is the new project from Mon Khmer/Oberhofer sideman Mathew Scheiner – his geeky white-boy solo funk seems to be inspired equally by glam, hip hop and South African township jive, though he himself describes it as “a warm, magical place that you must be special enough to have found.” Judge for yourselves below via the videos, with their ninja noir and tinfoil chic.

Tags: Alex Knapp, Andrew Cheetham, Andrew Gellert, Blank Paper, Brighton (England), Camille Maalawy, Cantor Jason Green, duo music, Edinburgh (Scotland), Glasgow (Scotland), Helena Massip, Hey! Manchester (event), Julian Dawes, Kiran Leonard, Legs, Let's Eat Grandma, Lip Talk, London (England), Louisa Stuber, Manchester (England), Marc Rooney, Mathew Scheiner, Mitra Alice Tham, New York City (USA), piano music, premieres, Pronto Mama, Redolent, Salford (England), Sarah Kyle, SKP, Sophie Lockett, Stephen Dickinson, string quartet music, The Holywell String Quartet, Tom Settle, trio music, Tropic Of Pisces, Vivienne Bellos, Yerba Mansa

December 2015 – last gigs before Christmas, London & elsewhere – Phantom Chips and Matt Loveridge’s MXLX play More News From Nowhere; mix’n’match improvising at The Hat Speaks; and the rest of the London Contemporary Music Festival 2015.

13 Dec

Well, actually this is the first of the next-to-last gigs post of the year (I’ve still got to do the second round of Christmas parties). Apologies for terseness and excessive recycling of press-release blurb, but there’s a lot to pack in both here and elsewhere this month.

About half of these gigs are seriously avant-garde concerts for the London Contemporary Music Festival, with even more of a blizzard of links and odd video clips than usual. I’m also starting with a couple of full-on jazz or electronic improvising gigs.

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MXLX/Phantom Chips (More News From Nowhere @ The Victoria, 188 Hoe Street, Walthamstow, London, E17 4QH, UK, Wednesday 16th December 2015, 8.00pm) – £5.50-£7.00 – information – tickets

Walthamstow’s newest (and only?) regular night of experimental/noisy/generally interesting music, returns with sets of bracing electronic experimentation from Phantom Chips and MXLX(the amazingly prolific Matt Loveridge, aka Fairhorns, Team Brick, and one third of BEAK>, among others), as well as the MNFN DJs playing ’til late.

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The Hat Speaks (LUME @ Hundred Years Gallery, 13 Pearson Street, Hoxton, London, E2 8JD, England, Thursday 17th December 2015, 7.30pm) – pay-what-you-want (£5.00 minimum) – information – tickets on the door

For our last gig of 2015 we return to Hundred Years Gallery in Hoxton, for the second edition of our dice-and-hat improvised music night. We held the first one in July to celebrate our second birthday, and it was so much fun we decided to do it again. As before, a nebulous ensemble of UK improvisers will gather to make spontaneous music together. This time the list looks like this:

Alison Blunt (violin, voice, assorted instruments) – Alex Bonney (trumpet) – Dee Byrne (saxophone) – Tim Fairhall (double bass) – Tom Greenhalgh (guitar, voice) – Anton Hunter (guitar) – Andrew Lisle (drums) – Percy Pursglove (trumpet, double bass) – Martin Pyne (percussion) – Tullis Rennie (trombone and possibly field recordings) – Ed Riches (guitar) – Cath Roberts (saxophone) – Tom Ward (saxophone, bass clarinet) – Colin Webster (saxophone) plus a couple more to be confirmed.

Taking inspiration from long-running Manchester night The Noise Upstairs (founded by Anton Hunter and Tullis Rennie, no less), we will put all the players’ names into a hat, throw the dice to determine how many musicians will play, and then draw out the names. The result is lots of mini- sets from often completely new combinations of people! (Some groups from last time have decided to carry on playing together too: Tom Ward and Adam Fairhall are now collaborating on a new quartet for 2016 after their hat encounter in the summer).

Do join us for this last gig of the year – it’s been a blast, so let’s see it off in style! Entry, as usual, is one Bank of England note of your choice.

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And to close, here’s that run-down through the remaining London Contemporary Music Festival concerts.

LCMF 2015: Chris Watson premiere (London Contemporary Music Festival 2015 @ Ambika P3, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London, NW1 5LS, England, Monday 14th December 2015, 7.30pm) – (probably) £11.75 – information – advance tickets sold out: limited tickets available on the door.

We present the world premiere of a monumental new work by sound artist and recordist Chris Watson. Drawing on extensive underwater recordings gathered by the artist from oceans around the world, ‘Okeanos’ – a multi-channel sound installation that will play in complete darkness – celebrates the songs, rhythms and music of the oceanic depths.

LCMF 2015: ‘To A New Definition Of Opera II ‘ (London Contemporary Music Festival 2015 @ Ambika P3, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London, NW1 5LS, England, Tuesday 15th December 2015, 6.30pm) – £11.75 – information – tickets

In an attempt to shift our perception of what opera can do and be, we present a second instalment of ‘To A New Definition of Opera’, in which performance, video art and neglected modernist opera rub shoulders. Alongside a new commission from British performance artist Sue Tompkins, the night will include composer Tim Parkinson’s apocalyptic anti-opera ‘Time With People’ (performed by the University of Huddersfield’s edges ensemble) and Los Angeles-based artist Ryan Trecartin‘s dystopian film ‘CENTER JENNY’.

The centrepiece of the evening will be the UK premiere of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s celebrated ‘Pieta’ from ‘Dienstag aus Licht’, with the voice of Lore Lixenberg and flugelhorn of Marco Blaauw. Interlaced throughout the evening will be an extremely rare performance of excerpts from Ezra Pound’s troubadour opera about medieval ne’er-do-wells, ‘Le Testament de Villon‘, which critic Richard Taruskin called “a modernist triumph.”

Programme:

Ezra Pound – excerpts from ‘Le Testament de Villon’ 1926 version (UK premiere) – performed by Lore Lixenberg (voice), Aisha Orazbayeva (violin), Lucy Railton (cello), Ian Sankey (trombone), Serge Vuille (percussion) Christopher Stark (conductor)
Karlheinz Stockhausen – Pieta from ‘Dienstag aus Licht'(UK premiere) – performed by Marco Blaauw (flugelhorn) and Lore Lixenberg (voice)
Ryan Trecartin – CENTER JENNY
Tim Parkinson – Opus 1, 2, 3 and 4 from ‘Time With People’ – performed by edges ensemble: John Aulich, Mira Benjamin, Jorge Boehringer, Eleanor Cully, Beavan Flanagan, Stephen Harvey, Dorothy Lee, Asher Leverton, David Pocknee and James Woods
Sue Tompkins – Like Sake (world premiere, LCMF commission) – performed by Sue Tompkins

LCMF 2015: ‘A Martian Sends A Postcard Home’ (London Contemporary Music Festival 2015 @ Ambika P3, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London, NW1 5LS, England, Wednesday 16th December 2015, 6.30pm) – £11.75 – information – tickets

‘A Martian Sends A Postcard Home’ takes its name from a poem by Craig Raine that sought to re-see the world through bold acts of defamiliarisation. This night celebrates the Martianist turn in music, with an exploration of composers who have made the familiar fresh.

The night will include the European premiere of Norwegian composer Øyvind Torvund‘s lawless chamber work ‘Untitled School/Mud Jam/Campfire Tunes’, performed by the Plus Minus Ensemble, and Andrew Hamilton‘s electrifying ‘music for people who like art’. In ‘Mezcal No. 8’ Swedish composer/performer Hanna Hartman transforms a copse of steel rods and washers into a sounding presence.

We honour two standard bearers of “making strange” in composition: Helmut Lachenmann and Dieter Schnebel. Aisha Orazbayeva performs Lachenmann’s ‘Toccatina’ alongside a recital of Russian poems by Mayakovsky and Yesenin that live and breathe the idea of estrangement or ostranenie. Meanwhile, composer and musician Christian Kesten‎ presents Schnebel’s celebrated ‘Maulwerke’ where vocal technique is pulled apart into its constituent parts, alongside his own ‘Zunge Lösen’ that seeks to stage the tongues of three performers.

Artist Tino Sehgal takes on the body, intellectual property and materiality itself. ‘Instead of allowing some thing to rise up to your face dancing bruce and dan and other things’ is his earliest “livework”. It sees performer Louise Höjer transformed into, in the words of ‘Frieze Magazine’, a “hydraulic android”.

The night ends with a visit from Cairo’s E.E.K. Under the fingers of Islam Chipsy (accompanied by drummers Khaled Mando and Islam Tata), a digital keyboard is wrenched into explosive new sonic territory, articulating the sound of post-Tahrir electro-chaabi.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQOoGSB-Nos

Programme:

Tino Sehgal – Instead of allowing some thing to rise up to your face dancing bruce and dan and other things – performed by Louise Höjer
Selected poems by Vladimir Mayakovsky and Sergei Yesenin – performed by Aisha Orazbayeva (voice)
Helmut Lachenmann – Toccatina – performed by Aisha Orazbayeva (violin)
Christian Kesten – Zunge Lösen (Releasing the Tongue) – performed by Christian Kesten (voice)
Andrew Hamilton – music for people who like art – performed by Becca Carson (piccolo), Ausiàs Garrigos Mórant (bass clarinet), Ian Sankey (trombone), Sam Wilson (percussion), Jack Ross (electric guitar), Siwan Rhys (piano), Joanne Evans (voice), Eloisa Fleur-Thom (violin), Valerie Albrecht (viola), Oliver Coates (cello), Martin Ludenbach (bass guitar), James Weeks (conductor)
Dieter Schnebel – Maulwerke (2015 solo version) – performed by Christian Kesten
Hanna Hartman – Mezcal No. 8 (UK premiere) – performed by Hanna Hartman
Øyvind Torvund – Untitled School/Mud Jam/Campfire Tunes (European premiere) – performed by Plus Minus Ensemble: Mark Knoop (piano), Roderick Chadwick (piano), Serge Vuille (percussion), Elsa Bradley (percussion
Islam Chipsy & EEK – live set

LCMF 2015: ‘Requiem for Reality’ (London Contemporary Music Festival 2015 @ Ambika P3, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London, NW1 5LS, England, Thursday 17th December 2015, 6.30pm) – £11.75 – information – tickets

Some call it post-internet art: others “the New Aesthetic”. Whatever the name, there’s no doubt that the internet has scrambled the way we think, see and listen. Yet if art has placed this new paradigm at its heart, we are only now beginning to distil what it means for musical composition.

One pioneer of musical attempts to understand how things are changing in the digital shadow is Jennifer Walshe. The final night of LCMF 2015 will see the UK premiere of her latest, major one-woman work ‘Total Mountain’. Two further UK premieres arrive from Germany. Berlin-based Neele Hülcker investigates (as does Claire Tolan) the online phenomenon of autonomous sensory meridian response – or ASMR – in her work ‘Copy!’, while Brigitta Muntendorf explores the YouTubed bedroom in ‘Public Privacy No 2’.

https://vimeo.com/140623887

The flight from reality captured by this post-internet music is not new. Serialist trailblazers like Milton Babbitt got there first with works such as ‘Reflections for piano & synthesized tape’. The hyperactive, networked aesthetic of Walshe and others, meanwhile, was foreshadowed by Jacob TV in ‘Grab It! Both are performed tonight.

As an occasional collaborator with London-based collective PC Music, Felicita‘s music is one in which the tropes of pop’s most commercial statements are accelerated, amplified and brought riotously together into a language that, if satirical, is also wildly inventive in its own right.

We conclude and project into the future with the long-awaited UK return of James Ferraro, whose 2011 album ‘Far Side Virtual’ is an essential post-internet text. For his forthcoming release ‘Skid Row’, Ferraro turns his attention to contemporary Los Angeles, a kind of “hyper-America” where violent realities are obsessively mediated and reproduced.

Programme:
Milton Babbitt – Reflections – performed by Mark Knoop (piano) with original tape recording
Jacob TV – Grab It! – performed by Nick Goodwin (electric guitar)
Brigitta Muntendorf – Public Privacy #2 (UK premiere) – performed by Brigitta Muntendorf with Mark Knoop (piano)
Neele Hülcker – Copy! (UK premiere) – performed by Neele Hülcker
Jennifer Walshe – Total Mountain (UK premiere) – performed by Jennifer Walshe
Felicita – live set
James Ferraro – new work

Tags: Aisha Orazbayeva, Alex Bonney, Alison Blunt, Andrew Hamilton, Andrew Lisle, Anton Hunter, Asher Leverton, ASMR, Ausiàs Garrigos Mórant, Øyvind Torvund, Beavan Flanagan, Becca Carson, Brigitta Muntendorf, Cath Roberts, Chris Watson, Christian Kesten, Christopher Stark, Colin Webster, David Pocknee, Dee Byrne, Dieter Schnebel, Dorothy Lee, E.E.K, Ed Riches, edges ensemble, Eleanor Cully, Eloisa Fleur-Thom, Elsa Bradley, Ezra Pound, Felicita, Hanna Hartman, Helmut Lachenmann, Ian Sankey, Islam Chipsy, Islam Tata, Jack Ross, Jacob TV, James Ferraro, James Weeks, James Woods, Jennifer Walshe, Joanne Evans, John Aulich, Jorge Boehringer, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Khaled Mando, London (England), London Contemporary Music Festival (event), Lore Lixenberg, Louise Höjer, Lucy Railton, LUME (event), Marco Blaauw, Mark Knoop, Martin Ludenbach, Martin Pyne, Milton Babbitt, Mira Benjamin, Neele Hülcker, Nick Goodwin, Oliver Coates, Percy Pursglove, Plus Minus Ensemble, Roderick Chadwick, Ryan Trecartin, Sam Wilson, Serge Vuille, Sergei Yesenin, Siwan Rhys, Stephen Harvey, Sue Tompkins, The Hat Speaks (event), Tim Fairhall, Tim Parkinson, Tino Sehgal, Tom Greenhalgh, Tom Ward, Tullis Rennie, Valerie Albrecht, Vladimir Mayakovsky

December 2015 – upcoming London gigs – the 2015 London Contemporary Music Festival part 1 (sounds for and from London, West Coast America and the time continuum)

6 Dec

Friday this week sees the start of the London Contemporary Music Festival, which (as if it were part of a conspiracy theory) is lurking in a giant underground bunker near Baker Street…

LCMF 2015: ‘Collective Capital’ (London Contemporary Music Festival 2015 @ Ambika P3, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London, NW1 5LS, England, Friday 11th December 2015, 6.30pm) – £11.25 – information – tickets

London takes centre stage in our opening night, as we celebrate the exploratory fringes of the city’s music scene and the collective imperative that has been a spur to some of the capital’s greatest experiments. The proliferation of collectives among young musician-composers is reflected in new commissions from some of the most adventurous of these musical laboratories. The night will include premieres from Charlie Hope and Jamie Hamilton (a.k.a. Topophobia), Neil Luck (performing with his Squib Box ensemble) and John Wall & Tom Mudd (Utterpsalm and Contingent Events). We hear recent work by composers Edward Henderson (Bastard Assignments), Shelley Parker and the artist duo Claudia Hunte. We welcome an iconic figure and chronicler of London’s musical edgelands, David Toop, and offer a live improvisation from Poulomi Desai (Usurp), who started the Hounslow Arts Co-op at the age of 14.

We also offer a world premiere from artists Richard Wilson and Anne Bean. In the 1980s, Anne, Richard and Paul Burwell formed the legendary Bow Gamelan Ensemble, enthralled by the aural poetry and parallel visions of the Thames. Now, Wilson and Bean enter the territory as W0B. Theirs is a world that cracks and splinters and grinds into being as it races backwards and forwards through friendships of forty years. ‘NALEMAG’ becomes the totemic incarnation of their endless scrabbling around boat-yards, scrap-yards, gas depots, pyrotechnic munitions, voyages on many rivers in countless vessels and a frenzy of carrying, welding, investigating and making across the planet. The trajectory culminates with a landmark new AV performance from south London’s Visionist, whose singular language emerges from the fragmentation of dubstep and grime.

Programme:

David Toop – Many Private Concerts
Anne Bean/Richard Wilson – NALEMAG (world premiere)
Poulomi Desai – Vermillion Sands (world premiere)
Neil Luck – Via Gut (world premiere – LCMF commission)
Jamie Hamilton/Charlie Hope – New work (world premiere)
Edward Henderson – Tape Piece
Claudia Hunte – The Elephant In The Room Is Afraid Of Dying
Shelley Parker – Live set
John Wall – Live set
Tom Mudd – Live set
Visionist – Live set (AV)

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The second LCMF night, on Saturday, sees the series take a broad stylistic and historical sweep across twentieth and twenty-first century California (with one digression to Alaska, so it’s not all sun.)

LCMF 2015: ‘West Coast Night’ (London Contemporary Music Festival 2015 @ Ambika P3, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London, NW1 5LS, England, Saturday 12th December 2015, 6.30pm) – £11.75 – information – tickets

The second night of LCMF 2015 is dedicated to the music of the American West Coast, an exploration of 100 years of musical non-conformism, from the piano insurrections of Henry Cowell to the deep listening of Pauline Oliveros (performing her own music on v-accordion). Oliveros is joined by another founding legend of the pioneering San Francisco Tape Music Center, Morton Subotnick, who presents a solo Buchla set and the UK premiere of a 1960s Tape Center composition with a film by Tony Martin. Another composer associated with the Tape Center was Terry Riley, whose ‘Keyboard Study No. 2’ gets a rare outing.

Alongside this we zig-zag through the experimental landscape, calling on John Cage‘s concussive ‘First Construction (In Metal)’, which premiered in Seattle in 1939, John Luther Adams‘s monumental ‘Among Red Mountains’ and Catherine Lamb‘s subterranean ‘Frames’. We excavate two gems from California’s 1980s computer music scene, Maggi Payne‘s ‘Flights Of Fancy’ and Carl Stone‘s ‘Wall Me Do’. On the fiftieth anniversary of the Watts Uprising we present an extremely rare performance from Otis O’Solomon, whose collective The Watts Prophets emerged from the rubble of that uprising and helped lay the foundations for hip-hop.

Programme:

Henry Cowell – The Banshee (for piano) – performed by Gwenaëlle Rouger
John Cage – First Construction (in Metal) (for percussion ensemble) – performed by PERC’M and Serge Vuille
Morton Subotnick/Tony Martin – PLAY! No. 3 (1965) (UK premiere)
Terry Riley – Keyboard Study No. 2
Maggi Payne – Flights of Fancy
Carl Stone – Wall Me Do
John Luther Adams – Among Red Mountains (for piano) – performed by Gwenaëlle Rouger
Catherine Lamb – Frames for cello & bass recorder (UK premiere) – performed by Anton Lukoszevieze/Lucia Mense
Otis O’Solomon – Selected poems
Pauline Oliveros – Pauline’s Solo (1992)
Morton Subotnick – solo Buchla set

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On Sunday, the third LCMF event has a polycultural and temporal feel:

LCMF 2015: ‘Five Ways To Kill Time’ (London Contemporary Music Festival 2015 @ Ambika P3, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London, NW1 5LS, England, Sunday 13th December 2015, 6.30pm) – £11.75 – information – tickets

Time is stretched, bent and finally dissolved in ‘Five Ways To Kill Time’. Sound artist Ellen Fullman opens the night with a UK premiere of The Watch Reprise, which will be performed on her 50-foot Long String instrument that one writer compared to “standing inside a giant grand piano.” Ethiopian composer, pianist and nun Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou makes her first visit to the UK to perform a selection of her intimate piano miniatures that seem to drift through space. Plus Minus Ensemble, meanwhile, offers up the intricate and disorientating world of Bryn Harrison‘s ‘Repetitions In Extended Time’ (conducted by Mark Knoop and featuring strings, organs, piano, guitar and clarinet). Mixing spoken text and music, theatre maker Tim Etchells (Forced Entertainment) and violinist Aisha Orazbayeva offer a set of fragmentary improvisations in ‘Seeping Through’, a work fresh from a critically acclaimed run at the Edinburgh Fringe. We end with a time-obliterating live set from doom pioneer Stephen O’Malley, whose work within and beyond his seminal group Sunn O))) exists in a kind of transcendent stasis.

Programme:

Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou – selected piano works
Bryn Harrison – Repetitions in Extended Time
Tim Etchells/Aisha Orazbayeva – Seeping Through
Ellen Fullman – The Watch Reprise (world premiere)
Stephen O’Malley – live set

Tags: Aisha Orazbayeva, Ambika P3, Anne Bean, Anton Lukoszevieze, Bas Jan, Bastard Assignments (event), Bow Gamelan Ensemble, Bryn Harrison, Buchla electronic musical instrument, Carl Stone, Catherine Lamb, Charlie Hope, Claudia Hunte, Contingent Events (event), David Toop, Daylight Music (event), Edward Henderson, Ellen Fullman, Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, Jamie Hamilton, Jenny Moore, John Adams, John Cage, John Luther Adams, John Wall, listening to women, London (England), London Contemporary Music Festival (event), Lucia Mense, Luminous Bodies, Maggi Payne, Mark Knoop, Morton Subotnick, multi-instrumentalists, music for Buchla synthesizer, Neil Luck, Otis O'Solomon, Pauline Oliveros, PERC'M, Phantasmagoria, Plus Minus Ensemble, Poulomi Desai, Rhodri Davies, Richard Barratt, Richard Wilson, San Francisco Tape Music Center, Serafina Steer, Serge Vuille, Shelley Parker, Squib Box, Stephen Dodgson, Stephen O'Malley, Sunn O))), Terry Riley, The Watts Prophets, Tim Etchells, Tom Mudd, Topophobia, Usurp, Utterpsalm (event), Visionist, W0B

December 2015 – upcoming gigs, London & elsewhere – the return of Mark Mulholland and Craig Ward in a Scottish village hall; Serafina Steer & Bas Jan at Kings Place; Olga Stezhko in a Staffordshire chapel; and assorted Others cabaret from punk to accordiana with The Bohemianauts and Bad Fractals

6 Dec

The end of the month, and the year, is nigh – so what are we looking forward to this week?

Mark Mulholland, Craig Ward, Yacouba Sissoko & Hannes D’Hoine (Ford Village Hall, Ford, Argyll, Scotland, Tuesday 8^th December 2015, 7.30pm) – £5.00 minimum – information – tickets on the door

Back in 2012, two wandering Scottish singer-songwriter-guitarists – Mark Mulholland (ex-Two Dollar Bash) and onetime dEUS member Craig Ward – quietly released one of the finest records of the year. A compelling murmur of acoustic guitar folk, ‘Waiting for the Storm’ was soaked in the Scottish and British folk-baroque of Davey Graham, Pentangle and John Martyn but, in its settings of moist heat, tin roofs, typhoons and dark forces, it was also informed by the Haitian setting of Port-au-Prince, Mark’s home for the previous two years. Some of you may remember that I liked it.

With Mark now relocated to Mali and Craig settled in the little Argyll village of Ford, the duo are collaborating on a follow-up (provisionally called ‘The Darkness Between the Leaves’) on which they’ll be joined by Flemish double bass player Hannes D’Hoine – who played the Danny Thompson anchor-cable role on ‘Waiting for the Storm’ – and by Mark’s newest collaborator, the Malian djely and multi-instrumentalist Yacouba Sissoko, a master kora and ngoni player. The quartet have been preparing and recording in a number of different countries, and the end of the Scottish sessions will be marked by a Ford performance both taking place in and raising funds for Ford Village Hall, with prices set on a pay-what-you-like basis starting from five pounds.

In its quiet way this should be one of the gigs of the year, so if you’re in western Scotland and have a free Tuesday evening, consider heading over to Ford (at the south-western end of Loch Awe, north-west of Glasgow, with the nearest substantial town being Kilmartin.) If you miss this one, they’re playing again in Glasgow at 7.00pm on Wednesday 9th; a low-key gig at the Hidden Lane Gallery in Finnieston.

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After that – for me – the week doesn’t pick up until a very busy Friday and weekend. Too subjective, probably. Here we go, anyway.

Serafina Steer & Bas Jan (Hall Two @ (Kings Place, 90 York Way, Kings Cross, London, N1 9AG, England, Friday 11th December 2015, 8.00pm) – £9.50-£12.50 – information & tickets

The hitherto independent worlds of contemporary harp music and experimental kraut-pop will collide – or at least bump each other – in this concert of two halves by harpist/songwriter Serafina Steer and her new band Bas Jan.

After a few years of mainly only using the harp for her own writings, Serafina went on a roadtrip around Eastern Europe busking, discovering and rediscovering pieces along the way. The result of this experience will form the first half of the programme, which will feature compositions by Richard Barratt (‘tendril’), Benjamin Britten (‘Suite for Harp’), Stephen Dodgson (‘Fantasy’), Rhodri Davies (‘Aqcua Alta’) and Serafina’s own father Michael Maxwell Steer (‘Grovelly Wood’)

The second half of the show will be a performance by Bas Jan, Serafina’s latest collaborative project in which she plays bass guitar and keyboards and writes minimally arranged songs about the Essex coast, the Anglo-Saxons, sex, part-time work and love; with sound artist Sarah Anderson playing violin and OP1 mini-synthesizer and performance visual artist Jenny Moore playing drums (all three women also sing). Bas Jan’s first gig was to six thousand people at Brixton Academy and since then they have gone on – via support slots for Xylouris White and The Decemberists – to entertain smaller and smaller audiences.

On the same night, one of ‘Misfit City’s favourite classical musicians is spreading her own particular musical gospel up in Staffordshire:

Olga Stezhko (Abbotsholme Arts Society @ Abbotsholme School Chapel, Rocester, Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, ST14 5BS, England, Friday 11th December 2015, 8.00pm) – information – limited number of tickets available, phone 01543 263 304 for details

Following up her recent debut performances at both the Wigmore and Bridgewater Halls (at which she performed full or partial versions of her ‘Lucid Dreams‘ assemblage, a programme of music exploring people’s changing perception of reality from childhood through to adulthood), classical pianist and multi-disciplinary thinker Olga Stezhko is bringing her sophisticated, metaphysical perspective and repertoire to the audience at Abbotsholme.

On this occasion, her choice of music is a little more conventional (leaning on well-established favourites by Mozart, Bach and Prokofiev rather then stretching to the Sophia Gubaidulina pieces she was playing last month). However, there’s still room in the programme for work by one of her compositional touchstones, Alexandr Scriabin; and you can be assured that whichever pieces Olga plays will have been carefully thought out and put into context as part of a programme intended to inspire thought and broader conceptual connections as well as straightforward musical enjoyment.

Programme:

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Sonata in B flat major, K.570
Johannes Brahms – Six Pieces, Op.118
Alexandr Scriabin – Two Dances Op.73; Five Preludes Op.74; Vers la flamme Op.72,
John Adams – China Gates
Sergei Prokofiev – Sonata no.4 in C minor, Op.29

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Back in London, meanwhile, there’s cabaret afoot, plus breathless press releases.

The Bohemianauts + Bad Fractals (Bohemiocracy @ The Others, 6-8 Manor Road, Stoke Newington, London, N16 5SA, England, Friday 11th December 2015, 8.00pm) – £8.00-£10.00 – information & tickets here and here

An epic face-off between two amazing, unique and bizarre bands.

Bad Fractals are shaman gangsters shooting bullets of love, tearing their way through acid punk, malevolent music hall and trailer-trash blues in a world gone mad. Join us at the crossroads, in a theatre of the absurd: hear story and song shift with the wild wonder of fractals! Watch psychedelic punks get drunk with clown kings! Glare at artificial angels dancing with deadbeat demons! Gasp as astral travellers gather in galactic taverns!

The Bohemianauts are decadent divas of demi-monde carnivalism, playing weird waltzes, pithy polkas and rollicking rhumbas: they will take you on a theatrical musical journey through strange landscapes with absurd humour, exquisite noise and songs of unrequited dread. Tonight they will unleash their female alter-egos, as they parade in their geezer-bird finery, performing for your pleasure as the rarely-seen Bohemianauts – Drag-ed on Stage. (Trigger warning: Bearded Drag.)

PLUS – Visuals and projections from Jaime Rory Lucy‘s Rucksack Cinema and half-time performance interventions from Oleg the Mystic.

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More shortly…

Tags: Alexandr Scriabin, Bad Fractals, Bas Jan, Benjamin Britten, Craig Ward, dEUS, Finnieston (Argyll - Scotland), Ford (Argyll - Scotland), Jenny Moore, Johannes Brahms, John Adams, listening to women, Mark Mulholland, Michael Maxwell Steer, multi-instrumentalists, Oleg the Mystic, Olga Stezhko, piano music, Rhodri Davies, Richard Barratt, Rucksack Cinema, Sarah Anderson, Serafina Steer, Sergei Prokofiev, Stephen Dodgson, The Bohemianauts, Uttoxer (England), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Yacouba Sissoko

December 2015 – upcoming gigs, London and elsewhere – some Sunday jazz (Chris Laurence Quartet with Henry Lowther in Crouch End and LUME’s Deemer/Survival Skills show at the Vortex); Ray Dickaty’s Noise Of Wings in Warsaw; and a final Yorkshire shout from Was Is Das? (Skullflower + Tor Invocation Band at Inkfolk in Hebden Bridge)

1 Dec

Increasingly, Sunday night in these listings seems to be the night for jazz – or near-jazz. Something accessible’s going on in Crouch End, just down the road from ‘Misfit City’; something spikier’s in preparation at the Vortex over in Dalston; and a thousand miles away in Warsaw, an old favourite’s taking a new step.

In order of proximity, then..

The Chris Laurence Quartet with guest Henry Lowther (Sunday Night Jazz @ The Supper Room, Hornsey Town Hall Arts Centre, The Broadway, Crouch End, London, N8 9JJ, UK, Sunday 6^th December 2015, 8.00pm) – £11.00 – information – tickets

For several decades, Chris Laurence has skilfully straddled the worlds of British jazz, British classical and British popular music without compromising his artistry in any of them. He’s played double bass on tracks by Elton John, Sting or David Gilmour and spent many years as principal double bassist with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields and the London Bach Orchestra; but the prime outlet for his melodic, propulsive playing has always been jazz, whether he’s been working in controlled explosions with free-jazz drummer Tony Oxley or in more measured compositional jazz space with Kenny Wheeler, John Taylor or John Surman.

His own Chris Laurence Quartet has been active since the mid-2000s, with the other three members being vibraphonist Frank Ricotti (a longtime Laurence collaborator and bandleader in his own right, as well as being a British percussion-session legend) and past/present Loose Tubes players John Parricelli (guitar) and Martin France (drums). Their lone album to date – 2007’s ‘New View’ – includes Laurencian takes on compositions by Wheeler, Surman, Taylor, Stan Sulzmann, Joni Mitchell and Andy Laverne. As well as featuring guest appearances from Norma Winstone, it also showcases the interplay of Chris’ vigorous bass playing and the subtle implicatory musicianship of his cohorts.

For this particular concert, Henry Lowther (whose five-decades-plus career of playing has seen him grace work by Mike Westerbrook, Gil Evans, Talk Talk, John Dankworth and many others including various jazz orchestras) will be guesting on trumpet. The Quartet is playing as part of a brief Three Sundays of Inspirational Music season at Hornsey Town Hall, which concludes on the 6th and features various jazz, baroque and classical performances.

Deemer + Survival Skills (LUME @ The Vortex Jazz Club, 11 Gillett Square, Dalston, London, N16 8AZ, UK, Sunday 6^th December 2015, 7.30pm) – £11.00 – information – tickets

The next concert’s billed as “a special evening of improvised music with electronics” and hangs onto whatever jazziness it has by its fingertips alone: but if you’re interested in creative spontaneous music, don’t let that put you off in the slightest.

Deemer is the brain-child of Merijn Royaards and Dee Byrne. Deemer started life in 2006 as a weekly improvisation/electronics session in a warehouse in Hackney Wick. The project has since evolved into an installation/performance based electro-acoustic two-piece orchestra, whose aural narratives are created within fluid frameworks that map a trajectory in time, but leave the sonic textures and compositions entirely free and undetermined. Deemer employ, among other things, alto saxophone, analogue electronics, tape, transducer microphones/speakers to instantly compose, activate space, and blur the boundaries between free jazz and sound installation. They are releasing their debut album ‘Interference Patterns’ on Monday 7th December on the new LUME record label, Luminous.

Survival Skills is the solo project of Chris Sharkey (trioVD, Acoustic Ladyland, Shiver). It has no fixed instrumentation but the music is often comprised of various processed layers created in real time by hardware including synths, sequencers, cassette recordings, vocals and guitar – the results have been described as “a lo-fi vision of mangled techno, where beats cluster and stumble in their fight for dominance; a highly intriguing piece of noise art…” (‘Data Transmission‘).

Noise of Wings (Staromiejski Dom Kultury, Rynek Starego Miasta 2, 00-272 Warsaw, Poland, Sunday 6th December 2015, 7.00pm) – 20 zł – information – tickets on the door, one hour before concert

Saxophonist Ray Dickaty has travelled a long way in twenty-odd years – both geographically (Liverpool and London, via assorted world tours, to Warsaw) and musically (British avant/alt-rock with Spiritualized, Moonshake and Gallon Drunk, then the brutal jazzpunk of Solar Fire Trio, and his current work as an improviser). Now embedded deep in experimental jazz (plus a host of projects around the Warszawa Improvisers Orchestra) he’s stepping out as a frontline composer. For Noise Of Wings, Ray twins his tenor sax with that of Maciej Rodakowski, adding avant-garde double bass player Wojtek Traczyk and polygenre drummer Hubert Zemler to form a quartet playing “inside and outside” Ray’s own written pieces.

Though the project’s influences and ingredients come from Terry Riley, Ornette Coleman, “mediaeval darkness”, drone culture and Albert Ayler free-forming, Ray claims that the final results“are not free jazz blowout music; this is a carefully considered sonic palette… It may be considered dark ambient jazz, with a hint of contemporary classical: melodic and yet full of interesting twists and turns… The saxes are pushed to their limits sonically and all the time the volume is kept down.” The project is still too young for me to be able to provide any sonic evidence, but this December gig at Warsaw’s Staromiejski Dom Kultury is being pitched as “a very special concert in a very special sounding room” and will be recorded live for rapid release.

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Bringing up that last Warsaw gig reminds me that I’ve been trying to look further afield than London for news on interesting concerts, in attempts to escape the complacent gravity of the capital and my own complacence as a born-and-bred Londoner. The results can be rewarding, and although I don’t want to spend all my time as a gig-advertising service, there’s definitely some satisfaction involved in supporting people’s efforts to foster and promote interesting music away from the biggest cities and media hubs. The flipside, though, is an occasional feeling that I’ve started doing this too late.

Take this Was Ist Das? concert, for instance – the latest effort by an enthusiastic promoter and instigator of rare noise in West Yorkshire, but also the final effort. The story might not have quite such a sad ending – this thing’s coming to an end not due to disillusionment but because of the promoter emigrating – but it’s still a shame to see a gig series wink out of existence in a place where it will be missed. All the more reason to catch this particular concert before the end…

Skullflower + Tor Invocation Band (Was Ist Das? @ Inkfolk @ Machpelah Mill, Station Road, Hebden Bridge, HX7 8AU, UK, Sunday 6th December 2015, 8.00pm) – price t.b.c – information – tickets on the door

The final Was Ist Das? gig before I emigrate to America and there’s only one way to go out….with a bang.

Formed in 1987, Skullflower emerged from the Broken Flag noise scene but with a sound far more guitar-driven than most of their peers. Their intense sonic assaults have been influential on such bands as Bardo Pond and Godflesh. Band leader Matthew Bower has worked with many of the leading lights of the UK underground such as Vibracathedral Orchestra, Richard Youngs, Ramleh and Colin Potter.

Tor Invocation Band is a nebulous, international unit of seasoned improvisers. As given to the light as to the dark, their exploration of space, sound, noise and sacred spaces. The exact line-up is yet to be completely confirmed but if it is what I hear it is… Well, don’t turn up late. It seems like the perfect way to end it all, with our ears ringing!

Further information – this gig’s part of the Inkfolk December gathering, sprawling from 3rd 6th December. I think that the Tor Invocation Band may have something to do with the group of improvising musicians associated with Tor Press (who run various psychedelic.drone.folk.metal.noise Tor Bookings events in Todmorden Unitarian Church a few miles from Hebden Bridge, but I can’t be sure. Meanwhile, Skullflower have the following comment on the whole affair – “On the Sixth of December we will descend on Hebden Bridge to evoke the Dakshini Force and build altars of Set/Guedhe in the Werewolf Universe with that shadow stuff that their bible calls ‘the Darkness of Aegypt’. Driving over the moors to the Calder Valley, I have seen, the world cloaked in mist below me, and only a few plateaus, like islands, left, as if the world were drowned, cleansed.” With the minimum of tweaking, that’s the band’s Christmas card written too.

Glib jokes apart, publicizing this last gig has made me feel both sad and inspired. I’m increasingly feeling that this kind of concert (not in terms of genre, but in terms of hope and pluck – small and hopeful endeavours) is what I should be plugging more. So – best of luck to the mysterious Was Is Das person as he sets up again in America, and an open and obvious invitation to everyone else: if any of you are reading this and trying to run small, committed gigs of interesting music somewhere, please get in touch.

Tags: Acoustic Ladyland, Alpenglow, Causings, Chris Laurence, Chris Sharkey, Dee Byrne, Deemer, Elori Kramer, Ethan Woods, Frank Ricotti, Gallon Drunk, Harry Strange, Heart Of Saturday Night (event), Hebden Bridge (England), Henry Lowther, Hubert Zemler, Ian East, Inkfolk (event), Inspiral Trio, Jesse R. Berlin, Jesse Rifkin, John Parricelli, Jonny Moped, Liam Byrne, London (England), Loose Tubes, Maciej Rodakowski, Matthew Bower, Merijn Royaards, Moonshake, Noise With Wings, Ray Dickaty, Rokenri, Sandy Gordon, Shiver, Silent Isle, Skullflower, Solar Fire Trio, Spiritualized, Sumerian Kyngs, Survival Skills, The Chris Laurence Quartet, The Real Music Club (event/promoter), Toebow, Tom Montagliano, Tor Invocation Band, Uni Ika Ai, viol music, Warszawa Improvisers Orchestra, Was Is Das? (event/promoter), Wojtek Traczyk

December 2015 – upcoming gigs, London and elsewhere – classical/folk/songwriter fusion with James McVinnie, Mara Carlyle, Liam Byrne and HART at Daylight Music; an experimental boilup at St Johns Hackney with Faust/Nurse with Wound/Cut Hands; plus Tom Slatter’s steampunk prog acoustica in Winchester, and a Gong spinoff in Brighton (with Dave Sturt, Kavus Torabi & Ian East)

1 Dec

There were too many gigs this week to fit into the last post – go back there for details on assorted chamber music, folk, sample pop and the Anawan gigs in New York (one of which spills over into the weekend). For my usual erratic pick of what’s on over this coming weekend, keep reading.

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Daylight Music 209 – James McVinnie, Mara Carlyle, Liam Byrne + HART (Union Chapel, Compton Terrace, Islington, London, N1 2UN, UK,12.00pm) – free (suggested donation £5.00) – information

World famous organist James McVinnie makes the perfect partner for the Union Chapel’s 200-year-old Henry Willis organ. In the spirit of Christmas, James has invited his closest musical chums to share the stage with him: Mara Carlyle, Liam Byrne and HART. Together, they’ll be presenting some of their own music and doing arrangements of hidden gems and forgotten carols.

Organist James McVinnie was Assistant Organist at Westminster Abbey between 2008 and 2011 (playing for both regular and special services as well as directing the Abbey’s world-famous choir) and has held similar positions at St Paul’s and St Albans Cathedral. He appears on numerous recordings of vocal and choral music and, as a continuo player, he has appeared at most European early music festivals. In parallel to this, he is internationally renowned both as a soloist and a collaborator in new music whose boundless approach to music has lead him to collaborations with some of the world’s leading composers and performers. David Lang (winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in music), Martin Creed (winner of the 2001 Turner Prize), Richard Reed Parry (Arcade Fire), Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond), Pee Wee Ellis, Max de Wardener, Mara Carlyle and Bryce Dessner (The National) have all written works for him. He is a member of Bedroom Community, the Icelandic record label and close-knit collective comprising like-minded, yet diverse musicians from different corners of the globe. ‘Cycles’, his debut release of music written for him by Nico Muhly was released on this label in 2013 to widespread critical acclaim. 2016 will see releases of music for organ by J S Bach and Philip Glass.

Originally from Shropshire and now living in London, Mara Carlyle is a singer-songwriter, an arranger and electronic orchestrator, and a player of both ukelele and musical saw. The child of musical parents (with whom she played in assorted folk projects from childhood) and the product of classical training, she’s also the possessor of an eclectic taste as much enthused by A-Ha and Amerie as by Henry Purcell.Initially known as a guest singer on a succession of Plaid albums between 1997 and 2001, she released her first solo album in 2004. Mara’s own work blends her operatic voice with classical structures, torch jazz and electronic flourishes. In addition to her own original material, she specialises in interpretations and adaptations from the classical, baroque, Romantic and modern-classical canon including works by Handel, Purcell (Dido’s Lament), Robert Schumann (whose Ich Grolle Nicht was the basis of her single I Blame You Not), Walford Davies and Jacques Offenbach. Since 2014 she’s been part of the presenting team on Late Junction. Mara is currently in the process of recording her third album.

Liam Byrne divides his time between playing very old and very new music on the viol. With the firm belief that baroque music can be vibrant and expressive on its own terms, Liam’s solo work regularly explores lesser known corners of the 16th and 17th century repertoire. For several years he was a member of Fretwork, and has also toured and recorded with the Dunedin Consort, The Sixteen, Le Concert d’Astrée, i Fagiolini, Concerto Caledonia, and the viol consorts Phantasm and Concordia, among many others. Liam’s interpretative curiosity has also led him to work increasingly with living composers, and he has had new solo works written for him by Edmund Finnis, Nico Muhly, Valgeir Sigurðsson and others. Beyond the realm of classical music, he has worked with a wide variety of artists including Nils Frahm, Matthew Herbert, Martin Parker and The Hidden Cameras. He has played a significant musical role in the creation of several large-scale operatic works: Damon Albarn’s ‘Dr Dee’, Shara Worden’s ‘You Us We All’ , and Valgeir Sigurðsson’s ‘Wide Slumber’ . In 2015 he will undertake a new project with Belgian ensemble Baroque Orchestration X and Icelandic musician Mugison. Liam plays a 7-string bass viol by John Pringle, a 6-string bass by Marc Soubeyran, and a treble viol by Dietrich Kessler, which is graciously on loan from Marc Soubeyran.

Described as possessing “one of the most noteworthy male voices of the last twenty years,” (‘For Folk’s Sake‘), singer/songwriter Daniel Pattison trades under the project name of HART. Featuring elements of dream-pop, folk, avant-garde psychedelic rock, electronica and contemporary classical songcraft, his debut EP ‘Songs Of The Summer’ (featuring string arrangements from Nico Muhly) was released in October this year).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XTHrNpLsPk

Playing in-between on this weeks festive edition will be singer songwriter Harry Strange, a singer-songwriter from London currently working on his first EP.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bh4QI2necOg

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If all of that sounds too genteel, the same evening brings this triple-legend concert of experimental and industrial music heroes (also in a church). Putting this one on is a real point of pride for the organisers, who describe it as “a dream line up for us as we are all very heavily influenced by each of these artists. It will be an amazing show and the last one of 2015 from us.” I’ve just seen that tickets for the concert are selling out even as I post this – so move fast.

Faust/Nurse With Wound/Cut Hands (St John Sessions & Thirtythree Thirtythree @ St John at Hackney Church, Lower Clapton Road, Clapton, London, E5 0PD, UK, Saturday 5th December 2015, 7.30pm) – £18.15 – information – tickets

Roadmaking equipment onstage, self-invented instruments, performers who refuse to conform even to standard roles of getting onstage and playing…if any or all of this sounds familiar (or even the kind of thing that’s mentioned in ‘Misfit City’ every other week) it’s because Faust set the blueprints at the start of the 1970s, or at least brought them into the world of popular music. An inspiration for innumerable questioning music-makers for over forty years, the band (or, more accurately, the collective event which calls itself Faust) have maintained the same sense of spontaneity, constructive pranking, rude assertion and open-ended possibilities throughout an erratic and frequently interrupted existence.

Initially assembled and pitched (by record producer/journalist-philosopher Uwe Nettelbeck) as a counter-cultural boy band for the lucrative but conservative German record market in 1970 – as if they were a Hamburg take on The Monkees – Faust showed their true avant-garde colours immediately and deliberately. Only a rock band in the very loosest sense of the word (perhaps only their electric instrumentation, amplification, time of emergence and love of rough immediacy really plugs them into the genre), their music has combined free improvisation, garage-band jamming, a pre-punk inspiration-over-technique aesthetic and a distinctly Dada perspective. Stories about perverse, inspired experimentation and behaviour in the face of an increasingly bewildered and irritated music industry have passed into legend: rebellions which seem, for once, to have been essential and genuinely inseparable from the band’s music creation (even from their very existence). Today’s Faust may be mining a tradition rather than breaking new ground, but even as the original members pass through their sixties and into their seventies they retain their commitment to the methodology they unearthed.

To be honest with you, I’ve got only the faintest idea about which of the parallel current incarnations of Faust (each featuring various different original members) is playing in London this coming week, although the evidence is pointing towards a grouping of Zappi W. Diermaier/Jean Herve Péron/Maxime Manac’h/Uwe Bastiansen). The members themselves seem particularly unconcerned: Péron has never much concerned himself with rules and (in an eminently readable interview with ‘The Quietus’) founding organist/noise-marshaller Hans Joachim Irmler from the other main faction has confessed “our idea was that all six original members could be Faust but there should never be two Fausts at the same time. It was an agreement but the version of Faust based around Diermaier, Péron and [Amaury] Cambuzat broke the rules, in a way. It took a little while for me to get used to it but now I think… ‘Why not?!'” If they don’t mind, maybe we shouldn’t either. Increasingly, Faust is of more an idea than a band, per se – or perhaps it’s best to call them a travelling opportunity, an open mind; a self-contained performance space.

For three decades and over fifty releases, sonic collage project and “purveyor of sinister whim to the wretched” Nurse With Wound (predominantly the work of Steven Stapleton) has been drawing directly on nearly every musical genre imaginable, mixing them up via tape loops, samples and whichever methods work to illustrate Stapleton’s curiosity and sense of humour, itself influenced by surrealism, Dada and absurdism (which explains why John Cage, filched easy-listening and snatches of kosmiche could be rubbing shoulders on any given NWW track). The project’s music is also informed by Stapleton’s keen visual and fine-art sensibilities, reflecting his other work as painter and sculptor.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqPPMtG6grw

Originally the key figure in transgressive 1980s power electronics band Whitehouse, William Bennett has been exploring “Afro-noise” under the Cut Hands moniker since 2008. The project is heavily inspired by William’s fascination with Haitian vaudou, deploying Central African percussion in radical new ways and generating an intense sound unrivalled in its physical and emotional intensity. In a recent interview with ‘Self Titled‘, William has commented “with Cut Hands, one of the original intents was to try and achieve the same kinds of emotional transformation through polyrhythmic percussion where once words were used… I confess there is a bit of a crazy, beardy New Age composer trying desperately to break free.”

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If you’re in Winchester that night, rather than in London, and you fancy a bit of budget-imaginarium fun, I can point you towards this…

Tom Slatter (Heart Of Saturday Night @ The Art Café, 2 De Lunn Buildings, Jewry Street, Winchester, Hampshire, SO23 8SA, UK, Saturday 5th December 2015, 7.30pm) – free (donations encouraged) – information

This is Tom’s last gig of the year (although he’s got a few lined up for both London and Brighton in early 2016) and it’s free entry, though a hat might be passed around at some point for donations – possibly the topper which Tom is famous for wearing while he delivers his Victoriana prog songs.

I might as well requote my quick description of Tom from a few months ago, since he’s cheerfully seized on at least part of it for himself – “Tom describes his work as “the sort of music you’d get if Genesis started writing songs with Nick Cave after watching too much ‘Doctor Who'”, while one of his occasional collaborators, Jordan Brown of airy London prog-poppers The Rube Goldberg Machine, calls him “a sci-fi storyteller with a penchant for odd time signatures and soundscapes.” Both descriptions ring true but fail to pinpoint the cheerfully pulpy weird-fiction exuberance of Tom’s work as a one-man band. He’s a man not just happily out of his time, but making a virtue of it – a latter-day Victorian street-theatre barker with a guitar promising tales of mystery, imagination, ‘orrible murders and bloody great waving tentacles.”

For a second opinion, try this from ‘The Progressive Aspect‘ – “Tom is an engaging singer with a resonant voice and an unorthodox songwriter whose songs push the boundaries of what can be expected from the solo acoustic guitar troubadour, straying into the darkest of corners. There is a strange mind at work here but one that makes for a compelling and fascinating listen.”

Recorded and live tasters below…

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Meanwhile, over in Brighton, there’s something for the psychedelic crew:

Inspiral Trio + The Fibroid Nebulae (The Real Music Club @ The Prince Albert, 48 Trafalgar Street, BN1 4ED Brighton, England, Saturday 5^th December 2015, 8.00pm) – £8.80-£11.00 – information – tickets

The Real Music Club is delighted to present an intimate night of highly eclectic music.

Within Inspiral Trio, three current members of Gong explore their harmonious musical synergy. Dave Sturt (bass guitarist and composer) has worked with Gong, Bill Nelson, Steve Hillage, Jade Warrior and Cipher. His solo album ‘Dreams & Absurdities’ will be released on Esoteric Antenna on October 30th. Ian East (sax/woodwinds player and composer) has worked in multiple genres, from Gong to Balkanatics. Ian is currently producing a solo album to be released in 2016. Kavus Torabi (guitarist, singer and composer) has worked with Cardiacs, Gong, Knifeworld, Guapo and Mediavel Baebes – much of his work can be found on his own label, Believers Roast. Solo sets from each man (with Kavus promising some acoustic renditions of tunes from the forthcoming Knifeworld album in his one) will be followed by an improvised set from all three players together. Come and enjoy a tasteful melange of solo and triadic creations from these unique musicians.

The Fibroid Nebulae was formed by Damned/Sumerian Kyngs keyboardist Monty Oxymoron after opening the Real Music Club’s ‘Drones4Daevid’ gig in February 2015. The band consists of Monty (keyboards and vocals), Francesca Burrow (vocals, sax, clarinet and keyboards), Dave Berk (of Jonny Moped) on drums and vocals, Andy Power (Sumerian Kyngs) on bass and the Real Music Club’s own Gregg McKella (Paradise 9/Glissando Guitar Orchestra/Peyote Guru/Gregg & Kev) on synthy bits, vocals, guitar and glissando guitar. The Fibroid Nebulae play offbeat tracks and fuse their own styles and quirks with some lo-fi groove psychedelia, ambient sounds and Krautrock – taking in Soft Machine, Gong, Neu! and Pink Floyd along the way!

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And there’s more shortly…

Tags: Acoustic Ladyland, Alice Tolan-Mee, Alpenglow, Andrew Wells Ryder, Arctic Circle (promoter), Brighton (England), Causings, chamber ensemble, Cut Hands, Dave Sturt, Daylight Music (event), Dee Byrne, Elori Kramer, Ethan Woods, Faust, Gong, Harry Strange, Hart (Daniel Pattison), Heart Of Saturday Night (event), Hubert Zemler, Ian East, Inspiral Trio, James McVinnie, Jesse R. Berlin, Jesse Rifkin, Jonny Moped, Judith Shimer, Kavus Torabi, Liam Byrne, London (England), Maia Friedman, Mara Carlyle, Martin France, Maudlin Maladies, Monty Oxymoron, Moonshake, multi-instrumentalists, Nurse With Wound, Ray Dickaty, Rokenri, Sandy Gordon, Sarah Tolan-Mee, Shiver, Silent Isle, St John Sessions (event), Sumerian Kyngs, Survival Skills, The Damned, The Fibroid Nebulae, The Real Music Club (event/promoter), The Sneaky Mister, Toebow, Tom Montagliano, Tom Slatter, Trevor Wilson, TrioVD, True Lucy), Uni Ika Ai, viol music, Was Is Das? (event/promoter), Whitehouse, William Bennett, Winchester

December 2015 – upcoming gigs – the Ghosts At Our Shoulders folk meet in London (with Martin Carthy, Alasdair Roberts, Chris Wood, Kirsty Potts, The Devil’s Interval and Stick in the Wheel); plus Anawan’s Brooklyn chamber pop double-night and New York farewell.

29 Nov

After yesterday’s classical/post-classical/sample-pop frenzy, let’s move on to a preview of some purer folk music…

‘Ghosts At Our Shoulders – The Tradition Unfolds’ featuring Chris Wood + Alasdair Roberts + Kirsty Potts + Stick in the Wheel + Martin Carthy + The Devil’s Interval (Kings Place, 90 York Way, Kings Cross, London, N1 9AG, UK, Thursday 3rd to Saturday 5th December 2015, various times) – various prices (£9.50-£22.50) – information & tickets

“The men have withdrawn and left me alone in a roomful of relics / But they gave me the song, so I carry the song that all men inherit.” – Alasdair Roberts

A series of songwriters and song interpreters inspired by tradition. The rich folk song tradition in these isles is a never-ending well of ideas and sensibilities as well as source material. The traditional canon is often attributed to ‘Anon.’ – a ghost perched on the shoulders of contemporary performers, who carry tradition forward and forge their own paths inspired by that legacy. This series of concerts features some of the most thoughtful and creative interpreters of song, whose unifying focus is the telling of the song. Voices close to the source, acting as a link from the then to the now.

With his work sometimes compared to that of Richard Thompson (though he cites his major influence as ‘Anon.’), Chris Wood is an uncompromising singer, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter whose music reveals his love for the un-official history of the English-speaking peoples, weaving his own contemporary parables into the tradition. His lateral take on the modern world follows an ideological thread from the likes of John Clare and William Blake, and as well as humble hymns and wry observations of the small things in life, his songs have included Hollow Point (a chilling ballad of the shooting of Jean Charles Menezez).

The twenty-year, eleven-album career of Scottish singer-songwriter and guitarist Alasdair Roberts has taken him from the early alt.folk of his Appendix Out project via mingled traditional and self-penned work to his latest, self-titled solo recording, featuring a span of Glaswegian folk talent. He performs songs which are “elliptical and gnomic, direct and personal, romantic and tender” and which have moved from an early economical style (partially inspired by the sparse aesthetic of indie rock) to the complex, esoteric and spiritual work of more recent albums. An enthusiastic and generous collaborator, he’ll be sharing the stage with Kirsty Potts, a singer of traditional Scottish folk for thirty years. Having recorded six albums with the famous folk duo of Alison McMorland (Kirsty’s mother) and Geordie McIntrye, she’s recently released her own long-delayed debut solo album ‘The Seeds of Life’.

Raw and uncompromising London folk quintet Stick in the Wheel record to the sound of sirens and birdsong in their long-rented East End front rooms. Brought up in the thriving culture of working class London and cutting their teeth in its diverse musical landscape, they now bring those influences and attitudes to their traditional music. Across three EPs, multiple festivals and award nominations and the release of their debut album in September this year, their music is as authentic as it comes, capturing a culture that is rapidly disappearing, and is at times brutally honest and grabbing.

Over five decades of a varied career (with Waterson Carthy, Steeleye Span, solo and beyond), Martin Carthy has been one of folk music’s greatest innovators, one of its best loved, most enthusiastic and, at times, most quietly controversial of figures. He’s a ballad singer, a ground-breaking acoustic and electric-guitarist and an authoritative interpreter of newly composed material; always preferring to follow an insatiable musical curiosity rather than cash in on his unrivalled position.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJhRuYHTkMk

Playing in support of Martin are some of his regular tourmates: recently-reunited vocal group The Devil’s Interval (the teaming of singers Jim Causley, Emily Portman and Lauren McCormick, each of them solo artists in their own right). The group are well-loved for their spell-binding harmonies and passion for captivating story-telling through the medium of traditional song: their three distinctive voices blend beautifully, bringing new life to some of the old jewels of the folk-song canon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZED6MkauZe8

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Here’s something for readers in New York who like their art pop. Trevor Wilson of Anawan has been in touch with a welcoming Christmas message as cute, rambling, perky and openhearted as his band is. See below.

Anawan – ‘Having Fun’ show (Briscoe Music Space, 3 Sackett Street, Red Hook, Brooklyn, New York, New York State, USA, Friday 4^th and Saturday 5^th December 2015, 8.00pm) – $5.00-$15.00 (pay-what-you-want) – information and tickets

“We are doing a huge show on two nights, December 4th and 5th, at our music space in Red Hook, Brooklyn! At the intersection of danger and confidence comes, perhaps, one of the most important reasons for being alive. Sometimes ‘having fun’ is outwardly bold and courageous- motosports – skydiving. Sometimes just going out on a limb and making a joke is the boldest thing you can do in a day- just cracking a smile can take years for some! Love is more bold than any physical challenge- hearts are huge, sometimes mountains, with hiking trails to be lost in, make plans, need more, need less- as my friend Ethan Woods says, “love takes time”. But also, man, love is the funnest thing of all… what’s around the corner? You don’t know!

“The “sound” of fun is loose and electric, sometimes passionate, sometimes flippant. The songs for this very special show include new songs inspired by fun – but don’t expect them to all sound like it… that would be too easy, and what’s the fun in that? In addition to working with my dear historical Anawan members, we’re working with some new folks and doing things in a new way, and that in and of itself is the most palpably fun element of this whole production. It’s going to be a huge ten-piece ensemble playing songs old and new; a rhythm section, string trio, electronics, and the usual Anawan gang. We’ll round the show off with some Anawan standbys as well as a supremely fun song from wa-a-ay back when. I really hope to see you there! I leave NYC at the end of the year to live elsewhere! This is it, guys! Let’s do it! I’m not gonna say it again!

“Jesse Rifkin (a.ka. Jesse R. Berlin) will play electric guitar (one of my oldest and bestest musical pals – we met each other on Myspace in 2005 – such a beautiful guitar player). Tom Montagliano (of Maudlin Maladies) will provide the soundtrack to an experimental universe that will begin the night! Also involved – singing and more by Maia Friedman (Uni Ika Ai, Toebow), Alice Tolan-Mee (True Lucy) and Ethan Woods (Rokenri), percussion by Sandy Gordon (Silent Isle, Causings), violin by Elori Kramer (Alpenglow), keyboard and more by Judith Shimer (The Sneaky Mister), violin by Sarah Tolan-Mee (who is awesome) and elemental forces by Andrew Wells Ryder (True Lucy).

“Tickets are donation based- we won’t turn anyone away- but this will go towards paying the performers and keeping the space warm. Make sure to come by 8.00pm so you do not miss anything. This could make a huge difference in your life! Or it may go on the same as always! See you there!”

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More shortly, as we take on the weekend…

Tags: Alasdair Roberts, Chris Wood, Deco Ensemble, Emily Portman, Ethan Woods, Ghosts At Our Shoulders (event), Jesse Bescoby, Jim Causley, Kirsty Potts, Lauren McCormick, London (England), Luigi Boccherini, Martin Carthy, New York City (USA), Robert Fokkens, Rockfeedback Concerts (event/promoter), Rokenri, Stick In The Wheel, The Devil’s Interval, Tpongle, William Kunhardt, Zach Walker

December 2015 – upcoming gigs, London and elsewhere – another Forge flurry (Boccherini and Schubert quintets with Arensky Chamber Orchestra, sample pop from Cosmo Sheldrake, tango nuevo from The Deco Ensemble); and Project Instrumental’s post-classical Pärt/Fokkens passacaglia at Hackney Attic.

28 Nov

Straight into December, then (I’m ignoring the last day of November – it’s done me no favours this year) and before the splurge of upcoming musical Christmas parties, here are some assorted one-off gigs in London. Classical, post-classical and tango nuevo chamber concerts; and a man battering experimental songs out of a piece of beef. That’ll do. Most of these are at the Forge in Camden Town, with one Hackney exception.

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The Arensky Chamber Orchestra presents ‘Surround Sound II’ (The Forge, 3-7 Delancey Street, Camden Town, London, NW1 7NL, UK, Tuesday 1^st December 2015, 8.00pm) – £12.00 – information & tickets

Since its debut in 2009, The Arensky Chamber Orchestra has established itself as one of London’s most exciting young ensembles, dedicated to revitalising the concert experience with theatrical and brilliant productions of classical music. Led by international prize-winning conductor William Kunhardt, the orchestra’s performances fuse electric performance with lighting design, ‘live’ programme notes delivered from the stage and unusual venue use. The ACO also regularly combine their performances with specially created food and drink menus and commissioned work from other artists, including video DJs, artists, actors and dancers. This will be the Forge’s second immersive ‘in the round’ performance from the Arensky Chamber Orchestra’s brilliant principal players; and on the menu are performances of two of the great string quintets.

Luigi Boccherini’s String Quintet in E major is one of the most famous quintets in the classical repertoire. The timeless melody of its third movement, ‘The Celebrated Minuet’, is woven into popular culture (appearing in ‘The Blues Brothers’ and ‘This is Spinal Tap’ as well as many other contexts). Tonight’s performance is in the original configuration (a conventional string quartet of two violins, viola and cello, plus a second cello as the fifth instrument) but over the years the piece has been rescored for a startling breadth of instruments including organ, mandolin duo, accordion and saxophone.

Franz Schubert’s String Quintet in C was the composer’s last instrumental work (composed during the final weeks of his life) and possibly his greatest accomplishment. It’s most iconic movement is the Adagio – a piece of such sublime tranquility that time seems to stand still throughout. Yet every other movement lives up to this extraordinary standard as well – from the expanse of the opening Allegro to the dazzling scherzo, it is a work of endless invention, radiant and rich sound-worlds and infinite varieties of texture and colour.

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The Deco Ensemble (The Forge, 3-7 Delancey Street, Camden Town, London, NW1 7NL, UK, Wednesday 2nd December 2015, 7.30pm) – £10.00 – information & tickets here and here

Established in 2013, The Deco Ensemble performs an eclectic and colourful combination of classical masterpieces, little-known gems and new avant-garde works. Rich in poignant harmonies, bold rhythms and elaborate ornamentations, their exuberant and glamorous repertoire includes works by Gustavo Beytelmann, Yannis Constantinidis, Frédéric Devreese, Ramiro Gallo, Graham Lynch, Astor Piazzolla, Sergei Prokofiev, Maurice Ravel and Anibal Troilo. A quintet of Sabina Rakcheyeva (violin), Bartosz Glowacki (accordion), Ricardo Gosalbo (piano), Rob Luft (electric guitar) and Elena Marigómez (double bass), they also collaborate with many of the world’s most promising and intriguing composers and performers, and write their own arrangements.

The ensemble’s adventurous approach and spirit of fearless exploration has its origins in the music of Piazzolla, re-imagining the Tango Nuevo Quintet which the composer formed during the 1960s in order to lay down the foundations of modern tango writing and to combine classical, jazz and traditional influences. Already the veterans of extensive European touring, Deco Ensemble have performed sellout concerts across Britain and across the breadth of Europe from west to east. Their critically-acclaimed debut album ‘Encuentro’ was released in July 2015.

Programme:

Ramiro Gallo – El último kurdo
Gustavo Beytelmann – Travesía
Astor Piazzolla – Muerte del ángel
Astor Piazzolla – Milonga del ángel
Astor Piazzolla – Tango del diablo
Frédéric Devreese – Passage à 5
Frédéric Devreese – Dream & Tango
Gustavo Beytelmann – Encuentro
Astor Piazzolla – Triunfal
Astor Piazzolla – Oblivion
Ramiro Gallo – Las malenas

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Cosmo Sheldrake (Rockfeedback Concerts @ The Forge, 3-7 Delancey Street, Camden Town, London, NW1 7NL, UK, Thursday 3rd December 2015, 7.30pm) – £11.00 – information & tickets

A multi-instrumentalist, an improvising sampler/looper and the crafter of sweet unorthodox earworms, Cosmo Sheldrake has been described as “a relentlessly experimental artist taking organic samples from the world and turning them into dreamy songs.” Certainly his best-known single, ‘Rich’, is a case in point. Its tripping, sunny melodies – apparently moulded from stray chunks of both English folk and contemporary R&B – bob over a rhythm made by tearing meat from a cow carcass.

This kind of experimentation and juxtaposition (the cute tunes and the occasionally slightly-sinister underpinning; the initiation of whimsical but multi-layered musical questions; the rough-and-ready play across a huge musical vocabulary) seems to lie at the heart of what Cosmo does. He’s certainly steeped in music – aside from the wide-spanning instrumentalism (beginning with early days on piano at age four, building upwards and outwards and somehow never stopping), he’s been a founder member of nine-piece polygenre band Gentle Mystics since 2007, and also runs assorted instrumental and beatboxing workshops, plus a choir, in his Brighton hometown. He’s also known for performances in unusual locations including boats, farmyards, laundrettes and public swimming pools; and takes inspiration from the world around him with unfiltered, undifferentiated spontaneity; being as likely to turn out a song about pelicans as he is one about humans.

This week’s show promises to be mostly improvised, intimate and has a pretty small number of tickets, so move fast if you’re interested.

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Project Instrumental + Tpongle + Zach Walker + DJ Jesse Bescoby present ‘Built On Bass’ (Hackney Attic, 2170 Mare Street, Hackney, London, E8 1HE, UK, Friday 4th December 2015, 7:30pm) – £6.00 – information here and here – tickets

Project Instrumental bring thrilling performances to unbounded audiences. Bold, imaginative and boundary defying, this virtuosic ensemble strips back the peripherals with their straightforward contemporary approach to create not just concerts, but experiences. For ‘Built On Bass’, they bring together a composer, a sound artist and a visual artist to create a multi-sensory musical environment using sound, electronics and cymatics. Taking a four-hundred year-old form defined by variations against a bass motif, they connect a passacaglia-inspired programme of music written within the last fifty years and create a twenty-first century experience, responding to the written repertoire through live collaborations that explore the physical sensation of sound and auditory-visual interactions.

The world premiere of a commission from composer Robert Fokkens features in an irresistible confluence of timelessness, change, cycles and variance alongside Arvo Pärt’s mesmeric Passacaglia in its version for 2 violins and Dmitri Shostakovich’s powerful Chamber Symphony op.118a. Inspired by and sampling the programmed repertoire, sound artist, producer and DJ Tpongle creates a ‘passacaglia for the present’, weaving a bass thread through the night, culminating in a live electronic set. Zack Walker‘s striking projections will extend the sound experience in space using his live liquid cymatics sculpture, original film content and analog feedback projections to respond to the live musical performance. Ace Hotel Guest DJ Jesse Bescoby rounds the night off with a set exploring the gap between contemporary classical and experimental, independent music. All can be taken with locally produced craft beers and food available to order throughout the evening.

Programme:

Arvo Pärt – Passacaglia
Robert Fokkens – New Commission World Premiere
Dmitri Shostakovich – Chamber Symphony op.118a
Tpongle – Live electronic set
Zach Walker – Live cymatics sculpture

For a glimpse of Zach’s cymatic sculpture work, see below.

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Coming up in the next post – Brooklyn art-pop, and a small but significant London folk festival; Over the coming weekend – a man in a top hat sings songs of Victorian-Edwardian never-weres, wild noise in Hackney and Yorkshire, and a couple of spells of jazz… but more on that later.

Tags: Anndreyah Vargas, Arvo Pärt, Astor Piazzolla, Bartosz Glowacki, chamber ensemble, Cosmo Sheldrake, Deco Ensemble, Dmitri Shostakovich, Elena Marigómez, Franz Schubert, Frédéric Devreese, Gentle Mystics, Gustavo Beytelmann, Jesse Bescoby, London (England), Luigi Boccherini, multi-instrumentalists, Project Instrumental, Ramiro Gallo, Ricardo Gosalbo, Rob Luft, Robert Fokkens, Rockfeedback Concerts (event/promoter), Rokenri, Sabina Rakcheyeva, The Arensky Chamber Orchestra, Tpongle, William Kunhardt, Zach Walker

November 2015 – upcoming gigs – Olga Stezhko takes her Lucid Dream piano concert to the Wigmore & Bridgewater Halls; Haiku Salut, Camden Voices and Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch bring post-folk, soundtrack classical and community chorale to Daylight Music

7 Nov

Increasingly a ‘Misfit City’ regular, the Belarusian classical pianist Olga Stezhko (whose superb technique is equalled by her audacious, densely intellectual approach to programming her repertoire) chalks up two landmark concerts at two British classical music institutions this week as she makes her debut at both the Wigmore Hall and the Bridgewater Hall. To each venue, Olga is bringing her ‘Lucid Dreams’ programme – a selection of pieces exploring ideas of childhood and children’s music.

Olga comments “this programme is deeply personal to me. It is a conscious attempt to rediscover those things that were central to the development of my musical identity. Inevitably this can appear to be a sort of light musical psychoanalysis, but as I recall my childhood I remember vividly being surrounded by magic, with all its signs and symbols, which greatly affected how I felt towards the world around me at the time. To some extent, I have never lost touch with my younger self thanks to my extensive teaching work with children. Their distinctive personalities are an endless source for artistic inspiration; I wish therefore to dedicate my concert to those boys and girls.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxvP57t7Ojg

“The narrative of the programme reflects the development of our perception of reality during different stages of life. It moves from the magical realism of a child’s worldview in the first half (Toys & Dances) to the broader metaphysical questions we all face at some point in life in the second part (Images & Visions).”

Olga Stezhko: ‘Lucid Dreams’ piano recital (Kirckman Concert Society @ Wigmore Hall, 36 Wigmore Street, London, W1U 2BP, UK, Tuesday 10th November 2015, 7:30pm) – information & tickets

Programme:

Part One: Toys & Dances

Sergei Prokofiev – Old Grandmother’s Tales Op. 31
Sofia Gubaidulina – Musical Toys
Dmitri Shostakovich – Three Fantastic Dances Op. 5
Claude Debussy – Suite Bergamasque: Menuet
Lev Abeliovich – Tarantella
Aleksandr Skriabin – Deux Danses Op. 73

Part Two: Images & Visions

Claude Debussy – Images, Series 1
Aleksandr Skriabin – Cinq préludes Op. 74
Claude Debussy – Images, Series 2
Aleksandr Skriabin – Vers la flamme, poème Op. 72

Olga Stezhko (The Manchester Mid-day Concerts Society @ Bridgewater Hall, Lower Mosley Street, Manchester, M2 3WS, UK, Thursday 12th November 2015, 1:10pm) – £7.00-£11.50 – information – tickets

Programme:

Sergei Prokofiev – Old Grandmother’s Tales Op. 31
Sofia Gubaidulina – Musical Toys
Claude Debussy – Images, Series 1
Aleksandr Skriabin – Vers la flamme, poème Op. 72

(Note that the Manchester concert features a much shorter version of the ‘Lucid Dreams’ programme.)

Throughout the programme, Olga explores the further deeper brought up in her music choices, investigating Debussy’s complex psyche and relationship with his daughter, the cognitive differences between children and adults (including the former’s belief, often shared with adult musicians, that they shape the world by thought and action), her own childhood impulses as a pre-teen musician, and the roles of parent figures in successive generations of composers. She also challenges the subordinate role that children’s music seems forced to play, arguing “what is the definition of children’s music anyway? I believe when these works emerge as an innermost urge from a mature master, it epitomizes their most sincere and unpretentious artistic output.

“Such music as Gubaidulina’s Musical Toys (part of my future recording project ‘Toys & Tales’) or, for example, Debussy’s Children’s Corner (to be included into my next all-Debussy album) is as rich with imagery, colour, trepidation, emotion and symbolism as any symphonic masterpiece. Moreover, it is perhaps the most accurate musical description of any composer and their inner worlds. Both performers and listeners can relate to this kind of music precisely because there is something universal about it as we all were children once, authentic and genuine in our relationship with the world.”

Olga’s full thoughts behind ‘Lucid Dreams’ (from which the above notes and quotes are taken) can be found here, and are well worth reading.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHQy9F_U21U

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On the Saturday there’s another Daylight Music – a typically involved crossover gig of post-rock, soundtrack classical and communal musical spirit. Details and promo blurb below…

Daylight Music 206 – Haiku Salut + Camden Voices & Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch (Union Chapel, Compton Terrace, Islington, London, N1 2UN, UK, Saturday 14^th November 2015, 12.00pm–2.00pm) – free (£3.50 donation suggested) – information

The wonderful Haiku Salut are best described as an instrumental dream-pop-post-folk-neo-everything trio from the Derbyshire Dales, and their talent for combining joyous folk, intricate electronica and spellbinding neo-classical has seen them compared to everyone from Beirut and múm to Sigur Ros and Aphex Twin. Their second album ‘Etch And Etch Deep’ has received acclaim from ‘Uncut’ (who called it “both warmly familiar and completely, fearlessly new”) and ‘Popmatters’ (“vividly coloured sonic canvas”), while ‘The Line Of Best Fit’ described the opening track and recent single, Bleak And Beautiful (All Things), as “uniquely stunning… isn’t afraid to tear up the rulebook and begin fresh.”

Formed in 2013, Camden Voices is a choir of thirty passionate singers, instrumentalists and teachers, as well as those working outside of the music world. Rehearsing weekly in the heart of Camden Town, they aim for high musical standards whilst keeping a friendly and fun sense of community at our heart. With groove and harmony as their foundation, they develop new approaches to ensemble singing; using new arranging talent, they dust off neglected gems from the worlds of jazz, soul, gospel, and a cappella with a vibrant contemporary twist.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=os-LkECwlAA

You can also hear the elegant, beautiful music of Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch, an award-winning French pianist/composer currently living in London. Spanning film score, bespoke composition and art installations, her work is connected by both its high quality and evocative, meticulous craft – a common sensibility of elegant, instinctual composition. In 2015, she created a sound-walk for London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, and her debut album ‘Like Water Through The Sand’ is set for a November release on FatCat’s post-classical imprint 130701.

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If ‘ve got a moment over the next few days, I’ll post up something on the London Jazz Festival and on The End – failing that, more November gig news to follow.

Tags: Aleksandr Scriabin, Arctic Circle (promoter), Camden Voices, Claude Debussy, Daylight Music (event), Dmitri Shostakovich, Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch, Haiku Salut, Kirckman Concert Society (event), Lev Abeliovich, listening to women, London Jazz Festival (event), Manchester (England), Olga Stezhko, Robert Schumann, Sergei Prokofiev, Sofia Gubaidulina, The Manchester Mid-day Concerts Society (event)

November 2015 – upcoming gigs – Julia Holter’s experimental pop tours the UK; chamber music at the Forge (Ensemble Perpetuo’s galactic tour, CHROMA’s British Music Collection show with Martin Scheuregger & David Gorton premieres)

6 Nov

Since when did November become so generous? There’s plenty to see and hear this coming week, including the continuing Jenny Hval/Briana Marela tour (with Bristol and London dates), Laura Moody following up recent shows in Cardiff and Sheffield with a house concert in Edinburgh on the 12^th (email her directly in case tickets are still available) and, in London, the opening dates of the London Jazz Festival and the End Festival. Plus the following:

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With Briana Marela, Jenny Hval and Holly Herndon all touring or playing in Britain this month – and with Joanna Newsom having already sold out her lone British date at the Eventim Apollo on Monday – it’s a good month for seeing art-pop with a distinctly female hue or ethos (although to be honest there’s always a wealth of such things around, if you look hard enough and dip under the radar).

To the above, add Julia Holter, who’s working a short British tour over the course of the week. It’s an opportunity to see how rapidly Julia’s exploratory, highly literary work has evolved and altered over a decade of recording time: from the Debussy-an glistenings of 2006’s ‘Eating the Stars’ to the oblique sonic and textual puzzles of 2011’s ‘Tragedy’ (mixing transfigured Greek drama, disorientating found sound and transparent barely-there parings of songcraft) and the impressionistic jazz-novel assemblage of ‘Loud City Song’ in 2013 (which drew on Collette, MGM musicals and belle-epoque).

Julia’s newest album, this year’s ‘Have You in My Wilderness’, is something of a step into the known. Her once-baffling minimal musical stylings – which, on ‘Tragedy’ in particular, hung precariously on the edge of what might be described as “song” – have by now transformed themselves into what sounds like dreamy, distracted takes on late-‘60s/early-‘70s Brill Building songwriter pop. That said, the album’s meditations on solitude and companionship (real, imagined, rejected or deconstructed) retain Julia’s distinctive tone of lateral thinking and musing, and if the songs seem more conservative on the outside they soon reveal themselves as different, more fluid creations, if Carole King had been enticed into French surrealism (note the nods to Dali, Bunuel, Germaine Dulac and Gérard de Nerval in the video for ‘The Sea Calls Me Home’, above). It’s also clear that if ‘Have You In My Wilderness’ does invite a broader audience by way of its more comfortable textures, it’s not a sell-out: keeping firmly in touch with her earlier impulses and schemas, Julia has included a re-recording of Betsy On The Roof (a pre-‘Tragedy’ song best known from her rare 2010 live tapes).

Julia Holter:

Komedia, 44-47 Gardner St, Brighton, East Sussex BN1 1UN Monday 9th November 2015) – information – tickets
The Lantern @ Colston Hall, Colston Street, Bristol BS1 5AR, UK, Tuesday 10th November 2015, 7.30pm) – £13.98 – information – tickets
Glee Club Birmingham, The Arcadian, 70 Hurst Street, Birmingham B5 4TD, UK, Wednesday 11th November 2015, 7:00pm) – £16.50 – information – tickets
Islington Assembly Hall, Upper St, London N1 2UD, UK, Thursday 12th November 2015, 7:00pm) – £22.00 – information – tickets
The Hug & Pint, 171 Great Western Road, Glasgow, G4 9AW, UK, Friday 13th November 2015, 8.00pm) – £15.00 – information – tickets
Brudenell Social Club, 17 Brudenell Road, Leeds, LS6 1HA, UK, Saturday 14th November 2015, 1.00pm) -£20.00 – information & tickets

Note that the Leeds gig at the Brudenell is part of their High & Lonesome Festival in which Julia will be sharing a stage with Josh T. Pearson, Neil Halstead and many others.

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There are two chamber music concerts coming up at The Forge in London:

Ensemble Perpetuo presents: Heavenly Sights (The Forge, 3-7 Delancey Street, Camden Town, London, NW1 7NL, UK, Monday 9th November 2015, 7.30pm) – £10.00 to £12.00 – information & tickets – more information

Founded in 2013 by English oboist James Turnbull, Ensemble Perpetuo is a dynamic and versatile collective of musicians who perform a wide variety of traditional and contemporary chamber music in new settings; bringing it to new audiences through exciting collaborations and innovative repertoire choices; and seeking new pathways in which to experiment and augment the concert experience through multi-art form collaborations. Perpetuo has embarked on a number of exciting mini-residences throughout the UK and is taking music to new venues including concerts in theatres, museums, cafes, found spaces and other unexpected locations.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXt62JkibUI

Join Perpetuo for the final event in their groundbreaking series of chamber music concerts for 2015 – an evening of incredible music that takes you on a journey to the furthest reaches of the galaxy. ‘Heavenly Sights’ is an evening of music inspired by space, flight and motion. Featuring music from Beethoven and Piazzolla to Weir and Muhly, experience over two hundred years of chamber music in one evening.

Programme:

Robert Schumann – Mondnacht (arr. Colin Matthews)
George Benjamin – Flight
Nico Muhly – Motion
Judith Weir – Airs From Another Planet
Anthony Powers – In Sunlight
Charlotte Bray – Trail Of Light
Astor Piazzolla – Milonga del Angel
Ludwig van Beethoven – Moonlight Sonata
Cheryl Frances-Hoad – My Fleeting Angel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed-m9-f4ejE

CHROMA: Gorton, Scheuregger and British Music (The Forge, 3-7 Delancey Street, Camden Town, London, NW1 7NL, UK,Wednesday 11th November 2015, 7.30pm) – £10.00-£12.00 – information & tickets – more information

CHROMA ensemble

Founded in 1997, the critically acclaimed CHROMA is an acclaimed, London-based, flexible chamber ensemble dedicated both to new music and to revisiting classic repertoire in fresh and exciting contexts; mentoring the next generation of composers, and involving audiences in compelling, inspirational experiences.

Closely associated with the performance of contemporary music the ensemble has forged close links with many prominent British composers through many commissioned premières and collaborations (including work with Luke Bedford, Michael Nyman, David Bruce, Tarik O’Regan, Michael Zev Gordon, Raymond Yiu, Claudia Molitor, Julian Grant, Arlene Sierra, and Marcus Barcham-Stevens) .

CHROMA has a lively strand of intimate chamber concerts combining music and storytelling, which has resulted both in its first own-label album ‘Folk Tales’ and in various opera stagings in association with the opera festival Tête à Tête, the Linbury Studio Theatre and others. The ensemble’s mentoring programme includes ongoing work with student composers at the Royal Academy of Music, Royal Holloway University of London and Oxford University.

This concert (featuring Roderick Chadwick on piano) is the culmination of composer Martin Scheuregger’s residency at the British Music Collection. Martin’s new work, ‘Harlequin’, and ‘Burgh Castle’ by David Gorton form the centre of the programme. Harlequin engages with and reflects on the themes and ideas Martin has been exploring through the music of The Collection, whilst ‘Burgh Castle’ – a CHROMA aural-visual commission for piano and ensemble – is inspired by the landscape of the East Anglian Fens. Pieces from the BMC – from both lesser-known and established composers – place these new works in the context of Martin’s residency and the music with which he has surrounded himself for the last 18 months.

Programme:

Philip Cashian – Horn Trio
Helen Grime – Snow and Snow
Martin Scheuregger – Harlequin (world premiere)
David Gorton – Burgh Castle (world premiere)
Anthony Powers – In Sunlight
Sadie Harrison – The Bride’s Journey in Three Songs and a Memory

Tags: Anthony Powers, Astor Piazzolla, Birmingham (England), Brighton (England), Bristol (England), Charlotte Bray, Cheryl Frances-Hoad, CHROMA, David Gorton, Ensemble Perpetuo, George Benjamin, Glasgow (Scotland), James Turnbull, Josh T. Pearson, Judith Weir, Leeds (England), listening to women, Ludwig van Beethoven, Manchester (England), Martin Scheuregger, Neil Halstead, New York City (USA), Nico Muhly, Philip Cashian, Robert Schumann, Roderick Chadwick

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Categories 2015, 20th century classical music, 21st century classical music, chamber music, chamber pop, classical (Western art music), Classical music, early 20th century neoclassical music, instrumental music, minimalism, New Music, pop, previews, Romantic music, singer-songwriter

November 2015 – upcoming London gigs – assorted classical and related – Lubomyr Melnyk’s continuous piano (plus James Blackshaw’s flexible guitar and a Franco-Palestinian-Bedouin quintet from Kamilya Jubran & Sarah Murcia); and a Mexican evening with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Jaime Martín and Arturo Chacón-Cruz

30 Oct

Yesterday it was upcoming classical concerts; today it’s close relations of various kinds…

I’ve previously covered, in passing, the Labyrinths series of international live music events (presented by Thirtythree Thirtythree – the team behind St John Sessions – and Nawa Recordings) which are taking place throughout 2015 across Beirut, Cairo and London. Here’s another one, featuring music spanning Palestine, France, the Ukraine and Sussex and mingling Western and Eastern classical, jazz, folk baroque and Arabic forms.

Lubomyr Melnyk + Kamilya Jubran & Sarah Murcia + James Blackshaw (St John Sessions @ St John at Hackney Church, Lower Clapton Road, Clapton, London, E5 0PD, UK, Tuesday 3rd November 2015, 6.30pm) – £16.50

Lubomyr Melnyk is a Ukrainian composer and pianist who has pioneered ‘Continuous Piano Music’. Classically trained and greatly affected by the minimalist movement in the early 1970s, he has developed his own unique language for the piano, named after the principle of maintaining a continuous, unbroken stream of sound. The rapid sequences, coupled with Melnyk’s awe-inspiring ability of playing up to 19 notes per second with each hand simultaneously create a tapestry of sound that transcends sonic waves into a very tangible, physical experience. Having spent much of his artistic life in obscurity, Lubomyr Melnyk’s work was recently rediscovered by a whole new generation of music lovers, offering the piano virtuoso a well-deserved renaissance with world-wide tours.

Kamilya Jubran (Palestinian singer and oud player) and Sarah Murcia (French jazz double bassist and composer) will present the UK debut of their ‘Nhaoul’ project as a quintet also featuring Régis Huby (violin), Guillaume Roy (viola) and Atsushi Sakai (cello). Kamilya and Sarah’s first meeting dates back to 1998, when Sarah joined Sabreen – an innovative Palestinian group whose lead singer was Kamilya – for an album and concert tour of Europe and the Middle East. ‘Nhaoul’ (Arabic for “loom”) was first created together as a duo as a result of a profound exchange around their respective musical interests.

The basis of their duet rests on an amazing musical and aesthetic convergence which has solidified through delving deeper into several compositions by Kamilya based on prose poems, so as to give to the oud a total rhythmic and melodic freedom. Sarah has approached them in a vertical way in adding her harmonies. Her string arrangements, cast against Arabic music, deal with the economy, colours, matter. Kamilya Jurban, on the other hand, comes from a highly melodic and modal culture and thinks her music horizontally.

Over several years of reflection and mutual learning, the two musicians worked to create a common language: Sarah made a point of learning to play the quarter-tones of oriental scales and memorize long labyrinthine sentences – of the oral tradition – which are the rule in Arab music. Kamilya Jubran, in turn, began to internalise the methods of limited transposition and complex rhythmic structures (asymmetry, polyrhythm), following Sarah’s suggestions. The texts selected for setting are chosen from the work of contemporary poets; or are, for ‘Suite Nomade’, excerpts from Bedouin poems from the deserts of the Sinai and Negev published by Clinton Bailey in his collection ‘Bedouin Poetry’ (Saqi Books, reissued in 2002). Kamilya Jubran sings them in dialect remembering the Bedouin women she came across in her childhood.

Hastings-based guitarist and pianist James Blackshaw primarily plays an acoustic 12-string guitar in fingerstyle fashion (for which he has grown long pick-like fingernails on his right hand). A musician blending ideas from assorted folk cultures around the world and from the classical concert hall, James has been compared to cross-genre guitar explorers such as Bert Jansch, Robbie Basho, John Fahey, Jack Rose and Leo Kottke. He has released albums on the labels Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, Static, Digitalis Industries, Important Records, Tompkins Square, and Young God Records.

James has previously collaborated with Lubomyr Melnyk on ‘The Watchers’, a 2013 collection of improvised duets recorded at the Vortex Jazz Club. It’s possible that they might repeat the engagement at this gig.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYn7WpgLg48

More information is here, and tickets are here.

Jaime Martin, 2015

Several things have drawn me toward central and south American music recently. One of these things is Alex Ross’ fascinating history (in ‘Listen To This’) of the journey of the chaconne from Africa to south America, and from there to Spain, moving on through Europe and feeding into Monteverdi, the emerging baroque music atmosphere at Versailles, and Bach (there’s a version the whole story at Alex’ blog, here).

The other is the Harp Consort’s wonderful 2002 album, ‘Missa Mexicana‘, which carefully constructs an impression of a Spanish colonial church service in Baroque-era Puebla City, threading secular dances through a Juan Gutiiérez de Padilla mass, with African, traditional Spanish and fresh Mexican musical ideas intertwined.

With both of these in my mind, it was intriguing to see this advertised…

London Philharmonic Orchestra/Jaime Martín/Arturo Chacón-Cruz perform Mexican Magic (Royal Festival Hall @ Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, Waterloo, London, SE1 8XX, UK, Friday 6^th November 2015, 7.30pm) – £9.00 to £65.00

Experience a dazzling programme of Mexican classical music as we celebrate The Year of Mexico in the UK. Mexican classical music is about more than folklore and colour. Eclectic and sophisticated, it spans a broad spectrum of musical possibilities and embodies the spirit of Mexico in all its richness and diversity. Join London Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Jaime Martín for the slithering sounds of Revueltas’ ‘Sensemayá’, Ibarra’s ear-teasing ‘Sinfonía No. 2 ‘and Márquez’ toe-tapping ‘Danzón No.2’ alongside a selection of popular songs from Mexico (sung by tenor Arturo Chacón-Cruz).

Programme:

Ricardo Castro – Intermezzo from ‘Atzimba’
Charles Gounod – L’amour… Ah! lève-toi, soleil (from ‘Roméo et Juliette’)
Federico Ibarra – Sinfonía No.2 (Las Antesalas des sueño)
Various – Mexican Songs
Leonard Bernstein – Symphonic Dances from ‘West Side Story’
Silvestre Revueltas – Sensemayá
Arturo Márquez – Danzón No.2

More information here, and tickets here.

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More November gig previews shortly…

Tags: acoustic guitar music, Alex Ross (writer), Arturo Chacón-Cruz, Charles Gounod, Federico Ibarra, Heinrich Biber, Jaime Martín, James Blackshaw, Kamilya Jubran, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Lubomyr Melnyk, Mexico, oud music, Palestine, piano music, Ricardo Castro, Sarah Murcia, Silvestre Revueltas, The Harp Consort

November 2015 – upcoming London gigs – assorted classical and related – another Fenella Humphreys Bach-plus violin evening (with extra Peter Maxwell Davies/Adrian Sutton premieres) and a multimedia Rachmaninoff symphony from Arensky Chamber Orchestra

29 Oct

Two upcoming classical concerts here, both at the Forge…

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Fenella Humphreys: Bach to the Future Part 3 (The Forge, 3-7 Delancey Street, Camden Town, London, NW1 7NL, UK, Tuesday 3rd November 2015, 7.30pm) – £10.00-£12.00

Fenella Humphreys (photo by Gary Barton)

Fenella Humphries (photo by Gary Barton)

Violinist Fenella Humphreys presents the third of her Bach to the Future projects at The Forge, featuring commissions of new works by Britain’s leading composers to accompany Bach’s glorious Sonatas and Partitas for unaccompanied violin. The third concert includes new works by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and Adrian Sutton alongside extraordinary music by Bach, Sibelius, Biber and Ysaye.

Programme:

Jean Sibelius – En Glad Musikant
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies – new work (2015)
J.S. Bach – Sonata no. 3 in C major BWV 1005
Heinrich Biber – Passacaglia in G minor
Adrian Sutton – new work (2015)
Eugene Ysaye – Solo Sonata no. 3 ‘Ballade’ op. 27

Fenella is also making studio recordings of the project for Champs Hill Records over two CDs – ‘Volume One’ was released in August 2015.

More information and tickets here.

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Here’s something familiar in a new setting…

The Arensky Chamber Orchestra presents: Rachmaninoff Symphony No. 2 (The Forge, 3-7 Delancey Street, Camden Town, London, NW1 7NL, UK, Wednesday 4th November 2015, 8.00pm) – £12.00

Led by international prize-winning conductor William Kunhardt, The Arensky Chamber Orchestra has established itself as one of London’s most exciting young ensembles since its debut in 2009 – dedicated to revitalising the concert experience with theatrical and brilliant productions of classical music. Described as “deeply moving” by ‘The Independent’ in 2014, the ACO has produced numerous broadcast recordings on national radio and regularly performs in the country’s leading venues, including Cadogan Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, and the Southbank Centre’s Purcell Room.

The orchestra’s performances fuse electric performance with lighting design, “live” programme notes delivered from the stage and unusual venue use. Past collaborators have included leading soloists such as Jennifer Pike and Benjamin Grosvenor, guest directors including the leaders of the Philharmonia, the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and institutions and festivals ranging from the Royal College of Art to the Greenwich and Docklands Festival. The ACO also regularly combine their performances with specially created food and drink menus and commissioned work from other artists, including video DJs, artists, actors and dancers.

The ACO return to The Forge with Sergei Rachmaninoff’s opulent Second Symphony, arranged for chamber orchestra. Revered as the greatest pianist of his time, yet scorned as an out-of-date and sentimental composer, Rachmaninoff’s music is an oasis of drama, colour and feeling in the increasingly rational and cold 20th Century musical world. Whilst all Rachmaninoff’s music sings with a heart-wrenching honesty, his Second Symphony is perhaps the most personal piece he ever wrote. Rachmaninoff’s First Symphony – a huge failure – had led to three years in the musical wilderness, to crushing self-doubt and writers block. He published his Second only after intense courses of hypnotherapy and years of reworking the manuscript.

As a result, it is a true autobiography of his soul: it speaks of fierce patriotism, exile and of a yearning to return to a home that was now lost to him. It tells of his worldwide triumphs, yet also of his failings and self doubt. The “dies irae” chant lurks in the shadows, a morbid reminder of Rachmaninoff’s preoccupation with death. But above all it sings with extraordinary beauty, sumptuous colour and unending, impossible-to-forget melodies. Join the ACO as they unravel the luxurious sound-world of this symphony with excerpts, short performances and stories from Rachmaninoff’s life. Then sit back and enjoy perhaps the ultimate Romantic symphony, and the world premiere performance of its new arrangement.

“Music is a calm moonlit night, the rustle of leaves in Summer. Music is the far off peal of bells at dusk! Music comes straight from the heart and talks only to the heart: it is Love! Music is the Sister of Poetry and her Mother is sorrow.” – Sergei Rachmaninoff

More information and tickets are here.

Tags: Adrian Sutton, Eugene Ysaye, Fenella Humphreys, Heinrich Biber, Jean Sibelius, Johann Sebastian Bach, Leonard Bernstein, Peter Maxwell Davies, Sergei Rachmaninoff, The Arensky Chamber Orchestra, William Kunhardt

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Categories 2015, 20th century classical music, 21st century classical music, Baroque music, chamber music, classical (Western art music), Classical music, instrumental music, minimalism, New Music, orchestral music, previews, Romantic music

October 2015 – upcoming London gigs – Nonclassical rework Bohuslav Martinů; Iskra String Quartet, Minotaur Shock, Isobel Waller-Bridge and Angus Macrae meet at Daylight Music; acoustic guitar shows for Pierre Bensusan

16 Oct

A few posts ago, I covered Nonclassical and their various post-classical mashups. I’ve just cottoned on to the fact that they’re back with another one.

Inspired by Martinů (Czech Centre London + Nonclassical @ The Forge , 3-7 Delancey Street, Camden Town, London, NW1 7NL, UK, Wednesday 21st October 2015, 7.30pm) – £10.00/£12.00

‘Inspired by Martinů’ juxtaposes selected parts of the oeuvre of 20th century Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů (whose 125th birth anniversary we’ll celebrate in December this year), with London’s contemporary classical scene as represented by artists around the acclaimed Nonclassical label.

For this concert, Nonclassical founder, composer and DJ Gabriel Prokofiev (on laptop) will be joined onstage by piano virtuoso Lada Valešová, violin wunderkind Tereza Anna Přívratská (of Jubilee Quartet) and vibrant mezzo-soprano Lucie Špičková. They will be carrying out a unique attempt to reimagine Martinů’s most influential chamber pieces by creating real-time improvised soundtracks, avant-garde audiovisual installations and once-in-a-lifetime musical reworks.

Full details on and tickets for the event are here, with the Facebook page here. Nonclassical have been kind enough to point us towards a Martinů cheat sheet. I’ve probably plugged this a little too late for anybody else to enter the Martinů remix competition, but here’s the information on that if you’re interested. Here too is a video clip in which Nonclassical’s Eleanor Ward explaining some of the ideas behind both Nonclassical itself and the remix project.

As a fuller taste of Martinů, here are clips of part of one of his violin sonatas and a live performance of his Fantasie for theremin, oboe, string quartet and piano.

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Meanwhile, Daylight Music are setting aside the acoustic rock’n’folk songwriters for a week in order to take one of their occasional forays into contemporary classical fusion. Read on…

Daylight Music 204

Daylight Music 204: Iskra String Quartet with Minotaur Shock + Isobel Waller-Bridge, (Union Chapel, Compton Terrace, Islington, London, N1 2UN, UK, Saturday 24th October 2015, 12.00pm-2.00pm) – free entry, suggested donation £5.00

The Iskra String Quartet (their name meaning “a spark” – to ignite) is a London-based collaborative group of string players who enjoy making music together regardless of genre. The quartet has had a particularly strong relationship with Icelandic composer Johann Johannsson, whose music they’ve toured extensively across Europe: a particular highlight being a set of performances of Johannsson’s ‘The Miners’ Hymns’ in collaboration with American artist film maker Bill Morrison.

As sometime pop performers, Iskra has worked closely with pianist/composer Olafur Arnalds, with The xx (on the ‘Coexist’ album and on Jamie xx ‘s score for the ‘Tree Of Codes’ ballet) and with Radiohead (creating a string quartet remix of The Reckoner from ‘In Rainbows’) as well as with Vampire Weekend, Sufjan Stevens, Benjamin Francis Leftwich, Katie Melua, Duke Special and My Brightest Diamond. Recently they performed as a trio alongside The Lone Bellow on ‘Later…with Jools Holland’. Within the world of film and theatre soundtracks, Iskra have collaborated with composers Dustin O’Halloran, David Julyan (with whom they performed for the 177th Daylight Music concert in November 2014) and Alex Baranowski (on the twice-BAFTA- nominated film ‘McCullin’ and for Sir Nicholas Hytner’s National Theatre production of ‘Hamlet’ starring Rory Kinnear).

Iskra’s first release was the three-track ‘Discoveries & Inventions’ EP in 2010. Their forthcoming album, ‘Iskra’ (1613 Recordings, October 2015) celebrates their tenth anniversary and features contributions from composers previously linked with the group (Johann Johannsson, Olafur Arnalds, Alex Baranowski, David Julyan) as well as new composer collaborators (Peter Gregson, Luke Anthony, Paul Frith and Isobel Waller-Bridge).

Working as Minotaur Shock, Bristol-based David Edwards first made a name for himself nearly fifteen years ago via albums and EPs of wide-screen pastoral folk-tinged electronica incorporating field recordings and other instances of nature-love (he once released an EP with a title that might have been lifted from a birdwatching manual.) Of his five albums since 2001, the most recent is 2012’s ‘Orchard’ for which he returned to his original record label Melodic following a two-album stint with 4AD. ‘Orchard’ also saw him returning to the use of acoustic instrumentation (strings, flutes, clarinets) in addition to his own electronics, drums and “weedy acoustic guitar”. He has a previous connection with Iskra – his 2008 composition ‘Accelerated Footage At Night’ (originally released on the ‘Amateur Dramatics’ album) was rearranged and performed by the quartet on ‘Discoveries & Inventions’.

As a composer, Isobel Waller-Bridge has worked primarily in television and theatre and film (she won the Best Composer award at 2014’s Underwire Film Festival for her score for Claire Oakley’s film ‘James’, and has scored multiple plays performed in venues across the UK). Her work spans a wide range from large scale orchestral music to experimental to folk, and has been performed in concert halls across Europe, USA and the UK (sometimes by a mixed ensemble of her own combining acoustic strings with piano, minimal sounds and electronics).

Her ‘Music For Strings‘ album, featuring six symphonic works for large string orchestra (including Untouched By A Storm, during which the orchestra divides into twenty separate string parts), was released in April this year. Isobel has recently been commissioned to write a ten-minute “cosmological” work to score projection-mapping of the story of the universe onto Durham Cathedral as part of the Lumiere Festival in November.

A special additional guest, Angus Macrae, will be playing piano at points during the afternoon. These will be in a similar vein to the pieces found on ‘Awake’, the debut EP released by Angus this year, which featured intimate piano improvisations with a backdrop of spiralling tape delays, distant voices and deep analog synthesisers.

Like Isobel, Angus is a composer-musician best known for his soundtrack and theatre work, having composed for a wide range of productions at venues in London and Edinburgh; for short films including this year’s ‘Interlude’ (winner of the 2015 Sci-Fi London 48 hour film challenge), ‘The Listener’, ‘Way Out’ and the documentary ‘On Guardian Mountain’; and for dance works including Wayne Parsons’ ‘Meeting’ and Tamsin Fitzgerald’s ‘Lucid Grounds’ (the latter in collaboration with Alex Baranowski.) A follow up to ‘Awake’ is currently in development with a planned release in late 2015.

Up-to-date info on this particular Daylight Music afternoon is here.

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I first saw Pierre Bensusan many years ago at the Union Chapel. Although he was supporting fellow guitarist Antonio Forcione (who’s a master not only in terms of staggering technique but also in terms of showmanship), he more than held his own against the headliner’s prowess. Bensunan didn’t and doesn’t play with that hand-spinning percussive flash that’s in vogue with many acoustic fingerstyle guitarists, then and now (including Forcione and Jon Gomm, above). He didn’t need to. Instead he offered a deep, communicatory and involved playing style with a depth and complexity all of its own, drawing from his own French-Algerian-Sephardic background and broad listening, interweaving a host of simultaneous techniques from traditional to jazz to neo-acoustic, and spinning out polyphonic melodies as sun-warmed and vivid as a Mediterranean afternoon. He was a pleasure to hear.. and he’s back in London for three dates this coming week.

Pierre Bensusan (The Half Moon, 93 Lower Richmond Rd, Putney, London SW15 1EU, London, UK, Sunday 25th to Tuesday 27th October 2015, 8.00pm) – £10.00/£12.00

Here’s the tour blurb…

The “Mozart of Guitar” is back in the UK. Over the past forty years, fingerstyle acoustic guitar virtuoso Pierre Bensusan has taken his unique blend of world, Celtic, jazz and folk inspired music to all corners of the globe. Winner of the 2014 Independent Music Award in the Live Performance Album category for his triple live album ‘Ecore’ Pierre is recognized as one of the great guitar players of the 21st century. Described as a “genius” by the likes of Jon Gomm and ‘Melody Maker’, immortalised by the tune ‘Bensusan’ written in tribute by the late Michael Hedges, and referenced as an important inspiration to many other great musicians, Pierre Bensusan is a one-of-a-kind artist whose music transcends genre and time.

“How the guitar would want to sound if it could play itself” … in Pierre’s music there is an uninhibited sense of musical freedom and expression, a sense of something both playful and serious, otherworldly yet right here right now. His “manner” of playing defies classification – crossing world, classical, jazz, traditional, folk and more. None can be isolated as simply “world music”, “Celtic”, “Arabic” or “French”; rather, they represent our world in its current state, a world sharing itself, fusing cultures together in ways we have never experienced. Not to be missed!

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The final October gig previews are coming up shortly, plus the first November ones…

Tags: acoustic guitar music, Angus Macrae, Arctic Circle (promoter), Bohuslav Martinů, Bristol (England), Daylight Music (event), Gabriel Prokofiev, Iskra String Quartet, Isobel Waller-Bridge, Jubilee Quartet, Lada Valešová, London (England), Lucie Špičková, Minotaur Shock, Nonclassical (event/promoter/record label), Paris (France), piano music, Pierre Bensusan, premieres, Tereza Anna Přívratská, violin music

October 2015 – upcoming London gigs (12th to 18th) – new classical music with Darragh Morgan & Mary Dullea; William D. Drake, Bill Pritchard and Bill Botting make a trio of songwriting Bills for Daylight Music; Laura Moody and a host of others play at Match&Fuse

8 Oct

During the middle of next week, there’s a set of new or rare contemporary classical pieces being performed in Camden Town.

Picking Up The Pieces: Darragh Morgan & Mary Dullea (The Forge, 3-7 Delancey Street, Camden Town, London, NW1 7NL, UK, Wednesday 14^th October 2015, 7.30pm) – £10.00/£12.00

Here’s what the Forge has to say about it:

Described by BBC Music Magazine as ‘agile, incisive and impassioned’ violinist Darragh Morgan and pianist Mary Dullea are renowned soloists of new music as well as members of The Fidelio Trio, one of the UK’s leading chamber ensembles. ‘Picking up the Pieces’ explores new and recent repertoire, much of it written for this duo, by a diverse selection of composers. Among the program items, Richard Causton’s ‘Seven States of Rain’ (dedicated to Mary and Darragh) won the first ever British Composers’ Award; while Gerald Barry’s ‘Midday’ receives its world premiere alongside other London premieres from Camden Reeves and Benedict Schlepper-Connolly.

Programme:

Richard Causton – Seven States of Rain
Gerald Barry – Midday (world premiere)
Benedict Schlepper-Connolly – Ekstase I (UK premiere)
Dobrinka Tabakova – Through the Cold Smoke
Kate Whitley – Three Pieces for violin and piano
Sam Hayden – Picking up the Pieces
Camden Reeves – Gorgon’s Head (London premiere)

Here’s the original premiere recording of Darragh and Mary playing ‘Seven States of Rain’.

Tickets and up-to-date information are here. This concert is being recorded by BBC Radio for future transmission on Hear & Now.

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On the Saturday following, there’s a triple bill of Bills at Daylight Music. Now that’s cute, even for them. Here are the words, direct from the top…

Daylight Music 203: William D. Drake + Bill Pritchard + Bill Botting (Union Chapel, Compton Terrace, Islington, London, N1 2UN, UK – Saturday 17^th October 2015, 12.00pm-2.00pm) – free entry, suggested donation £5.00

For his fifth solo excursion, former Cardiacs keysmith William D Drake takes us on a serpentine path through the inner regions of ‘Revere Reach’, a part-imagined landscape composed of memory and fantasy. At once heart-felt, hearty and absurd, its heady reveries blend ancient-seeming modal folk melody with an obliquely-slanted rock thrust.

Bill Pritchard is a beloved cult British-born singer/songwriter. You may remember. You may not. He started writing songs for various bands at school but it wasn’t until he spent time in Bordeaux as part of a college degree that his style flourished. He did a weekly show with two friends on the radio station La Vie au Grand Hertz (part of the burgeoning ‘radio libre’ movement) and was introduced to a lot of French artists from Antoine to Taxi Girl. In 2014 Bill released – Trip to the Coast (Tapeste Records). He’s recently resurfaced with a cracking new album, the songs of which are classic Bill Pritchard. Guitar pop, hooky chorus’, melodic ballads and personal everyday lyrics about love, loss, and Stoke-On-Trent.

Our final Bill is Bill Botting – best known as the bass player from Allo Darlin with the encouraging face, or as one half of indie electro wierdos Moustache of Insanity. Bill returned to playing his own music sometime in 2014. What started as a solo act has now grown into a complete band featuring members of Owl and Mouse, Allo Darlin and The Wave Pictures. A 7-inch single out later in the year on the wiaiwya label has a country slant but an indie heart.

https://youtu.be/tROCvuxnke4

Up-to-date info on this particular Daylight Music afternoon is here.

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Laura Moody’s captivating cello-and-voice songcraft (which edges along the boundary lines of avant-garde classical, art pop and heart-on-sleeve folk music, while demonstrating a daunting mastery of both vocal and instrument) has been a favourite of mine for a while. On this particular week, she’s performing as part of the Match&Fuse Festival in London on 17th October, which I’d have made more of a noise about had I cottoned on to it earlier. She’ll be following up her London show with a date on 20th October at Leeds College of Music: unfortunately, this concert (which also features a talk) is only for LCM students/staff, but if you happen to be attending the college, grab the chance to go along.

There’ll be more on Laura shortly, as she’s embarking on a brief British tour next month which dovetails quite neatly with some other brief tours I’d like to tie together in a post. Watch this space.

Meanwhile, I might as well provide a quick rundown of the Match&Fuse events. This will be a short and scrappy cut’n’paste’n’link, since I’m honouring my own last-minute pickup (and, to be honest, because I exhausted myself listing out all the details of the Manchester Jazz Festival events earlier in the year).

By the sound of it, though, the festival deserves more attention than I’m providing. Even just on spec, it’s a delightful bursting suitcase of British and European music; much of which consists of various forms of jazz and improvisation, but which also takes in electronica, math rock, accordion-driven Tyrolean folk-rap, vocalese, glam punk, the aforementioned Ms. Moody and what appears to be a huge scratch ensemble closing the events each night. It’s spread over three days including a wild triple event on the Saturday. Tickets are starting to sell out; so if you want to attend, be quick.

Committed to the composers and bands who propel, compel and challenge, Match&Fuse turns it on and ignites the 4th London festival in October. Dissolving barriers between genres and countries, it’s a rare chance to hear a spectrum of sounds from underground European and UK artists. On Saturday 17th October our popular wristband event will give you access to three Dalston venues and about thirteen artists and bands. Strike a match…

The Vortex Jazz Club, 11 Gillett Square, London, N16 8AZ, UK, Thursday 15th October 2015, 7.30pm – £9.90

7.30pm – Blue-Eyed Hawk (UK)
8.30pm – J=J (Joanna Duda & Jan Emil Młynarsk – Poland)
9.30pm – Mopo (Finland)
10.30pm – JÜ meets Kjetil Møster (Hungary/Norway)

Rich Mix, 35-47 Bethnal Green Road, Shoreditch, London E1 6LA, UK, Friday 16th October 2015, 7.30pm – £13.20

7.30pm – Snack Family + Natali Abrahamsen Garner (UK/Norway)
8.30pm – Attwenger (Austria)
9.30pm – Alfie Ryner (France)
10.30pm – Get the Blessing (UK)

The Vortex/Café Oto/Oto Project Space/ Servant Jazz Quarters simultaneous event, Saturday 17th October 2015, 8.00pm – £11.00/£16.50

Café Oto/Oto Project Space, 18-22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London, E8 3DL, UK

8.00pm – The Jist (Norway) + Rachel Musson (UK)
9.00pm – Laura Moody (UK)
9.30pm – Alexander Hawkins (UK)
10.00pm – How Town (Belgium/Luxembourg)
11.00pm – Leafcutter John + Isabel Sörling (UK/Sweden)
Midnight – The Eirik Tofte Match&Fuse Orchestra (Europe – all acts playing together as one ensemble)

Servant Jazz Quarters, 10a Bradbury Street, Dalston, London, N16 8JN, UK

8.00pm – Brass Mask (UK)
9.00pm – Interstatic (Norway)
10.00pm – Henning (Switzerland)
11.00pm – Alice Zawadzki + Kalevi Louhivuori (Finland) + Alex Roth (UK)
Midnight – The Eirik Tofte Match&Fuse Orchestra (Europe)

The Vortex Jazz Club/Vortex Downstairs, 11 Gillett Square, London, N16 8AZ, UK

8.00pm – Kaja Draksler (Slovenia)
9.00pm – The Great Harry Hillman (Switzerland)
10.00pm – Magnus Loom (UK)
10.30pm – Alarmist (Ireland)
11.15pm – Strobes (UK)
Midnight – The Eirik Tofte Match&Fuse Orchestra (Europe)
00.30am – Soccer 96 (UK) party – stripped-down, amped-up analogue synth vs. live drum assault

Full details of Match&Fuse London 2015 are here and here, with tickets (including wristbands) available here. There’s also a playlist available – see below.

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More October gig previews coming up shortly, plus some more for November…

Tags: Alarmist, Alex Roth, Alexander Hawkins, Alfie Ryner, Alice Zawadzki, Amsterdam (Netherlands), Attwenger, Belgium, Benedict Schlepper-Connolly, Bill Botting, Bill Pritchard, Blue-Eyed Hawk, Brass Mask, Brighton (England), Camden Reeves, Cardiacs, Colin Webster, Dan Nicholls, Darragh Morgan, Dobrinka Tabakova, Dublin (Ireland), duo music, Eirik Tofte, Gerald Barry, Get The Blessing, Henning, How Town, Interstatic, Isabel Sorling, J=J, Jan Emil Młynarski, JÜ, Joanna Duda, Joshua Blackmore, Kaja Draksler, Kalevi Louhivouri, Kate Whitley, Kranj (Slovenia), Laura Moody, Leafcutter John, Leeds (England), Linz (Austria), London (England), Magnus Loom, Manchester (England), Mary Dullea, Match&Fuse (event), Matt Calvert, Mopo, Moster, Nagoya (Japan), Natali Abrahamsen Garner, Orivesi (Finland), Plovdiv (Bulgaria), Point X, premieres, Rachel Musson, Richard Causton, Sam Hayden, Snack Family, Strobes, the buds and spawn of Cardiacs and Tim Smith, The Great Harry Hillman, The Jist, Three Trapped Tigers, Tom Challenger, Toulouse, Troyka, William D. Drake

September 2015 – upcoming London gigs – Saturday 5th & Sunday 6th: post-classical at the Royal Opera House, brainy prog’n’noise in Bethnal Green, art pop in Brixton, a garage band jamboree in Hackney, chamber jazz in Dalston

5 Sep

Here’s the second of two previews for the first week of September, this one covering the weekend which has just arrived. Four gigs on Saturday (from post-classical to garage rock, from Afrobeat and kosmiche-influenced art pop to Canterbury-inspired lo-fi, from witty post-prog to Southern rock) and a chamber jazz gig on Sunday.

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After ten years of putting on post-classical club nights in east London, some way outside the heart of the British classical establishment, the Nonclassical organisation gets to play in the centre – a festival role, a high-profile corporate sponsorship, ads on the Tube and all. Come and judge whether they’re changing the game or being absorbed (beneficially or otherwise) into the belly of the beast. Whichever way this is going, the concert itself looks fascinating.

Nonclassical Club Night (Deloitte Ignite Festival @ Paul Hamlyn Hall, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, WC2E 9DD, UK, Saturday 5th September 2015, 8.00pm) – £10.00

Nonclassical label leader Gabriel Prokofiev (a polystylist composer with a background in electroacoustic work whose works include a Concerto for Turntables & Orchestra, an “orchestral remix” of Beethoven’s Ninth and production work on hip hop, grime, and electro records) will be performing at the event, as will five-string-electric-cellist/composer/technologist Peter Gregson (whose adventures in sound include film soundtracking, multiple premieres of newly composed work plus three albums of original compositions, and a “data sonification” of Twitter).

Also performing will be the amplified prepared-piano artist Klavikon (a.k.a. Leon Michener, who uses various pickups, real time analogue processing and playing-mechanism inventions including a robot dog to fuse aleatoric ideas from Stockhausen and Cage with electronic dancefloor work including “cascading batteries of percussion, sub-basses and abstract soundscapes”); the “post-a-cappella” group Juice Vocal Ensemble (whose voicework encompasses everything from classical sources to hip hop, Irish folk, close-harmony vocal jazz and the experimental approaches of Meredith Monk and of Björk’s ‘Medúlla’), and Gabriel’s DJ collaborator Mr Switch.

There will also be a collaboration between classical soprano Sarah Dacey and the “Tendons” music theatre project initiated earlier this year by Holly Lowe and Nwando Ebizie. Based around harp, spoken word, performance art and electronics while mingling repertoire work with improvisation, this draws on and expands two modern classical pieces (Salvatore Sciarrino’s ‘L’addio a Trachis’ and John Cage’s ‘Dream’) plus the ‘Siciliano’ from Bach’s ‘Sonata in E flat’ and was premiered in June at the Nonclassical Downtown Loft Concert at The Russet in Shacklewell – one of the label’s ongoing attempts to encourage a London equivalent of the New York loft-music scene of the ‘70s and ‘80s.

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If you prefer to have your brain tickled by other means, Group Therapy are presenting what they call a night of “good ol’-fashioned noise rock” down at an east London art-rock stronghold.

Trojan Horse + Thumpermonkey + Godzilla Black (Group Therapy @ The Sebright Arms, 33-35 Coate Street, London, E2 9AG, United Kingdom, Saturday 5^th September 2015, 8.00pm) Entry £7 otd £5.50 advance

What this actually seems to be is a night mixing a sharp-minded self-aware take on post-progressive rock and a rollicking contemporary version of what my local library used to call “popular instrumental”, and would stick in a rack alongside James Last and The Shadows (from which, long ago, in the early days of my musical education, I’d pull out the likes of Mike Oldfield, Sky and Vangelis’ ‘Heaven and Hell’, and later the raging electric jazz raga of David Torn’s ‘Cloud About Mercury‘ – ten years later, I’d might been using it to catch the Deodato lounge revival). But if my comment makes the gig sound as if it’s in any way mild or lounge-friendly or mild, think again. This is very much a rock evening and it’s explicitly clear that this night’s crop of bands have soaked up Boredoms, Swans, Big Black, Sonic Youth and The Melvins alongside any Genesis or King Crimson which they might have imbibed. It’s just that it’s refreshing to be able to go along to one of those gigs, with that label, and not encounter yet another bunch of predictable art-punks posing with their distortion pedals and their feedback zones while reheating old daydreams about free jazz and No Wave…

I’m bitching. I don’t like doing that. Let’s have a look at the bands on the bill.

Manchester’s Trojan Horse are post-prog omnivores with tuneful hearts and a refreshing lack of shame. While their records pillage, digest and absorb a wide diet from Pink Floyd to James Brown to The Kinks to the 13th Floor Elevators, they also use their appetites to build their own muscle and identity – one through which they filter a broad, contemplative awareness of British and Mancunian history and how it soaks through into the lives of present-day people (although you don’t need to analyse that in order to enjoy one of their rambunctious gigs).

Simultaneously theatrical and punk-lean, Thumpermonkey can stake a claim to being one of the smartest British bands this side of Everything Everything (with whom they share a geeky brainiac quality driven home by vigorous, tuneful force). Couched in a crunching but colourful hard-rock vein with big pinches of post-hardcore and prog, their dramatic convoluted stalk-and-punch compositions are playful but melodious and rewarding. You can bang your head to a Thumpermonkey song, but you can also think to it. In Michael Woodman (a man like a knowing fusion of Peter Hammill, Nick Cave and Peter Blegvad) they’ve also got a frontman who’s one of the best singers and cleverest current lyricists in rock, delivering allusive and elusive barrages of sly wordplay in a resonant rock-operatic voice.

Finally, the big, bold, brazen sound of Godzilla Black lands precisely midway between No Wave and pin-sharp easy-listening film themes, or between James Black and the John Barry Seven, with rollicking drums, tight stunt brass (and yes, all right, distortion and computer sleet). They also play at a blistering, speaker-pummelling volume, so maybe there’s something in that noise rock description).

In case you needed any more wheedling, here’s a typically effusive pre-gig write-up from ‘Organ’.

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An alternative is this friendly North/South art pop nudge down in Brixton.

Canteloupe + Barringtone + Gurglez + tbc (The Windmill, 22 Blenheim Gardens, Brixton, London, SW2 5BZ, UK, Saturday 5^th September 2015, 8.00pm) – price tbc

Headlining, Nottingham’s Canteloupe offer an omnivorous mix of pop, Krautrock, Afrobeat and disco. London’s Barringtone (featuring former Clor frontman Barry Dobbin) continue to pursue their motoric English art pop in the wake of the ‘Fever Head’ single. From Bradford, Gurglez blend what their neighbours Jumbo Records call “the power of prog, the drama of opera and the AOR grooves of the 70’s… poetic moments à la Terry Durham and free-jazz à la Nice” and “(turn) them on their head with a kind of left of field madness that Zappa would be proud of” (which, to these ears. also makes them sound more than a little like Sleepy People…) There should also be one more act to be added, which you can find out about in due course with the other gig information here and here.

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If you’d prefer something a little looser (or, as a clincher, something that was free to get into) for Saturday night, there’s this literally free-for-all concert taking place in the middle of Hackney and hosted by Sound Events Solutions, who have also provided the summary…

The Little Things + Alkatraz + Picturebox + Marianne Hyatt + Pit Ponies (Sound Events Solutions @ Bohemia Hackney, Unit 2, Bohemia Place, Mare Street, Hackney, London, E8 1DU, United Kingdom, Saturday 5th September 2015, 7.45pm) – free

With The Little Things it’s funk, and then it’s 70s New York new wave alt-rock, and then it’s pop, but it’s all seamless and it’s funky and cool as fuck – an uncanny indie-ish dance party band that just never suck no matter how much they flirt with mass appeal.

Alkatraz provide the psychotic reactions and spontaneous psychedelic combustions of trippin’ psychedelic garage rock.

Picturebox (centred around home-recordist Robert Halcrow) are leading lights (and probably the main constituents) of Canterbury Lo-Fi, a new clandestine pop movement encapsulating all the charm but none of the noodling of the legendary old Canterbury Scene. When Halcrow sings a song like Ruth Bakes A Cake, he is neither being ironic nor twee nor coquettishly kitchen-sink. There is a light-hearted, profoundly uncynical love for humanity running through his lyrics that can sometimes remind you of the way Syd Barrett used to sing about the lost idea of simple kindness. Special things don’t always hit you over the head with a mallet, and neither will Picturebox. But you just never know, sometimes a movement can start with an instrumental named in allusion to a little hi-fi shop next to a supermarket car-park in Canterbury, some heartfelt tributes to pop stars, and lots of tea and cake.

Frontwoman of (variously) Dragstripper, Temple of Sound, Anarchistwood and Country Dirt, Marianne Hyatt is a London-based deep southern songstress from Austin Texas. She’s equal parts Patsy Cline, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison, has sung with The Frogs at ATP, with Bill Callahan at Meltdown Festival and played a late-night pickup in Richard Linklater’s ‘Slacker’. She writes and plays platonic lovesongs to sexworkers, country reggae odes to schizophrenic madames and protest tunes to natural disasters… a walking triumph of lost causes and no-longer living legends.

Pit Ponies are renegades from Naughties rockney/post-punk/knees-up beer boys Corporal Machine & The Bombers, fusing ‘90s indie with pissed pub fights and ‘70s pub-rock. (In spite of this preamble, they’ll actually be playing an acoustic set.)

Up-to-date gig info here, some tasters here:

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After all of this, on Sunday, there’s jazz via the return of the LUME evenings via the Vortex. Blurb for the first evening is below.

Mark Pringle’s A Moveable Feast & Rebecca Nash (LUME @ The Vortex Jazz Club, 11 Gillett Square, Dalston, London, N16 8AZ, UK, Sunday 6th September 2015, 7.30pm – £10.00

A Moveable Feast is a group led by jazz pianist Mark Pringle (a Peter Whittingham Award winner for the year 2015, following in the footsteps of previous recipients Gwilym Simcock, Trish Clowes and Elliot Galvin). Heavily inspired by time spent studying in Paris in 2013, the music draws on multiple cultural influences, containing themes of nature, wildlife, literature, the chaos of cities, the lives of people who inhabit them, woodland creatures and strange beasts… This autumn sees the group undertaking a national tour to promote the release of their album, ‘A Moveable Feast’, on Stoney Lane Records.

Featuring a twelvetet line up of strings, horns and rhythm section, the group explore Mark’s music with great freedom of approach, resulting in music that is eclectic, adventurous and highly unique. The band are Mark Pringle (piano), Percy Pursglove (trumpet), Chris Young (alto saxophone), Dan Searjeant (tenor and alto saxophones, flute), Alicia Gardener-Trejo (bass clarinet, baritone saxophone, alto flute), Ben Lee (electric guitar), James Banner (double bass) and Euan Palmer (drums), plus a string quartet of Christine Cornwell, Sarah Farmer, Megan Jowett and Lucy French.

Rebecca Nash‘s music, written with the intention of creating a new cohesive sound, blends together all the things she loves about music. Most important is a sense of purpose, identity and beauty. It is inspired by many musical influences which primarily include jazz musicians such as Pat Metheny and Wayne Shorter but also other styles too, such as electronica and folk music. Rebecca’s own style, rooted in the contemporary jazz genre, blends acoustic and electronic elements with strong melodies, underpinned by dense harmonies and unusual grooves with the aim of creating one overall soundscape.

This latest project is Rebecca’s first as a bandleader, and all of the music performed is original material from her forthcoming album, due to be recorded later this year. Tonight she leads a small group with herself on piano, Percy Pursglove on trumpet, Matt Fisher on drums, and Chris Mapp on bass guitar.

More information on the event is here, with tickets available here.

Tags: A Moveable Feast, Alicia Gardener-Trejo, Alkatraz, Barringtone, Ben Lee (jazz musician), Canteloupe, Canterbury scene, Chris Mapp, Chris Young, Christine Cornwell, Corporal Machine & The Bombers, Country Dirt, Dan Searjeant, DJ Mr Switch, duo music, Euan Palmer, Gabriel Prokofiev, Godzilla Black, Group Therapy (event), Gurglez, Holly Lowe, Johann Sebastian Bach, John Cage, Juice Vocal Ensemble, Klavikon, lo-fi, London (England), Lucy French, LUME (event), Marianne Hyatt, Mark Pringle, Matt Fisher, Megan Jowett, Nonclassical (event/promoter/record label), Nwando Ebizie, Percy Pursglove, Peter Gregson, Picturebox, Rebecca Nash, Salvatore Sciarrino, Sarah Dacey, Sarah Farmer, Sound Events Solutions (event), Tendons, The Little Things, Thumpermonkey, Trojan Horse

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Categories 2015, 20th century classical music, 21st century classical music, Afrobeat, alternative rock, art rock, Baroque music, chamber jazz, classical (Western art music), classical fusion, country reggae, crossover, dance music, disco, electronica, experimental music, experimental/avant-garde rock, folk music, folk-jazz, freak-folk, funk, garage punk, garage rock, hard rock, heavy metal, improvisation, instrumental music, jazz, jazz fusion, jazz rock, kosmische & Krautrock, math rock, New Wave rock, noise rock, political music, pop, post-hardcore, post-metal, post-progressive rock, post-punk, previews, progressive metal, progressive pop, progressive rock, psychedelic pop, psychedelic rock, pub rock, punk rock, reggae, rhythm'n'blues, RIO (Rock In Opposition), rock, singer-songwriter, skronk, techno, Zeuhl

September 2015 – upcoming London gigs – Wednesday 3rd to Friday 5th: orchestral-pop croons in Kings Cross, psychedelic grandeur in Pentonville, and a post-metal mash-up in Camden Town versus a grand Curved Air event in Fulham

1 Sep

There’s a wealth of new gigs coming up in London in the first week of September – here’s the first of a couple of whistle-stop preview for some of the ones which caught my interest. I’ve missed Monday and Tuesday. Starting with some relative softness on Wednesday…

Ralegh Long + The Left Outsides (Parallel Lines @ St Pancras Old Church, Pancras Road, Kings Cross, London, NW1 1UL, UK, Wednesday 2nd September 2015, 7.30pm) – £8.25

A piano balladeer with soft rich baroque pop tendencies, Ralegh Long’s been compared to Alex Chilton, Todd Rundgren, Laura Nyro and Nick Drake… and not without cause. His debut album ‘Hoverance’ was released earlier this year, and at this concert he’ll be joined not only by his usual band but by the strings, horns and whatnot of A Little Orchestra. In support, there’s the acid-folk duo The Left Outsides, affiliated to both The Eighteenth Day Of May and Of Arrowe Hill. To find out what both acts sound like, see below.

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On Thursday, things are louder…

Guapo + Hirvikolari (The Quietus @ The Lexington, 96-98 Pentonville Road, London, N1 9JB, UK, Thursday 3rd September 2015, 7.00pm) £8.00

Over a twenty-year career experimental rockers Guapo have explored their own open-ended, constantly-altering takes on noise/jazz/psychedelic rock, Magma-esque Zeuhl and Rock In Opposition (via several roiling and transformative line-up changes attracting, turn by turn, some of the most talented London players). The latest version of the band – perennial Guapo drummer Dave Smith, guitarist Kavus Torabi and keyboard player Emmett Elvin (both also of Knifeworld) and new bass guitarist Sam Warren (also of Thumpermonkey, more of whom tomorrow) – will be launching and performing an extended version of their new album ‘Obscure Knowledge’. On this occasion Guapo will be augmented to a quartet by guest woodwind player Michael York.

Playing support are trumpet-and-modular-synth duo Hirvikolari, a spinoff project from psychedelic rockers Teeth Of The Sea featuring Sam Barton and Mike Bourne. They were recently hailed by Luke Turner (of event promoters/multi-media…. ‘The Quietus’) as “a gorgeous, transportive wander across a luminous veldt, taking in grubby techno and hinting at Coil’s ‘Musick To Play In The Dark’ via a tripping colliery band, falling down an unguarded shaft after being led astray by Jon Hassell.”

Up-to-date gig information is here, and some soundclips are below – also courtesy of ‘The Quietus’ is the Hirvikolari set recording, taken from their summer appearance at the Raw Power festival in Tufnell Park earlier this year.

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On Friday, Facemelter are presenting a triple-feature heavy evening in Camden, while progressive rock veterans Curved Air are playing a special gig in Fulham.

Tacoma Narrows Bridge Disaster + Opensight + Sumer, (The Facemelter @ The Black Heart, 2-3 Greenland Place, Camden, London, NW1 0AP, United Kingdom, Friday 4th September, 7.30pm) – £6.00 advance, £8.00 on the door

Tacoma Narrows Bridge Disaster are a brilliant atmospheric post-metal band who’ve risen early in the UK’s underground scene and with an audience spanning the edges of metal, prog and post-rock. Now back with the original lineup that won them their international audience (and fresh from performing at ArcTanGent) they launch their third album ‘Wires/Dream\Wires’, three years after releasing the hugely acclaimed ‘Exegesis’. Originally from Colombia, Opensight are an ambitious band fusing metal with the vintage, grainy feel of 70s prog. Their launch of their new EP ‘Ulterior Motives’ will appeal to fans of all genres. Gig openers Sumer are a self-styled post-prog band with interesting riffs, soaring vocal melodies and catchy hooks. They have risen with seemingly unstoppable force and with every reason, as anyone who attended the packed launch of their album ‘The Animal You Are’ last September will remember.

All of the above is a slightly-tweaked Facemelter summary: some album tasters are below, and tickets are available here.

Curved Air (Under The Bridge, Stamford Bridge, Fulham Road, Chelsea, London, SW6 1HS, UK, 4th September 2015, 7.00pm) – £18.00

Though they’re best known for a single classic rock radio staple – Back Street Luv, which might suggest to the casual listener that they were briefly a British Jefferson Airplane – Curved Air began life as a genuinely innovative band. While the presence and tone of singer Sonja Kristina (the band’s only constant member) has always tied the band in with folk music and the rock siren tradition, founder members and key composers Darryl Way and Francis Monkman were classically-trained enthusiasts of psychedelia and the ecstatic minimalism of Terry Riley – hence the cascading Hendrix-and-microtones violin roar of Vivaldi on the band’s first album ‘Air Conditioning’.

Despite a remarkable start, differences of opinion, susceptibility to fluctuating musical styles and plain bad luck meant that Curved Air subsequently staggered from lineup to lineup and from image to image. With Way slipping in and out of the band over the years, and Monkman a relatively early casualty of disagreements (though a frequent if brief returnee), many the original ideas were lost in transit. Nonetheless, versions of the band have existed on and off ever since, with Curved Air currently anchored by Kristina, original drummer Florian Pilkington-Miksa and guitarist Kirby Gregory (from the second main lineup).

For this particular gig, Darryl Way will be making an appearance on violin and the band will – for the first time ever – be playing early masterpiece ‘Air Conditioning’ in its entirety, although they’ve also promised to perform from their entire repertoire up until the present day. The concert will be recorded and filmed for a commemorative DVD release. Tickets available here.

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Tomorrow, more on Saturday’s stretch of gigs, from garage bands to chamber jazz to art-pop to post-classical…

Tags: A Little Orchestra, Curved Air, duo music, Emmett Elvin, Guapo, Hirvikolari, Kavus Torabi, Knifeworld, London (England), Mike Bourne, Opensight, Ralegh Long, Sam Barton, Sumer, Tacoma Narrows Bridge Disaster, Teeth Of The Sea, The Facemelter (event), The Left Outsides, The Quietus (publication/event/label)

August 2015 – upcoming London gigs (Rumour Cubes in Camden on Friday 7th August, Arthur Russell Instrumentals in Bethnal Green on Monday 10th August)

6 Aug

More quick London gig news – art rock, post-rock, electronica, and a dash of classic New York downtown.

Rumour Cubes + Dresda + kontakte @ The Facemelter (The Black Heart, 2-3 Greenland Place, Camden, London, NW1 0AP, UK, Friday 7th August, 7.30pm – £8.00/£6.00)

Sumptuous instrumental and electronic post-rock from ex-Glastonbury and ArcTanGent Festival performers, plus a UK debut.

Post-rock veterans Rumour Cubes have been spreading tentacles of ambient, soaring soundscapes across the globe, catching people’s attention with their classical and electronic nuances, attention to the finest details and unassuming political statements embedded in their writing. Their work with poets and film-makers has allowed them to create a multi-media experience and has propelled them to performances at Glastonbury, ArcTanGent and a support slot for Sólstafir; while their albums ‘The Narrow State’ (2012) and ‘Appearances Of Collections’ (2014) received wide critical acclaim.

Celebrating their tenth anniversary this year, Dresda hail from Genova, Italy, and will be driving over to make their UK debut. Their music is intricate, dense and introspective yet gloriously cinematic. They have several well-received releases under their belts, including soundtracks for critically acclaimed Italian independent movie ‘The Krolevsky Case’, and the short movie ‘La lingua del disordine’. In 2009, they were featured on the Italian DVD edition of the Canadian documentary ‘RIP! A remix manifesto’, distributed by Feltrinelli Real Cinema nationwide.

Conceived in 2005 from a string of old 4-track demos and further realized via a labyrinth of digital workstations and computer software, kontakte blend organic instrumentation within an electronic and hypnotic framework of programmed beats and pulsing synths. Pooling influences such as Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Mogwai together with Brian Eno, krautrock and shogaze sounds, this duo manages to perfectly blend shimmering electronics and ethereal melodies. They have too many releases to name and have been remixed by many visionaries including Tim Holmes of Death In Vegas, Chris Olley of Six By Seven and Russell. M. Harmon.

More details here, and tickets available here.

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There might also be tickets remaining for the performance of Arthur Russell’s Instrumentals early in the following week. This is a repeat visit of a show that’s been on and off the road at various points around the world since 2012 and which last visited London via Cecil Sharp House earlier this year… so if you missed it before, now’s your chance.

Visions presents: Arthur Russell’s Instrumentals, directed by Peter Gordon @ Visions Festival (Oval Space, 29-32 The Oval London, Bethnal Green, London, E2 9DT, UK, Monday 10th August, 7.30pm – £21.50 plus booking fee)

For those of you who don’t know about Arthur Russell’s turbulent, productive (and sadly curtailed) life, he was a vigorous participant within the downtown New York music scene between the mid-1970s and early 1990s. Having studied as an avant-garde cellist and composer, he rebelled into Manhattan nightlife, vigorous cross-fertilization and event curation. Russell rubbed up against Fluxus, disco, avant-garde theatre, New Wave and no-wave, making the most of the breadth of the prolonged New York creative ferment of the times, feeding his assorted roots and collisions into music of his own.

During the last decade of his life Russell wrote and performed voice-and-cello songs – predominantly solo but employing loops, echo and sundry effects. In these, he synthesized all that he’d learned into what were perhaps his most personal and accessible works. These are probably what he’s best known for now, thanks to the more prominent releases of albums such as ‘World Of Echo’ and ‘Another Thought’, but they’re only one aspect of his work

A notorious perfectionist reknowned for agonised work gestations (and who left hundreds of pieces uncompleted at his death) Russell nonetheless completed what was, at the time a remarkably bold, broad and modern array of work from orchestral pieces and theatre music to forays into electro-pop and dance music under project names including Dinosaur (for ‘Kiss Me Again’) and Loose Joints (‘Tell You Today’). Today this kind of equivalence and eclecticism is more commonplace in the orchestral or ensemble work of composers such as John Zorn, Django Bates, Anna Meredith or Tansy Davies. In the 1970s, though, Russell was a pioneer, notoriously shocking the staider elements of his avant-garde classical audience with ‘24-24 Music’ (a contemporary classical piece equating the pulses and disciplines of New York minimalism with those of disco music).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_LO4QIs-30

Coming from the zone of Russell’s talent which drew most on his contemporary classical roots, ‘Instrumentals’ is an example of his chamber music, Dating from the late ‘70s, it was initially conceived as a forty-eight hour piece, its duration far exceeding even the infamously massy protracted works of Morton Feldman. Versions of the work were performed over the years, and a selection of excerpts appeared on a Disques du Crepuscule release in the mid-‘80s.

The piece as it stands owes much to Russell’s friend Peter Gordon, a fellow eclectician from the 1970s downtown scene and Russell’s bandmate in The Flying Hearts and Gordon’s own ongoing Love Of Life Orchestra. Gordon worked closely on the original performed version, assisting on keyboards, arrangement and notation. Two decades after Russell’s death in 1992, Gordon brought a new version of ‘Instrumentals’ back to The Kitchen (Russell’s old home venue in Manhattan. Following the initial sold-out performance in March 2012, Gordon has periodically revived and toured the new arrangement. The performance at Oval Space will feature several members of Russell’s original ensemble, and will also feature photographs by Yuko Nonomura which were projected during the original 1975/78 Manhattan performances of ‘Instrumentals’.

More information and tickets are available here.

Tags: Arthur Russell, chamber ensemble, Chaos Theory (event/promoter), Dresda, Genova (Italy), kontakte, London (England), New York City (USA), Peter Gordon, Rumour Cubes, The Facemelter (event), Visions Festival (event)

August 2015 – upcoming gigs – the Manchester Jazz Festival (31st July to 9th August)

31 Jul

One of the reasons that I’ve been posting so many concert previews recently is simply that (being mostly homebound at the moment) I miss going to gigs. Looking at the lineup and scope of the 2015 Manchester Jazz Festival (which starts today and runs rampant for ten days through until 9th August) reminds me that not only do I regret not attending the wealth of music that takes place here in London, but that I miss more freewheeling days of music elsewhere. Discovering unexpected, treasurable bands at random while on holiday in Brugge, for instance; or immersing myself in a week of concerts and more in Edinburgh or Leeds (such as the one I reviewed here, over a decade ago.)

We know that, as a British pop and dance city, Manchester punches well above its weight. Despite a bubbling undercurrent of improvised music, its reputation as a jazz town is hazier…. or, more probably, I’m just ignorant. The Festival’s been going for twenty years, long enough to gain enough gravity to generate its own traditions. (One such is ‘Surroundings’, a longer-form ensemble piece by Salford composer Neil Yates. Commissioned for the festival in 2010, it seems to have become the event’s unofficial signature – this year, it’s being revisited as a quartet performance in the Central Library Reading Room.)

Even a quick sift through this year’s programme reveals a jazz party that any city would be proud of – diverse, inclusive, inviting and multi-levelled, an exciting noise ranging from the stately to the vividly scraggled and all the better for it. With many tickets going at only four pounds, (with a ten-pound all-events daily ticket and free-entry deals if you stump up as a low-level event sponsor), they could hardly have made it any more inviting to the casual walker-upper. Excuse me for a moment while I strip-mine press releases and YouTube, and check Soundcloud pages and Bandcamp links.

Starting with the higher-end, bigger name events… Acclaimed Blue Note pianist Robert Glasper slips away from his experimentations with latterday R’n’B to get back to basics with an acoustic trio; John Surman re-teams with the Trans4mation String Quartet to revive the thoughtful, tidally-deep music from his ‘Coruscating’ and ‘The Spaces in Between’ albums. Norma Winstone, Klaus Gesing and Glauco Venier bring along their trans-European project Distances. Partisans bring their transatlantic swing storm; Christine Tobin her ‘Thousand Kisses Deep’ jazzification of Leonard Cohen songs. French Jazz Musician of the Year Airelle Besson makes an appearance with her Quartet for a set of “gently experimental songs animated by heartfelt lyrics, plaintive melodies and rolling harmonies.” backed with pinballing rhythms and punchy countersyncopations.

There are heavyweight two-headed summit performances by acclaimed British jazz talents – one by frequent quartet buddies Mike Walker and Gwilym Simcock, another by the more recent pairing of Tori Freestone and Alcyona Mick. Two further British scene fast risers – Stuart McCallum and Alice Zawadzki – bring string-enhanced performances of ongoing projects (the former offering contemporary soul jazz and bass-heavy electronica with surprise guest singers, the latter a fantastical Mancunian song cycle influenced by various shades of love and fairytale).

There are also several of those gentler, more literate projects which seem to blossom best in a festival atmosphere away from a hot core of gutsy brass. Andrew Woodhead and Holly Thomas’ Snapdragon trio specialize in chilled, ethereal song-settings of literature and poetry (Larkin and Bukowski-inspired) and bursts of vocalese. Mark Pringle‘s A Moveable Feast mates orchestral strings with a bold horn and rhythm section to explore “themes of wildlife, literature and city chaos.” The “fractured Anglicana” of Hugh Nankivell’s multi-instrumental/four-part vocal quartet Natural Causes means that they perform “curious compositions with improbable but poignant texts” including “psychedelic lullabies, pinprick-precise ballads, unpredictable group improvisation and brotherly harmony across the board”, and music which draws on classic and contemporary art pop (Robert Wyatt, XTC and Björk) as much as it does on jazz sources.

Elsewhere, much of the polyglot diversity of jazz today is celebrated. The Cuban tradition is represented by the Pepe Rivero Trio and Orquesta Timbala; the Congolese by Eddy Tshepe Tshepela‘s Afrika Jazz. Central and South American ideas are brought along by Agua Pasa (who, with Dudley Nesbit’s steel pan project Pan Jumby, also touch on the Caribbean). The Quarry Hillbillies (a teaming of Ulrich Elbracht, Ed Jones, Jamil Sheriff) from European contemporary jazz, while the frenetic whirl of Eastern European folk elements are covered by Makanitza. The Gorka Benítez Trio move between Basque-flavoured small group jazz and compelling free-form impressionism. David Austin Grey’s Hansu-Tori ensemble is inspired by natural, elemental and cinematic” ideas, as well as a fascination with Eastern world culture. Percussionist Felix Higginbottom’s Hans Prya provides genre-hopping jazz-dance and Jim Molyneux’s Glowrogues favour funk and hip-hop flavoured pieces. Trumpeter Lily Carassik‘s fusion group Yesa Sikyi take ideas from the ’50s and blend them with popular standards and soul arrangements; while The Stretch Trio include glossier elements from ’70s jazz rock, progressive rock and ’80s pop along with sinuous gusts of wind synth.

Those who prefer classic jazz – more traditional by-the-book American styles – might prefer Russell Henderson and Jamie Taylor’s Ellington-and-Strayhorn tribute ‘The Intimacy Of The Blues’, or the Dan Whieldon Trio‘s salute to Gershwin. The Dave Kane Quartet take inspiration from the knottier ambitions of Charles Mingus, John Zorn and Eric Dolphy. Two groups of students from the Royal Northern College of Music provide live celebrations of the history which they’ve been learning – the James Girling Quintet spans jazz, blues and funk from New Orleans roots through to the 1960s, while the Nick Conn Octet (a self-described “trombone choir”) interweaves re-arranged jazz classics with original material.

Fans of New Orleans jazz can check out genuine New Orleaners The Session (who offer a past-present take on their hometown’s music), or look out for the street sounds of the New York Brass Band (actually from old York, the cheeky buggers) or see how the Riot Jazz Brass Band dust up old New Orleans sounds with dancefloor, dubstep and drum-and-bass incursions. Hot jazz/Gypsy/jazz manouche aficionados can go for the loving recreations of 52 Skidoo (who promise you prohibition speakeasies, rent parties and Tin Pan Alley) or for Gypsies Of Bohemia, who manouche-ify latterday pop songs such as Heart Of Glass, Toxic and Hot In Herre. (Being Mancunian, they also do This Charming Man – I’ll bet that that high-life opening riff translates pretty well).

Of course, much of the fun of a jazz festival involves catching a lesser-known, or even unknown, band carving away at the edge, furiously discovering – and there are plenty of those here. Since they drew me into covering the festival in the first place, I’m going to put a particular word in for Jon Thorne’s Sunshine Brothers (playing at Matt & Phreds on 4^th August) in which the double bass/laptop-wielding Jon teams up with drummer Rob Turner (of Blue Note-signed breakbeat jazz electronicists GoGo Penguin) and looping poly-genre bass guitarist Steve Lawson (a ‘Misfit City’ regular) for “a cutting-edge trio of genre-defying musicians mixing jazz, improvisation, electronic and filmic soundscapes to euphoric effect, evoking sounds far removed from their bass origins.”

However, you could just as easily catch a full performance by GoGo Penguin themselves; or by Lauren Kinsella’s Blue-Eyed Hawk, who offer “art-rock, jazz and electronic soundworlds: imaginative and emotive, from pindrop to powerhouse.” The Madwort Saxophone Quartet play intricate four-part math-jazz. “Power-jazz commando team” Taupe (a triple-city trio from Manchester, Newcastle and Edinburgh) punch around themes from jazz, hip hop and heavy metal. Craig Scott’s Lobotomy seem determined to take the cake for upfront experimental exhilaration this time around, delivering shout-outs to John Cage, Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa, proclaiming a performance in which “experimental jazz rubs shoulders with electronica and DIY alternative rock in a bubbling cauldron of live and recorded sounds” and promising to sample and reconstruction their own improvisations live on stage. There’ll also be a improvised summit involving bands associated with Manchester’s Efpi Records and Paris’ Onze Heures Onze collective.

One way into discovery is to take advantage of the free showcases for emerging bands. Care of the BBC’s ‘Jazz On 3’, London offers three bands – Nérija ( the all-female creative septet from the Tomorrow’s Warriors jazz school), the award-winning piano jazz of the Ashley Henry Trio and the decidedly psychedelic Phaze Theory (a quartet of drums, tuba, voice and guitar dedicated to “exploring the vastness of the musical cosmos”).

But perhaps it’s Jazz North’s Northern Line series that you should be checking out, showcasing bands from the north and the Midlands. Manchester offers the Iain Dixon/Les Chisnall Duo (whose repertoire of self-defined standards stretches from Messaien to Gracie Fields) and the John Bailey Quintet (guitar-led, and similarly inspired by twentieth century classical music). Newcastle provides barrel-house blues and ballads from The Lindsay Hannon Plus and the tricky free jazz/folk/rock/dancefloor entwinings of the Graeme Wilson Quartet. Lancaster and Liverpool provide one act apiece – Andrew Grew’s “total improvisers” The Grew Quartet and the “gothic bebop” of Blind Monk Trio, who claim to fuse the spirit of Thelonius Monk with Persian traditional music and the heavy-rock attitude of Led Zeppelin and Nirvana’s heavy-rock attitude.

However, it’s Leeds (still underrated as a musical powerhouse despite the world-class output of its music college and the vigorous inventiveness of its bands) which dominates the Northern Line. As well as providing the previously-mentioned Pan Jumby, Leeds brings the Portuguese/African/Latin and Indian song-fusions of Manjula, the Django Reinhardt swing of the Matt Holborn Quartet, Cameron Vale‘s ferociously energetic melange of jazz, metal, electronica, Afrobeat and Klezmer and the semi-electric “extreme, eerie to comic” improvisations of Tipping Point (featuring perpetual bad-boy pianist Matthew Bourne). Friendly rivalry aside, there’s also co-operation: Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool all join forces in The Bugalu Foundation for a Latin barrio take on northern soul.

Around all of this jazz there’s the usual happy agglomeration of related music – not quite jazz in itself, but possibly sharing a drink or a roll-up somewhere along the way. The festival covers various popular outcropping such as soul (in assorted Northern, jazz and diva forms courtesy of The Juggernaut Love Band, Terry Shaltiel & The Soultroopers, Charlie Cooper & The CCs) but also ’60s/‘70s funk (Buffalo Brothers), ’70s Afrobeat and Ethiopian pop (Kalakuta), ska (Baked à la Ska) and mbalax (Mamadou & The Super Libidor Band). There’s even an alt-country act (Stevie Williams & The Most Wanted Band) sneaking in at the back door. As for rock’n’roll/folk/reggae/swing scavengers The Flat Cap 3… well, for starters, there’s only two of them, so you can be dubious about anything else you might read, but don’t let that put you off.

Three female songwriters are also bringing their bands, coming from a folk or world music zone and overlapping into jazz. Kirsty McGee leads her Hobopop Collective through a “joyful, dirty” sound drawing from gospel, blues and a collection of found instruments (including musical saw, waterphone, Humber hubcaps and metal buckets). The constantly shifting song landscapes of the Zoe Kyoti Trio draw from their leader’s Armenian and Greek heritage (as well as Cajun, European and Indian ideas). Saluting home-brewed British polyculture, Shama Rahman‘s ensemble explore her London home, her Bangladeshi roots, and her childhood memories of Middle Eastern desert landscapes in a “sitar,stories and song” melange of jazz-inspired improvisation, classically-inspired melodies and folk-inspired storytelling accompanied by energetic rhythms of swing, funk, hip hop, bossa nova and drum’n’bass.

For parents of very young children, needing to balance a jazz fix with family responsibilities, there are a couple of fully interactive kids’ events with activities, storytelling and improvisations. The Living Story Music Ensemble and illustrator Ann Gilligan collaborate on ‘I Have A Duck Who Can Roar’; the blues-and-roots-tinged Hillary Step Quartet work with storyteller Ursula Holden Gill and dancers from The Dalcroze Society for ‘How Monkey Found His Swing’. Once the kids are attended to, there are still interactive events for the grown-ups, whether you’re talking about the all-in jazz vinyl night, the mixed-genre dj sets by Mr Scruff, Franny Eubanks‘ open-door blues jam or (for the more technologically inquisitive) Rodrigo Constanzo‘s showcasing of his dfscore software. The latter’s a creative music tool, cueing improvisers via graphical, visual and written clues: on this occasion, anyone with an instrument and a connectible smartphone/tablet/pad should be able to roll up and join in with the roar, joining some leading improvisers in performing music in tandem with the system.

For those remaining soundclips which I’ve not already snatched and pasted, visit the MJF Soundcloud page here … but better yet, if you’re anywhere near Manchester over the next few weeks, drop in at the festival (it’s hard to miss, considering that it’s not just hiding behind club doors but has effectively taken over the town’s main square for a fortnight). Seeing something this impressive light up and roll on fills me with delight – even if on this occasion I’m also filled with rue at not being able to go myself. But never mind me…

Tags: 52 Skidoo, Afrika Jazz, Agua Pasa, Airelle Besson, Alice Zawadzki, Andrew Grew, Andrew Woodhead, Ann Gilligan, Ashley Henry, Baked à la Ska, Billy Strayhorn, Birmingham (England), Blind Monk Trio, Blue-Eyed Hawk, Buffalo Brothers, Cameron Vale, Charles Mingus, Charlie Cooper & The CCs, Christine Tobin, Dan Whieldon, Dave Kane, Dave McKean, David Austin Grey, dfscore, Distances (jazz trio), Duke Ellington, Ed Jones, Eddy Tshepe Tshepela, Edinburgh (Scotland), Felix Higginbottom, Franny Eubanks, George Gershwin, Glauco Venier, Glowrogues, GoGo Penguin, Gorka Benítez, Graeme Wilson, Gwilym Simcock, Gypsies Of Bohemia, Halifax (England), Hans Prya, Hansu-Tori, Hillary Step Quartet, Hugh Nankivell, Iain Ballamy, Iain Dixon, James Girling, Jamie Taylor, Jamil Sheriff, Jim Molyneux, John Bailey, John Surman, Jon Thorne, Jon Thorne’s Sunshine Brothers, Kalakuta, Kirsty McGee, Klaus Gesing, Lauren Kinsella, Leeds (England), Leonard Cohen, Les Chisnall, Lily Carassik, listening to women, live concerts, Liverpool (England), Living Story Music Ensemble, Madwort Saxophone Quartet, Makanitza, Mamadou & The Super Libidor Band, Manchester (England), Manjula, Mark Pringle, Matt Holborn, Matthew Bourne, Matthew Sweeney, men and women singing together, Mike Walker, Mr Scruff, Natural Causes, Nérija, Neil Yates, New Orleans (USA), New York Brass Band, Newcastle-upon-Tyne (England), Nick Conn, Norma Winstone, Onze Heures Onze (collective), Orquesta Timbala, Pan Jumby, Partisans, Pepe Rivero, Phaze Theory, Riot Jazz Brass Band, Rob Turner, Robert Glasper, Rodrigo Constanzo, Russell Henderson, Shama Rahman, Snapdragon, Steve Lawson, Stevie Williams & The Most Wanted Band, Stuart McCallum, Taupe, Terry Shaltiel & The Soultroopers, The Bugalu Foundation, The Dalcroze Society, The Flat Cap 3, The Grew Quartet, The Hobopop Collective, The Juggernaut Love Band, The Lindsay Hannon Plus, The Manchester Jazz Festival (event), The Pepper Street Orchestra, The Quarry Hillbillies, The Session (jazz band), Tipping Point, Tomorrow's Warriors, Torquay (England), Trans4mation String Quartet, Ulrich Elbracht, Ursula Holden Gill, women of heart and mind, Yesa Sikyi, Zoe Kyoti

July 2015 – upcoming London gigs this week – LUME on Thursday (Nick Costley-White/Bleep Test); Daylight Music on Saturday (The UCC Handbell Ringers/Ryan Teague/Ellie Lovegrove, with Angèle David-Guillou)

13 Jul

More upcoming London gigs this week. Firstly, various kinds of jazz on Thursday…

Nick Costley-White & Bleep Test (LUME @ Long White Cloud, 151 Hackney Road, Hoxton, London, E2 8JL, UK, Thursday 16th July, 8.00pm

This week at LUME… original and improvised music. We’ve got a tasty double bill for you this Thursday with solo guitar explorations and an exciting new electronic jazz ensemble mixing beats and tunes. Should be a great evening of cutting edge new sounds. Entry is one Bank of England note of your choice. (£5, £10, £20… £50???!)

Bleep Test (Fraser Smith – tenor sax/effects; Joe Webb – synths; Lloyd Haines – drums; Matthew Read – bass) combine house, breaks, drum & bass and jazz. Analog synths, electric drums and a screaming saxophone tie this band to the growing scene of exciting, genre defying music groups emerging from London’s creative underground. Fiery grooves and memorable melodies push these musicians out of the traditional jazz improvisation realm and into another soundscape that hits hard.

Nick Costley-White is fast becoming one of the most in demand young guitarists in the London jazz scene. With a developed sound and individual voice on his instrument, Nick has had the opportunity to perform professionally with some of the country’s finest musicians including Stan Sulzmann, Jeff Williams, Gareth Lockrane, Tom Challenger, Martin Speake, Ivo Neame, Tommy Andrews, Jon Scott, Dave Hamblet and Josh Arcoleo.
Nick studied jazz and classical guitar at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama with Phil Robson, Colin Oxley and John Parricelli, graduating with first class honours and awarded the 2011 Yamaha Jazz Scholarship for Outstanding Musicians.

See you there!

On Saturday, there’s the last Daylight Music concert of the season, with definite sacred and classical tinges to it…

Daylight Music 197: The UCC Handbell Ringers + Ryan Teague + Ellie Lovegrove (Union Chapel, Compton Terrace, Islington, London, N1 2UN – Saturday 18th July, 12pm to 2pm)

A Bells and Bronze afternoon will ring out this season of Daylight in style.

The UCC Handbell Ringers are a select group of nineteen young people, ages fourteen to eighteen, from the University Christian Church in Fort Worth, Texas. This Church is situated across the street from the Texas Christian University School of Music and since its founding in 1873, the music ministry has been an integral part in the life of the church. The UCC Ringers ring one of the church’s two five-octave sets of English handbells cast by the Whitechapel Bell Foundry in London. The bell choirs have a long tradition of musical excellence and have been an integral part of the life of the church for many years. They have toured regularly. In addition to being the first bell choir to perform at Westminster Abbey, they have played in worship services and in concert at the Royal Festival Hall, York Minster, St. Mary Redcliffe Church in Bristol and the Collegiate Church of St. Mary in Warwick; and at Exeter, Bristol, Gloucester, Canterbury, Winchester, Salisbury, Christ Church Oxford and Coventry Cathedrals.

Ryan Teague is a composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist based in Bristol. His music combines acoustic instrumentation and arrangements with electronic and processed material, the results of which incorporate minimalist, ambient and electro-acoustic music. Ryan has released numerous albums and EPs on labels including Village Green, Sonic Pieces and Type Records. He also produces music and sound design for various film & TV productions and has spent an extended period of time in Indonesia studying Javanese gamelan music. This afternoon’s music will also feature a new and exclusive composition premiere ‘Storm Or Tempest May Stop Play’ by Ryan Teague with Gamelan Ensemble.

From a musical family in Ware, Hertfordshire, Ellie Lovegrove began learning the trumpet at school aged seven. She later played principal trumpet with the Hertfordshire County Youth Orchestra, joined the National Youth Orchestra at the Proms, and went on to study at the Royal College of Music, London. Here she received tuition from Paul Beniston, Neil Brough and Michael Laird, winning the Brass Ensemble Prize and the Brass Concerto Competition. Ellie continued her studies with Kristian Steenstrup and Mark David. Professionally, Ellie enjoys a varied freelance career. Her work as an orchestral player includes concerts and broadcasts with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, RTÉ Concert Orchestra, Royal Ballet Sinfonia and the Britten Sinfonia. She has also deputised for the the Royal Shakespeare Company as the onstage trumpeter in their production of ‘The Roaring Girl’ and in their recent production of ‘Henry IV’ at the Barbican. As a chamber musician, Ellie has performed at The London Handel Festival on period instruments, and has enjoyed working with Chaconne Brass, including a commercial recording of a new work by Bob Chilcott with Wells Cathedral Choir. Her trumpet and organ duo Illumina have performed recitals at St Paul’s Cathedral, Fairfield Halls and Alexandra Palace, and have recently commissioned a new work from composer Paul Burke.

If that wasn’t enough magic then Angèle David-Guillou will plays some chiming melodies on the piano. Angèle is best known for a brace of critically acclaimed electro-acoustic dream-pop albums under the alias Klima, for her signature contributions to cult Anglo-French ensemble Piano Magic and for cameos on albums by the likes of The Go! Team, Peter Astor and Ginger Ale. In contrast to much of her oeuvre to date, Angèle’s debut album under her given name is a largely, if not exclusively, instrumental work, predominantly consisting of melodically opulent, emotionally compelling compositions for the grand piano (and, on three songs, a Wurlitzer electric piano), many of them emblazoned with vivid arrangements for strings, woodwind, musical saw and percussion.

Free entry, but donations are (as ever) encouraged.

Tags: almost acoustic, Angèle David-Guillou, bells, Bleep Test, chamber ensemble, Daylight Music (event), electric guitar music, Ellie Lovegrove, Fraser Smith, Joe Webb, Klima, live concerts, Lloyd Haines, London (England), LUME (event), Matthew Read, Nick Costley-White, Piano Magic, piano music, Ryan Teague, The UCC Handbell Ringers, trumpet music

June 2015 – upcoming London classical gigs – Jane Manning curates Voiceworks – two concerts of contemporary classical song

21 Jun

For anyone who’s interested in contemporary classical song, here are details on two London afternoon concerts taking place this week and next week…

Voiceworks Song Recitals:
Concert 1 – St Olave Hart Street, 8 Hart Street, London, EC3R 7NB, UK, Thursday 25th June, 1.05pm
Concert 2 – St Stephen Walbrook, 39 Walbrook, London, EC4N 8BN, UK, Tuesday 30th June, 1.05pm

Senior Guildhall School of Music musicians are giving free lunchtime concerts in churches across the City as part of the City of London Festival 2015. In the Voiceworks concerts, postgraduate singers and pianists perform in two programmes of twentieth & twenty-first century repertoire curated by soprano Jane Manning (in conjunction with ‘New Vocal Repertory For The 21st Century’, her forthcoming book for Oxford University Press).

Songs to be performed include repertoire by Alison Bauld (both concerts); Joseph Horovitz, Cecilia McDowall and John McLeod, Edward Nesbit, Anthony Payne and Thierry Pecou (concert 1); Sebastian Currier, Lori Laitman, Anthony Milner, Mel Powell, Malcolm Singer and Huw Watkins (concert 2).

Performers:

(Concert 1:)

Holly-Marie Bingham – mezzo-soprano
Sarah Killian – soprano
Jean-Max Latteman – countertenor
Juliane Gallant, Michelle Santiago, Dylan Perez – piano

(Concert 2:)

Genevieve Colletta, Joana Gil – soprano
James Robinson – tenor
Michelle Santiago, Natalie Burch – piano

More information is here for concert 1 and here for concert 2.

Tags: Alison Bauld, Anthony Milner, Anthony Payne, Cecilia McDowall, chamber ensemble, City of London Festival (event), countertenor (vocal) music, Dylan Perez, Edward Nesbit, Genevieve Colletta, Guildhall School of Music, Holly-Marie Bingham, Huw Watkins, James Robinson, Jean-Max Latteman, Joana Gil, John McLeod, Joseph Horowitz, Juliane Gallant, listening to women, London (England), Lori Laitman, Malcolm Singer, Mel Powell, Michelle Santiago, Natalie Burch, piano music, Sarah Killian, Sebastian Currier, soprano (vocal) music, tenor (vocal) music, Thierry Pecou

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Categories 2015, 20th century classical music, 21st century classical music, acoustic music, chamber music, classical (Western art music), classical songs, New Music, previews, vocal music

June 2015 – upcoming London gigs – North-eastern classical – a London debut for the Baltic Music Society

17 Jun

Baltic Music Society – Inaugural Concert (All Saints Church,, Clydesdale Road, Notting Hill, London W11 1JE, UK, Saturday 20th June, 7.00pm)

The newly-formed Baltic Music Society in London hosts its debut concert of classical chamber music this coming Saturday, in Notting Hill.

This first concert features music by Erkii Sven-Tuur, Jāzeps Vītols and a host of living composers including Arvo Part. It includes the world premiere of a specially commissioned new work – ‘Memories of Lithuania’ by Keith Burstein, a British composer of Lithuanian descent – and music by a wide range of Baltic state composers including Zita Bružaitė, Bronius Kutavičius, Anatolijus Šenderovas, and Ariel Anenburg.

The Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia lie on one of the critical geopolitical faultlines of the world and yet still little is known of their culture in the West. However the burgeoning creativity of the region now promises a new wave of cultural riches. The Baltic Music Society exists to explore, present and introduce music from or inspired by the Baltic region. The world refracted through the amber stone of the Baltic – a new light from a new music. Join us at the beginning of this pathway of discovery.

Programme:

Zita Bružaite – Novelette

Bronius Kutavičius – Three Metamorphoses

Jāzeps Vītols – Romance

Erkki-Sven Tüür – Piano Sonata

Keith Burstein – Trio for Viola, Clarinet and Piano, “Memories of Lithuania” (world premiere)

Anatolijus Šenderovas – Cantus in memoriam Jascha Heifetz

Arvo Pärt – Spiegel im Spiegel

Keith Burstein – PianoWorks

Ariel Anenburg – Images

Performers:

Jelena Makarova, Rimantas Vingras, Kristiina Rokashevich, Keith Burstein – piano
Antanas Makštutis – clarinet
Orpheus Papafilippou – violin,
Barbara Gumėnaitė – viola.

Expect a broad range of musical voices, from folk-inspired pieces to torrid, fractured flights of neo-romantic piano through to Pärt’s familiar “holy minimalism”. More information is here, and tickets are available here – price £10.00.

For a few tastes of what’s on offer, I’ve tracked down a few YouTube performances of some of the pieces on the programme – see below:

Tags: Anatolijus Šenderovas, Antanas Makštutis, Ariel Anenburg, Arvo Pärt, Barbara Gumėnaitė, Bronius Kutavičius, chamber ensemble, clarinet music, Erkki-Sven Tüür, Estonia, Jelena Makarova, Jāzeps Vītols, Keith Burstein, Kristiina Rokashevich, Lithuania, London (England), Orpheus Papafilippou, piano music, Rimantas Vingras, The Baltic Music Society (London), viola music, violin music, Zita Bružaitė

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Categories 2015, 20th century classical music, 21st century classical music, chamber music, classical (Western art music), instrumental music, previews

June 2015 – upcoming London gigs – A Formal Horse & Ham Legion; Olga Stezhko; The Spiders of Destiny play Frank Zappa; a Bowie Night in Soho

29 May

Here’s some quick info on upcoming gigs in early June which I’ve heard about – all of them in London.

Over the last couple of years, Westminster Kingsway College has established itself as one of the capital’s finest homes for quirky art-rock – by which I don’t mean student hobby bands thrown together for campness or for ironic prankery, but a rich, complex, committed electric music spanning the range between gutter-punk and flouncing prog via metal, jazz, folk, avant-gardening and anything else which gets melted down into the stew. Here’s one of those gigs that proves the point.

A Formal Horse + Ham Legion (Westminster Kingsway College, 211 Gray’s Inn Road, London, WC1X 8RA, Tuesday 2nd June, 6.30pm)

A Formal Horse is a new progressive rock quartet based in Southampton. Although the band’s sound is difficult to pinpoint, their dense instrumental passages are reminiscent of King Crimson and Mahavishnu Orchestra, whilst Francesca Lewis’ lead vocals evoke the whimsical surrealism of the 1970s’ Canterbury scene. Wonky melodies and serene vocals over a brutal sound – their music keeps you on your toes. However, A Formal Horse go beyond simply regurgitating the music of their predecessors. With influences as diverse as Bartók and Bon Iver, the band prove that there is still much territory to be explored in the field of British progressive rock.

In June 2014, the band released their debut EP, which was recorded by Rob Aubrey (IQ, Transatlantic). They went on to perform at London’s Resonance Weekend alongside Bigelf and Änglagård, and were described by Prog Magazine as a “festival highpoint”. Since, they have shared stages with Knifeworld and Lifesigns, cementing their position at the forefront of the British progressive scene.

Ham Legion spent 2014 honing their sound and developing a storming live show. You can expect a collision of beaming up beat power pop, grinding metal outbursts, dramatic changes of mood, sudden passages of twistingly epic prog then moments of restrained delivery and somber reflection. They are striking out in 2015 with the release of their debut album towards the end of the year.

Tickets available here – £6.00/£5.00

Olga Stezkho: ‘Eta Carinae’

Olga Stezhko (the far-thinking Belarusian classical pianist whose ‘Eta Carina’ album impressed me so much last year) has two London concerts coming up in the first fortnight of the month. The second’s likely to be an all-access crowd-pleaser. Given its charity fundraiser status, I’m not sure whether the first is likely to feature or indulge any of Olga’s intriguing conceptual preoccupations with Scriabin, Busoni, cosmology and early twentieth century consciousness, but even if it isn’t it’s a great opportunity to see a fine musician at work in a grand location.

Olga Stezhko charity piano recital in aid of Friends of the Belarusian Children’s Hospice (St Pancras Parish Church, Euston, London NW1 2BA, Thursday 4th June, 1:15pm – 2:00pm)

Programme not revealed – free admission, donations requested.

EC4 Music in aid of The Prince’s Trust (Barbican Hall, Tuesday 9th June, 7:30pm – 9:30pm)

The choir and orchestra of London-based EC4 Music return for their seventh fundraising concert in aid of The Prince’s Trust with a stirring selection of music from both sides of the Atlantic.

Programme:

Leonard Bernstein – Overture from ‘Candide’
Aaron Copland – Appalachian Spring
George Gershwin – Rhapsody in Blue
Vaughan Williams – Serenade to Music
Leonard Bernstein – Chichester Psalms
Eric Whitacre – Water Night
Hubert Parry – Blest Pair of Sirens

Performers:

EC4 Music Choir and Orchestra
Tim Crosley – conductor
Olga Stezhko – piano
Claire Seaton – soprano
Roderick Morris – countertenor
Thomas Herford – tenor
Adam Green – baritone

Tickets available here – prices from £10.00 – £35.00 plus booking fee.

Some of London’s most active art-rockers are brewing up a free Zappa homage in Croydon at around the same time. Details below:

The Spiders of Destiny play Frank Zappa (The Oval Tavern, 131 Oval Road, Croydon, CR0 6BR, Saturday 6th June, 8:30pm)

Great googly moogly! On June 6th, nine-piece tribute band Spiders Of Destiny come to The Oval Tavern to play a marathon set of music by the late, great Frank Zappa. Featuring world class performers with a sense of humour from notable prog/alternative bands such as: Knifeworld, Perhaps Contraption, Pigshackle, Medieval Baebes, The Display Team, Hot Head Show, Poino, Spiritwo, First, A Sweet Niche and more. So polish up your zircon-encrusted tweezers, trim your poodle, learn the mudshark dance and join us as we propagate the conceptual continuity instigated by one of the masters of modern music.

More info here – this gig is FREE ENTRY but there will be a donations jug doing the rounds during the intermission.

Anyone with an interest in David Bowie, rock history, cabaret, electropop and all of the other things that get swept up into Bowie’s art should head to Soho on Thursday 11th June for A Bowie Night at Gerry’s Club, at which pianist and writer Clifford Slapper launches his book ‘Bowie’s Piano Man: The Life of Mike Garson‘ (which also has its own Facebook page).

As well as readings and signings there will be performances of Bowie songs from avowed fans Danie Cox (from “flock-rockers” The Featherz), Ray Burmiston (of ’80s heroes Passion Puppets), club siren Katherine Ellis (Freemasons, Ruff Driverz, Bimbo Jones etc.) and acoustic singer Jorge Vadio. There’ll also be a performance from a longtime ‘Misfit City’ favourite – London balladeer, Brel translator and onetime ‘Pirate Jenny’s’ host Des de Moor, who’ll presumably be singing his Bowie-gone-chanson interpretations from his ‘Darkness and Disgrace’ show. (I’m particularly pleased to see that Des is back onstage. It’s been a long time.)

More on the book below, and more on Gerry’s Club here.

“It is pointless to talk about his ability as a pianist. He is exceptional. However, there are very, very few musicians, let alone pianists, who naturally understand the movement and free thinking necessary to hurl themselves into experimental or traditional areas of music, sometimes, ironically, at the same time. Mike does this with such enthusiasm that it makes my heart glad just to be in the same room with him.” – David Bowie

Mike Garson has played piano on sixteen David Bowie albums, including Aladdin Sane, with his celebrated piano solo on its title track, Diamond Dogs, Young Americans, 1. Outside and Reality. He has also played live with Bowie on countless tours and shows, and remains his most long-standing and frequent band member.

For some time Clifford Slapper has been working very closely with Garson to write a book which explores the life of this extraordinary and eccentric modern musician. It documents in detail how as a pianist he was catapulted overnight from the obscure world of New York’s avant-garde jazz scene to a close and long connection with Bowie. In addition, Garson is recognised as a classical virtuoso, a jazz master and one of the world’s greatest exponents of improvisation. He has also recorded and performed live with other rock legends such as the Smashing Pumpkins and Nine Inch Nails. All of this is covered by this first ever biography of Mike Garson.

Its starting point was several days of in-depth and frank conversation with Garson himself, and covers a wide range of themes which will be of interest to all Bowie fans, but also to anyone with a passion for music, social history or the process of creative inspiration. Input has also come from many interviews with those who have worked with him over the years, including Earl Slick, Trent Reznor, Sterling Campbell, Reeves Gabrels, Dave Liebman and many others.

Tags: A Formal Horse, Aaron Copland, acoustic performance, Adam Green, almost acoustic, book launches, Charlie Cawood, Claire Seaton, Clifford Slapper, Danie Cox, David Bowie, Des de Moor, EC4 Music Choir and Orchestra, Eric Whitacre, fund-raising, George Gershwin, Ham Legion, Hubert Parry, Jorge Vadio, Katherine Ellis, Leonard Bernstein, live concerts, London (England), Mike Garson, Olga Stezhko, Passion Puppets, Pirate Jenny's (event), Ralph Vaughan Williams, Ray Burmiston, rock books, Roderick Morris, The Featherz, The Spiders of Destiny, Thomas Herford, Tim Crosley

May 2015 – End-of-May gigs (mostly London) – Bank Holiday weekenders from Daylight Music and SmileAcoustic; a mixed-classical benefit for Nepal; Knifeworld again; fun and frolics underneath the arches with John Ellis and co.

22 May

Just because I’m likely to be stuck indoors for the next fortnight doesn’t mean that you have to be. Some interesting gigs are coming up in – mostly in London, I’m afraid – but just in case any of you are London-based, here are some ideas to see you through until June.

First of all, there are two free Daylight Music events over the weekend. Running eclectic free gigs that span from cosy to experimental, and from classical to folk to noise-pop, Daylight Music have been a Misfit City favourite for a long time. See here for reviews of previous events in September and October 2013 and in January 2014; and see below for details on the upcoming concerts…

Join us for a weekend of music with artist travelling from Los Angeles, Wales and Spain to dazzle you. And while you’re reading this, have a listen to a special mix by Ex-Easter Island Head.

Daylight Music 190: Winter Villains + Poppy Ackroyd + Jon DeRosa (Union Chapel – Saturday 23rd May, midday to 2pm)

The new Spring Season kicks off with a name to watch; Poppy Ackroyd is a classically trained pianist and violinist who weaves delicate, atmosphere music by manipulating and multi-tracking sounds from just those two instruments. On the same week, you can hear Cardiff’s Winter Villains and their intricate chamber pop music (the duo were nominated for the Welsh Music Prize in 2013) and Jon DeRosa from the USA, whose new album ‘Black Halo’ is out via Rocket Girl on 25 May. Hannah Lawrence plays some usual and some unusual melodies on the Henry Willis organ in between this week. Full details here.

Colleen with Ex-Easter Island Head (LSO St Luke’s – Sunday 24th May 7.30pm)

A double bill of musicians renowned for manipulating your expectations as much as they do their instruments; creating hypnotic minimalist music from simple arrays of strings, percussion and even just vocals. Colleen mixes acoustic instruments with electronic sampling techniques to create rhythmic, lyrical folk-pop songs. Her new album Captain of None will focus on a melodic repertoire, with fast-paced tracks rooted by prominent bass lines and her instruments of choice, the treble viola da gamba and her voice. Liverpool-based Ex-Easter Island Head turn the electric guitar on its head, to compose physical, droning soundscapes.

Next up, on Bank Holiday Monday there’s an afternoon-and-evening free concert in Bethnal Green, promoted by unplugged specialists Smile Acoustic (who are new to me, but seem very welcoming). Far too many different acts to summarize quickly – although I do recognise Matt Finucane, who first came to my attention doing anti-pop with Empty Vessels years ago and who’s now matured (though he probably wouldn’t use the word) into a sinister songwriter and a horror/science fiction writer. Read on…

SmileAcoustic: Tasting Menu Bank Holiday Special (Rich Mix – Monday 25th May, 4pm onwards)

Smile Acoustic has been making many friends, and all our friends seem to make great music… so we thought it high time for a get together. An extra long weekend requires extra entertainment after all! So we present a feast of flavours, in our first ever Tasting Menu. Full information here.

4pm – Prash Gor, Kirsten McClure, Lauren Lucille, Matt Finucane, Dave Santos, Gian Luca, Mark Harrison, Jeremy of The Green Rock River Band, Horatio James

7pm – Bellatrix, Camilo Menjura, Arthur Lea

Yes we’re cramming in a ridiculous amount of talent into an additional late afternoon show, as well as our usual evening gig. An incredible array of original songsters will be gracing the stage, with a line up that takes us all the way from banjo to beatbox. Free entry as ever, as is the cake. See you there!

On Friday 29th May, in west London, UK Music for Nepal are putting on a classical music benefit aiming to raise ten thousand pounds for the victims of the earthquake. It’s mostly performances of Romantic and Baroque work (by Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Brahms, Bach, Liszt and Fauré), but with a few outbreaks of early twentieth century modernism via some Scriabin pieces, plus a world premiere of a new piano work by composer Keith Burstein (a onetime Romantic Futurist and still an ongoing champion of latterday tonal music – see here for a long-ago review of his first String Quartet). It’s also got a striking array of performance talent – see below…

Gala Concert for Nepal (St Barnabas Church, Ealing, London, Friday 29th May, 7.30pm)

Programme:

Johann Sebastian Bach – Chorale Prelude “Nun Komm die Heiden Heiland” BMV 659
Frédéric Chopin – Polonaise-fantaisie in A flat major, Op.61
Gabriel Fauré – Sicilienne, Op.78
Gabriel Fauré – Élégie, Op.24
Aleksandr Scriabin – Etude in D# minor Op.8 No12
Aleksandr Scriabin – Nocturne for Left Hand
Sergei Rachmaninov – Cello Sonata in G minor, Op.19
Franz Liszt – Consolations, S.172
Sergei Rachmaninov – Prelude in G minor Op. 23 No. 5
Johannes Brahms – Variations on a theme by Paganini (Book 1)
(and a world premiere by composer Keith Burstein)

Performers:

Alicja Fiderkiewicz, Carlo Grante, Artur Pizarro, Murray McLachlan, Viv McLean, Nico de Villiers, Keith Burstein – piano
Corinne Morris – cello

Tickets available here – prices from £20.00 to £50.00.

Also on Friday 29th May there’s the latest London gig by Knifeworld, part of a five-date English tour also taking in Manchester, York, Bristol and Brighton (as mentioned a few posts back). Expect an evening of explosive, tuneful and corrugated art rock played with the vigour of a soul revue and the complexities of a ’70s prog band. For the York gig, they’re supported by motorik rockers Muttley Crew and for the London gig by bounding art-rockers Barringtone (ex-Clor) and Cesarians. The Brighton gig is a Tim Smith benefit gig at which they’re supported by prog-poppers Ham Legion, the mysterious M U M M Y (a brand new project by Cardiacs affiliates Jo Spratley and Bic Hayes) and self-styled bitter and twisted songwriter Stephen Evens (who says of himself that “the songs are beautiful and the words are horrible. I don’t know why you don’t think that’s a good thing…”).

Finally, on Saturday 30th May at 8pm there’s what’s billed as “a night of fun and frolics” at the Wanstead Tap (a craft beer shop in Forest Gate which doubles – or quadruples – as café, bar and performance space). The main attraction is John Ellis (the former Peter Hammill, Stranglers and Peter Gabriel guitarist whom ‘Misfit City’ last encountered via his ‘Sly Guitar‘ album). John’s solo gigs are rare, but he’s something of a master of post-punk art-rock guitar, so well worth seeing. Also on the bill are “post-punk electronic balladeers” Cult With No Name and Kamelia Ivanova (who’s either highly mysterious or needs to fix his or her Facebook page). See below for the flyer.

Tags: acoustic performance, Aleksandr Scriabin, Alicja Fiderkiewicz, almost acoustic, Arthur Lea, Artur Pizarro, Bellatrix (rapper), Camilo Menjura, Carlo Grante, Colleen, Corinne Morris, Cult With No Name, Dave Santos, Daylight Music (event), Ex-Easter Island Head, Franz Liszt, Frédéric Chopin, fund-raising, Gabriel Fauré, Gian Luca, Hannah Lawrence, Horatio James, Johann Sebastian Bach, Johannes Brahms, John Ellis, Jon DeRosa, Kamelia Ivanova, Kavus Torabi, Keith Burstein, Kirsten McClure, Knifeworld, Lauren Lucille, live concerts, Mark Harrison, Matt Finucane, Murray McLachlan, Nico de Villiers, Poppy Ackroyd, Prash Gor, Sergei Rachmaninov, SmileAcoustic (event), The Green Rock River Band, Viv McLean, Winter Villains

January 2013 – album reviews – Érick d’Orion’s ‘Koursk’ (“a kind of philosophical haunting”)

29 Jan

Érick d’Orion: ‘Koursk’

What becomes evident while listening to ‘Koursk’ is the kernel of oblique, detached anger which beads at its heart. The abrasive vigour of noise music – its refusal to comply to melody, to conventional narratives and aesthetics of order, even to most standards of beauty – can give it a predictable free pass into total self-indulgence. It’s good to hear something in this musical vein which hints at a moral core, at least for a while.

Recorded over a five-year period, Érick d’Orion’s baleful album mingles a stern, clinical brutality with unexpected gaps for breathing. A veteran of avant-garde noisemaking since the mid-’90s (via Napalm Jazz, morceaux_de_machines and entanglements with Otomo Yoshihide, Evan Parker and the like) Érick has based the core of his album on “the fatality of a place, or concept.” In effect, he’s created a kind of philosophical haunting.

Erick’s ground-zero meme is Koursk, out of which he plots and illustrates two fateful iterations. For those who don’t know their eastern European history, Koursk (or Kursk) is an ancient, iron-rich city and region of mid-Russia. During World War II, it saw the biggest and bloodiest tank battle in history, sprawling over a month’s duration as the Red Army ground itself to Pyrrhic shards and mince against the Wehrmacht. Under the spades of the defending Russians, the Kursk hills were gouged by thousands of miles of trenches and tank-crippling ditches, while Soviet air-raids pelted the Panzer supply lines. The Soviets triumphed and the Germans were halted, but at the cost of enormous losses of Russian men and machines – all thrown relentlessly into the meat-grinder by Marshal Zhukov and his colleagues in order to defend the motherland.

Fifty-seven years later (and nine years post-Soviet, in 2000) a second Koursk hit the worldwide news – a flagship Russian Federation nuclear submarine, named after the original grim victory. Following explosions in its torpedo chamber, the ‘Koursk’ plunged helplessly to the bottom of the sea. While the crew’s relatives panicked, the Russian authorities rejected international rescue assistance (on the grounds of military secrecy), covered up the disaster, bungled four successive days of rescue attempts and finally accepted help too late. Everyone on board the submarine was long dead by then. Initially, the Russian Admiralty claimed that the crew of the ‘Koursk’ had all perished within minutes of the disaster. It emerged later that many of them had stayed alive and conscious long enough to see the air run out and the water rush in, and that some of them had even had time to write farewell notes for their loved ones. The cause of the explosion was finally traced to a faulty, antiquated torpedo, retained for budget reasons. No one was ever punished or prosecuted – instead, the government spent most of its efforts on condemning the Russian media for negative coverage of the disaster.

Far away from these painful events, it’s easy to moon vacuously about the curse of Koursk, or to make similarly dimwitted puns. It’s also easy to discern a more accurate pattern – a coincidental collage of Russian bloody-mindedness, or of that contradictory mixture of material ruthlessness, fatalism and (in its conspicuous burn-up of lives and resources) jaw-dropping pseudo-potlatch that often characterised Stalinism and Warsaw Pact history. However much personal tragedy was involved, Zhukov and his comrades considered those thousands of burnt-out tanks and crisped bodies littered over the hills of Koursk Oblast in the summer of 1943 to be the necessary dues to be paid for protecting the nation. Given the attritional nature of Hitler and Stalin’s struggle for Russia, perhaps the generals had a point; even if the sheer scale of the death and appalls us in more parsimonious, less blindly patriotic days. It’s less easy to defend the fate of the submarine – first wrecked by institutional incompetence, then clumsily (and unsuccessfully) sacrificed to the public image of Putin’s Russian Federation.

With all of that considered, Erick doesn’t deliver explicit or directly moral judgements on either event nor on any continuum which they might share. Instead (bar that striking cover image of a half-submerged submarine in a welter of blood-streaked water), the details are in the sounds he shapes. Becquerels, for example, is a humming shroud: bassy drones hiccupping, a persistent drizzle of midrange noise. The noise drips and dribbles in, backed by distant grinds and rumbles, circular mechanical gnaws. There are implications here of badly-tuned mechanisms, of radiation slopping into compartments where it doesn’t belong. Chop-ins of explosive industrial drumkit noise become venting spurts; the engine-sounds periodically burst out in short-lived, ominous overruns. The last section is a beautiful warble, smashed into by bursting cogs. There’s no joy in the viciousness on display. There’s just a sense of carelessness being observed and documented, as Erick etches an acidic sonic portrait of breakdown which crowds out and overwhelms personal space, erasing people.

If Becquerels is a bitter salute to the submarine, the nine-plus minutes of Kursk Assault presumably pays tribute to the battle. A square wave tank growl, throbbing its way over random rises and dips and flats, becomes a wash of indiscrimate information leveled out to a crammed, rumpled buzz. Barely distinguishable behind this (in effect, crushed and obscured by the charging machinery) is a folk tune on droning pipes, possibly a Russian volynka. Throughout, scattered vocal syllables are chopped in like broken radio conversation. At the end, a tight cycle of looped pipes and data grind stutters round and round, like something trapped on a wheel.

As with Bequerels, there seems to be a moral edge to the noises here. It’s nothing to do with structured condemnation, nor with redemption. Instead Erick offers a baleful account in sound of the misery of people forced into combat, inside machines that they can’t trust to keep them safe, relying on other people who will let them down or spend them like poker chips. There’s an undercurrent of cramped and sweaty fear in these tones – men crammed into claustrophobic cockpits, waiting for the shells to burst through; men trapped in a crippled steel bottle, fathoms down, listening to the hull shear and the water gush in. The blattering sound also cocks a bitter snook at parade ground pomp. Here, war (and the Cold War) is just an impersonal, perilous sludge.

However, having registered his abstracted judgements, Erick retreats from his implicit moralism to explore different implications. The glitchy thud and staccato arpeggios of Steam And Speed suggest techno, as if Érick was building an impressionist, impasto sketch of a nightclub out of a mulchy bucket of cast-off industrial noises. The namesake being nodded to in the eleven-minute György is presumably György Ligeti, as vocal organum pitches move around behind radio whines and whoops and pell-mell machinery clashes, with disruptive cuts in the piece marked by static spits. After five minutes Érick folds a small choir into the mix, a sampled motet: after that, a man’s voice singing soft and deep and casual. The Ligeti references sift in as the piece moves on – the violent pitch shifts applied to the choir, mimicking Ligeti’s own unsettling choral runs: the deep-buried cosmic skitters buried deep in the mix in the final minutes, beneath the deep and pitchless drone.

Two remaining tracks reference a pair of lurid and controversial art-house films, both of which engaged in studies of morality and nihilism; but if Erick was intending to carry the studies over he’s done so in forms too obscure to plumb. The brief interlude of Man Bites Dog – a flat drone, a squeal and squiggle of static, a hint of hyper-compressed conversation – is straightforward but cryptic (or possibly encrypted). The ugly sibilant shiver of Bad Lieutenant – the album’s longest piece – is a dirty judder of mosquito hiss, behind which slow passes of electrophonica swell like slowed vox-humana organ stops slowed. A gentle pink noise churn runs through the piece, implying slow floods and propellers revolving; there’s a passage of steam-sound, tinny distorted vocal murmurs and dub echoes; an unsettling sweep of what sounds like electrified mice scrabbling and twittering. Later, birdsong echoes over a propeller churn like a shipwreck survivor’s memory – ordnance bangs and mechanical scurf play us out.

The last of this could be a recapitulatory visit to the ‘Koursk’s watery grave, or it might not. Bad Lieutenant has spawned a number of remixes that fail to illuminate a moral dimension: ignoring the context, they simply play with the noises. Martin Tétreault’s mix trims the piece down to a three-minute commodity , gaming it with a tattoo beat of drum-static. Of the two bonus remixes on the download version, Nicholas Bernier’s ten-minute effort retains more of the length but screebles everything with a silvery download skitter and needling, proggy synth cascades like a vintage Galaxians invasion. Robin Fox’s shorter five-minute mix concentrates on adding the missing rhythmatic elements: there’s a faint hip-hop influence in the thudding bass drum and the cut-up bursts of dynamic sound which feed its cat-walking impetus.

What these latter tracks and their reinventions don’t offer are any human conclusions. For a while, listening to this album opened up a window (a questioning and undermining of brute and impersonal power, itself expressed in brute power) which ultimately closed too soon. The noise artistry is impeccable, but I’m left feeling pulled up short: drawn in by a buzzing lasso to ponder a message which fades away too early under the racket.

Érick d’Orion: ‘Koursk’
Érick d’Orion (self-released, DOR 2013, no barcode)
Download-only album
Released: 21st January 2013

Get it from:
Bandcamp

Érick d’Orion online:

Tags: Érick d'Orion, classical music rephrased, creeping horror, György Ligeti, Martin Tétreault, morceaux_de_machines, Napalm Jazz, Nicolas Bernier, Quebec City (Canada), Robin Fox

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Categories 2013, 20th century classical music, album reviews, electro-acoustic music, electronic, experimental music, industrial music, motets, musique concrete, noise, remixes, reviews

LOOKBACKS – Elinor Armer & Ursula LeGuin: ‘Lockerbones/Airbones’ song-suite 1985/1988, released 2010 (“as hardened and hollowed-out as driftwood sculpture”)

14 Jun

While some of her work has been set to music, Ursula LeGuin is best known for her reconfigurations of science fiction, fantasy and myth. The narratives of her stories sheathe cunning, detailed challenges to race, to gender and to the ways in which one can tell a story. More recently her tales have shaded into a kind of conceptual ethnography in order to build stories almost entirely out of explorations of culture.

Less well known, LeGuin’s poetry initially seems like a different beast. Close examination sees the same preoccupations written in microcosm. Sparse and spare, the words in her poems are the tips of long quills of implied experience; to be drawn out and savoured. In these mid-’80s recordings, Californian composer Elinor Armer has taken five disparate Ursula LeGuin poems and (working in a stark, economical style as hardened and hollowed-out as driftwood sculpture) whittled a musical housing for them.

Assuming that it’s a song-cycle at all, ‘Lockerbones/Airbones’ is a loose one. The poems are taken from three separate volumes spanning thirteen years, and the interconnections in LeGuin’s text are tenuous. There are fleeting references to bodies of water. A falcon links two songs; extending this, references to birds link a full three. Unspecified protagonists (all of them apparently female) are observed via brief passing notes and at various ages, generally in relation to a loaded past or a fervently desired future. The obscure bones of the title transform and recur in the shape of crustacean shells or as feathers or teeth; possibly even in the irreducible state of the lean phrases making up the poems.

Armer, in turn, faithfully honours LeGuin’s verbal economy. Her music stops, starts and leaves prolonged expectant spaces as she delicately feathers the text. For ‘Lockerbones/Airbones’ she uses a quintet: flute, violin, piano and percussion set plus Wendy Hillhouse’s stooping mezzo-soprano. Armer keeps her own compositional liveliness on a tight leash. Nonetheless, she brings her particular yen for musical illustration to the table (as well as leavening touches of humour and compassion). Initially building up from a reserved, near-atonal sketchpad, Armer still works in tinges of modern America, ancient Greece and traditional Japan. Direct musical themes are hidden in favour of attentive, close-bound responses to the emotional charges of the poems. Ultimately, it’s this that provides the cycle’s unifying factor.

Elinor Armer & Ursula LeGuin: ‘The Anger’

In the first piece, The Anger, a young woman’s frustrations burst out. She’s trapped between worlds of experience – one outgrown and chafing, the other filled with promise but sealed away). Rira Watanabe’s chivvying violin and Keisuke Nakagoshi’s piano accents usher in a flare of rage, with the first line sung against tolling, breaking percussion: “Unlock, unlock! / So long a silence / needs shouting / and latches smashed / and the damned hinges broken…” In airier drifts, the middle section dreams welcome and ceremony – “open air, the wine / poured out, the hands / empty: and slowly, / grave, straight, smiling, / to step across the threshold.” It feeds the eventual conclusion, in which that earlier impotent frustration becomes a clear, confident command.

Elinor Armer & Ursula LeGuin: ‘The Child on the Shore’

The Child on the Shore is made up of a split dialogue between a daughter and her dead mother. Neither address each other directly: in the poem, their communications are carried by intermediaries of the natural world, by song, by death itself. The entire piece is a bleached landscape of bereavement rituals. Esther Landau’s lyrical flute-playing embodies the elements into which propitiatory gifts are flung – a ring into the sea, a feather into the wind.

In turn, Hillhouse gives voice to two exhausted threnodies, one for each woman. The child’s voice is angry with grief, demanding return of both tokens and parent. The mother’s is windblown and accepting; a thank-you for the gifts, a desire to soothe. Yet there is no confirmation that this message of comfort has been heard. The intermediaries themselves remain silent throughout. Armer divides the two voices with a bleak, unyielding curve of violin melody. Behind them, abrupt traces of marimba and piano stray and hit like bruising raindrops.

Elinor Armer & Ursula LeGuin: ‘Footnote’

Footnote briefly enters the thoughts of a solitary woman. It’s unclear whether she’s an exile or a recluse, whether she’s young or old. Her hints at an aristocratic background could be no more than whim, or the last vestige of hauteur. Regardless of this, she finds kinship with nature in all of its wrack, decay and continuance – not just through the heraldic glamour of the falcons, but via the cast-up seaweed, the scavengers, the passing insects and the weather.

Armer treats this cultivated loneliness (and acceptance of the world) in kind. Still, slow and minimal in nature, the music is pierced and enlivened by visitants. After a drifting reflective start, a shift to a dissonant emphasis and Erica Johnson’s rattling wood percussion greets the naming of “crabs / prancing in the shadow / of fierce, stranded seaweed” while the appearance of bats is accompanied by violin and flute.

Elinor Armer & Ursula LeGuin: ‘Hard Words’

In Hard Words, Armer abandons melody altogether and goes for a plosive, theatrical hayashi approach. Hillhouse speaks and swoops LeGuin’s words like a Noh theatre chanter, springing the rhythms in the poetry, which itself abandons all but the most essential nuggets of phrase in an oblique look at the failings of human language. “Hard words / lockerbones / this is sour ground / dust to ashes / sounds soft / hard in the mouth / as stones / as teeth / Earth speaks birds / airbones / diphthongs.” The instrumentalists respond with zings of percussion; with tongued flutes, piano fragments and instrumental noises (including a short resigned squall of violin like the last gasp of a fax machine). On the final word, a lacuna of mingled flute and gong ends in a sub-audible skirl of breath. Relief and release.

Elinor Armer & Ursula LeGuin: ‘For Katya’

The songs conclude with the wounded, optimistic For Katya. A muted and slender melody – seasoned by anger – fleshes out LeGuin’s words, which reinterprets the struggles for control between men and women in the form of a stark fairytale built from halting, frustrated syntax. “They always shut us up in towers / ever since once upon a…” Comfort arrives in the same mythic form, as a transformation of both sentence and outlook: “So we learn alone there / arts of unlocking / Till the old terrors / shed wolfskin and stand brothers…”

It’s an exhausted comfort: yet it’s indomitable, a long parched resistance holding out for a sane outcome. As Hillhouse sounds out the last word, a capella, its pitch hangs unresolved; waiting for the future to catch up with the hope.

Elinor Armer & Ursula LeGuin: ‘Lockerbones/Airbones’
Private release
Download tracks
Released: 2010 (recorded 1985/1988)

Buy it from:
Free download from Ursula LeGuin’s homepage.

Elinor Armer online:

Ursula LeGuin online:

Tags: Elinor Armer, Erica Johnson, Esther Landau, Keisuke Nakagoshi, listening to women, rattlebag, Rira Watanabe, San Francisco (USA), solitude, tidelines, Ursula LeGuin, Wendy Hillhouse, women of heart and mind

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Categories 2010, 20th century classical music, 21st century classical music, classical (Western art music), instrumental music, music downloads for free/cheap/pay-what-you-like, reviews

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Misfit City

January 2016 – upcoming gigs – Kiran Leonard’s UK mini-tour; in London, a Julian Dawes fundraiser at The Forge; in New York, Legs play the Manhattan Inn and Rough Trade NYC with Blank Paper, Tropic of Pisces and SKP

December 2015 – last gigs before Christmas, London & elsewhere – Phantom Chips and Matt Loveridge’s MXLX play More News From Nowhere; mix’n’match improvising at The Hat Speaks; and the rest of the London Contemporary Music Festival 2015.

December 2015 – upcoming London gigs – the 2015 London Contemporary Music Festival part 1 (sounds for and from London, West Coast America and the time continuum)

December 2015 – upcoming gigs, London & elsewhere – the return of Mark Mulholland and Craig Ward in a Scottish village hall; Serafina Steer & Bas Jan at Kings Place; Olga Stezhko in a Staffordshire chapel; and assorted Others cabaret from punk to accordiana with The Bohemianauts and Bad Fractals

December 2015 – upcoming gigs – the Ghosts At Our Shoulders folk meet in London (with Martin Carthy, Alasdair Roberts, Chris Wood, Kirsty Potts, The Devil’s Interval and Stick in the Wheel); plus Anawan’s Brooklyn chamber pop double-night and New York farewell.

November 2015 – upcoming gigs – Olga Stezhko takes her Lucid Dream piano concert to the Wigmore & Bridgewater Halls; Haiku Salut, Camden Voices and Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch bring post-folk, soundtrack classical and community chorale to Daylight Music

November 2015 – upcoming gigs – Julia Holter’s experimental pop tours the UK; chamber music at the Forge (Ensemble Perpetuo’s galactic tour, CHROMA’s British Music Collection show with Martin Scheuregger & David Gorton premieres)

November 2015 – upcoming London gigs – assorted classical and related – another Fenella Humphreys Bach-plus violin evening (with extra Peter Maxwell Davies/Adrian Sutton premieres) and a multimedia Rachmaninoff symphony from Arensky Chamber Orchestra

October 2015 – upcoming London gigs – Nonclassical rework Bohuslav Martinů; Iskra String Quartet, Minotaur Shock, Isobel Waller-Bridge and Angus Macrae meet at Daylight Music; acoustic guitar shows for Pierre Bensusan

October 2015 – upcoming London gigs (12th to 18th) – new classical music with Darragh Morgan & Mary Dullea; William D. Drake, Bill Pritchard and Bill Botting make a trio of songwriting Bills for Daylight Music; Laura Moody and a host of others play at Match&Fuse

September 2015 – upcoming London gigs – Wednesday 3rd to Friday 5th: orchestral-pop croons in Kings Cross, psychedelic grandeur in Pentonville, and a post-metal mash-up in Camden Town versus a grand Curved Air event in Fulham

August 2015 – upcoming London gigs (Rumour Cubes in Camden on Friday 7th August, Arthur Russell Instrumentals in Bethnal Green on Monday 10th August)

August 2015 – upcoming gigs – the Manchester Jazz Festival (31st July to 9th August)

July 2015 – upcoming London gigs this week – LUME on Thursday (Nick Costley-White/Bleep Test); Daylight Music on Saturday (The UCC Handbell Ringers/Ryan Teague/Ellie Lovegrove, with Angèle David-Guillou)

June 2015 – upcoming London classical gigs – Jane Manning curates Voiceworks – two concerts of contemporary classical song

June 2015 – upcoming London gigs – North-eastern classical – a London debut for the Baltic Music Society

June 2015 – upcoming London gigs – A Formal Horse & Ham Legion; Olga Stezhko; The Spiders of Destiny play Frank Zappa; a Bowie Night in Soho

May 2015 – End-of-May gigs (mostly London) – Bank Holiday weekenders from Daylight Music and SmileAcoustic; a mixed-classical benefit for Nepal; Knifeworld again; fun and frolics underneath the arches with John Ellis and co.

January 2013 – album reviews – Érick d’Orion’s ‘Koursk’ (“a kind of philosophical haunting”)

LOOKBACKS – Elinor Armer & Ursula LeGuin: ‘Lockerbones/Airbones’ song-suite 1985/1988, released 2010 (“as hardened and hollowed-out as driftwood sculpture”)

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