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December 2017 – strange and wonderful sounds in and out of London – Alien, Adrian Lane and Stuart Bowditch in Leigh-on-Sea (14th December); Dean McPhee, Sam McLoughlin, David Chatton Barker, Amy Cutler and Sylvia Hallett up in Homerton (16th December)

As Christmas approaches I find myself in a tearing hurry; so don’t be too surprised if the remaining gig posts for the year rely even more on text ripped straight off Facebook or other gig notifications. I’m just here to boost the signals and blend the options for the month, though I’ll also patch in any missing information as I go.

Now – December news on various Essex sonic artists coming together out on the Thames estuary, and on a Homerton gathering of atmosphere-guitar, homemade instruments and film…

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Courier Sound presents:
Alien + Adrian Lane + Stuart Bowditch
Phuse Media, Polar House, 103 Rectory Grove, Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, SS9 2HW, England
Thursday 14th December 2017, 8.00pm – information

“Courier Sound invite you to a launch party celebrating the release of Alien‘s ‘Perimeter’. Al Johnson’s long form piece, made with a bass guitar and a variety of electronics, is presented on a super-limited edition (30) mini CD in a bespoke arigato pack (designed by Machindo, cut by Damien Robinson), with two inserts, a sticker and a decal on the CD. In the small and intimate setting of his own office, Al will be playing a live improvised set, alongside live sets from Adrian Lane and Stuart Bowditch. Entry is free and early arrival is advised. Bring some booze.”

An intermittent surfacer, Alien has previously released work on labels including Southend’s Hottwerk; but here’s some very recent material (uploaded to Soundcloud yesterday!) plus a video swiped from Facebook…

https://soundcloud.com/alien9x/kaive-300

And here’s some more I dug up on the guest acts…

Adrian Lane – who’s also recorded as Calicoade and (in collaboration with Guido Lusetti), as That Faint Light – is a man of mutually superimposed talents. He’s a visual artist as well as a musician, or perhaps he’s better described as a simultaneously visual and musical artist: his music integrating acoustic and electronic elements, struggling in a dreamy web of neoclassical/mediaeval folk inspirations and textural ambient foggings. Adrian’s newest album, ‘Playing With Ghosts’, uses cut-up and re-ordered samples of hundred-year-old wax cylinder recordings as its main sound source (something Adrian goes into in greater depth in this interview with his record company Preserved Sounds.

The work of Stuart Bowditch (who also records under the names of Hybernation, USRNM and Furrows) is primarily based in sound design and field recordings. As his biog puts it, he’s mostly “inspired by location and the people and experiences he encounters there. He is interested primarily in the sounds of everyday life and those who create them, making work that is inclusive and accessible.His music, sound tracks and art installations are often site-responsive and developed with community groups, the public or people who would not consider themselves interested in ‘art’. In this way of working he tries to make sense of the world he lives in and his place within it. Simultaneously, the creations and experiences of others end up intrinsically embedded in his work, creating a rich texture of layers, representing his life and those he has encountered along the way.”

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The Old Dentist presents:
Dean McPhee + Sam McLoughlin & David Chatton Barker + Amy Cutler & Sylvia Hallett
The Old Dentist, 33 Chatsworth Road, Homerton, London, E5 0LH, England
Saturday 16th December 2017, 7.30pm – information here and here

“A night of deep audio-visual sorcery in three acts to mark the release of solo electric guitarist Dean McPhee’s much anticipated third album ‘Four Stones’ – featuring Dean’s hypnotic drone-folk guitar work and the visual feedback footage of Barry Hale, the homemade instrument/OHP séance shadow-puppetry of Folklore Tapes duo Sam McLoughlin & David Chatton Baker and the films and musical improvisations of Amy Cutler and Sylvia Hallett.

“Dean McPhee is a solo electric guitarist who combines fluid, chiming melodic lines with shimmering drones and deep layers of decaying delay and echo. He has a unique style of playing which draws together influences from British folk, dub, kosmische, post-rock and Mali blues, and his music has a hypnotic and dreamlike quality. His latest album ‘Four Stones’ is due to be released on Hood Faire (a label run collectively by Dean, Sam McLoughlin and David Chatton-Barker) in January 2018… For this gig Dean will be playing to footage of video artist Barry Hale‘s Intraference visual feedback films.

“Sam McLoughlin plays homemade instruments and contraptions along with guitar, analog synths, harmonium and pump organ. Sometimes he sings songs; at other times he combines handmade Moondog-like percussion with microphone feedback, synth drones and unpredictable bowed textures to produce improvised music with magical and shamanic overtones. Sam recently released the album ‘Flaming Liar’ on Them There Records and has previously released music on Andy Votel’s Twisted Nerve as well as Folklore Tapes, Pre Cert Entertainment and Hood Faire.

“David Chatton-Barker is the co-founder and captain of the highly regarded Folklore Tapes label which was recently described by Brainwashed.com as “possibly the most unique and fascinating label around”. As well as being a visual artist and film-maker, David also specialises in playful and atmospheric collages of sound, dictaphone recordings and live improvisation. Like Sam, he also builds his own very inventive and visually striking homemade instruments and sound-making devices, which he uses to perform live (along with projections and ritualistic interventions).

“As a new duo, geographer-poet Amy Cutler and multi-instrumentalist Sylvia Hallett draw on the dark sides of nature: from sea parasites to forensic botany to elegies based on Arctic bird migrations. They perform live improvisatory settings of pieces drawing on natural history, such as ‘you, the stingbearers’, based on Jean-Henri Fabre’s nineteenth-century chronicle of human desolation, ‘The Life of the Fly’. Instruments include the viola, the musical saw, and Sylvia’s Russian garden vines. Amy’s projections include kaleidoscopes of tree rot and insect forms in nature documentaries, and she will also screen some of her short music videos inspired by drone music and experimental landscape cinema.” (See below for Sylvia at work on a bicycle wheel, plus Amy’s short film ‘Incantations From Yin Valley’ – made this year with experimental drone musician Bridget Hayden, previously of Vibracathedral Orchestra).

Tags: Adrian Lane, Alien (Al Johnson), Amy Cutler, Barry Hale, Bridget Hayden, Courier Sound (record label), David Chatton Barker, Dean McPhee, guitar music, music for musical saw, Sam McLoughlin, Stuart Bowditch, Sylvia Hallett, unusual instruments, Vibracathedral Orchestra, viola music

December 2017 – upcoming London jazz and improvisation gigs – London New Wind Festival’s improv evening at IKLECTIK (5th); Vlad Miller’s Notes From Underground back in Kentish Town (16th)

1 Dec

As a follow-up to mid-November’s Regent Hall performance of classical works, the London New Wind Festival are putting on this more aleatory occasion, teaming several of the musicians who played last time with some of the improvisatory talent which coalesces around IKLECTIK in groups such as The Horse…

London New Wind Festival presents
London New Wind Festival: An Evening of Art, Film & Improvised Music
IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, Waterloo, London, SE1 7LG, England
Tuesday 5th December 2017, 7.30pm – information

“The London New Wind Festival presents a varied programme of new music with focus on wind symphony orchestras, brass ensembles, new music by women composers and improvisation. Musicians: Catherine Pluygers (oboe), Neil Metcalf (flute), Adrian Northover (soprano and alto saxophones), Sue Lynch (tenor saxophone), Sylvia Hallett (violin), Pier Paulo Martino (double bass), Adam Bohman (found objects). Film-makers: Paula Garcia Stone and Adrian Northover. Artists: Martin Harrison and Livia Garcia.”

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No content with pulling double duty at the LNWF, Adrian Northover’s also part of this returning gig from Notes From Underground up at MAP…

Vlad Miller – Notes From Underground
MAP Studio Café, 46 Grafton Road, Kentish Town, London, NW5 3DU, England
Saturday 16th December 2017, 8.00pm – information here and here

“The effect that Notes From Underground want to have on their listeners is immediate, direct, and accessible in the best sense. They want their music to grab your ears and your body and not let go until you’ve been variously pulverised, pummelled, or pleasured into submission.

“Notes From Underground are Vlad Miller (piano), Adrian Northover (alto and soprano saxophone), Les Booth (six-string electric bass) and Dave Rohoman (drums, vocals). They are a band that has lasted the course of time, using Vlad’s compositions as a starting point for a collaborative repertoire. Largely stimulated by jazz and Russian music traditions, strong melodies weave into colourful improvisation. They wish to present their pieces on the London jazz stage to challenge listeners to enjoy new compositions within the general framework of their set. All the pieces tell a story, for example ‘Between Two Storms’, a real life event on a cruise ship entering dangerous waters in the Russian White Sea.

“Their first album ‘Diaghilev’s Dance’ was inspired by the life of the famous Russian impresario Diaghelev, and his dance troupe ‘The Ballet Russes’. The Vortex magazine wrote: “With the odd ballad providing balance, this is an intelligently programmed, consistently absorbing set from a versatile and subtly interactive band”…”

Tags: Adam Bohman, Adrian Northover, Catherine Pluygers, Dave Rohoman, IKLECTIK Art Lab (promoters), Les Booth, listening to women, Livia Garcia (artist), MAP Studio Cafe (promoters), Martin Harrison (artist), multimedia, Neil Metcalf, Notes From Underground (jazz band), Paula Garcia Stone, Pier Paulo Martino, Sue Lynch, Sylvia Hallett, Vlad Miller (Vladimir Miller)

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Categories 2017, 21st century classical music, acoustic music, chamber music, classical (Western art music), DIY music, electro-acoustic music, experimental music, improvisation, instrumental music, jazz, jazz fusion, New Music, previews

December 2017 – experimental gigs up and down Britain – Kammer Klang plays Mary Jane Leach in London (5th December) plus Mette Rasmussen, Sofia Jernberg and Dawn Scarfe; Gnod R&D on tour with URUK and pals (7th, 8th, 10th); Xposed Club at Cheltenham with Alexander Hawkins, Raymond MacDonald, Sharon Gal, Stuart Wilding, Chris Cundy (8th)

30 Nov

Kammer Klang presents:
Kammer Klang: Ashley Paul & Ensemble (performing Mary Jane Leach) + Mette Rasmussen & Sofia Jernberg + Dawn Scarfe
Café Oto, 18-22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London, E8 3DL, England
Tuesday 5th December 2017, 7.30pm – information here and here

The coming month’s Kammer Klang has only a tenuous relationship with contemporary classical, concentrating as it does on musicians who espouse either free improvisation or natural resonance.

The evening centres on an ensemble led by clattering, free-form multi-instrumentalist and composer Ashley Paul (who recently supported Powerdove further north at the Old Dentist) and featuring Hyperion Ensemble bass clarinettist/utility person Yoni Silver, cellist/Kammer Klang organiser Lucy Railton, onetime Sonic Youth guitarist-turned-ubiquitous London art musician Thurston Moore and Charcoal Owls’ multi-instrumentalist Tom James Scott on piano (a man who generally brings a specifically Cumbrian twist to his playing, gizmo fiddling and use of field recordings). They’ll be playing ‘Wolff Tones E-Tude’, a cellular Christian-Wolff-inspired piece by American composer Mary Jane Leach (example performance below).

Much of Mary Jane’s work focusses on acoustic properties and how sound environments form in specific spaces with particular resonances and opportunities for difference, combination, and interference tones; in addition, how these may be manipulated by a performer, composer or editor (or by someone who’s a combination of all or some of those things). She herself will be present for the performance, which also includes a stereo-diffused playback of her 1992 radio sound piece/hörspiel ‘Kirchtraum’ (about which she says “Have you ever walked into a church, and it seems as if there is sound rolling around the space that’s been there for a long time? I created ‘Kirchtraum’ to create a sound dreamscape to create that kind of feeling. It uses the phases of a dream, going progressively further back into the past and becoming more chaotic with each phase. I used nightingales to punctuate the different phases of the dream, to differentiate between the dream and the environment…”). In addition, she’ll be present for a pre-concert workshop on Sunday 3rd December from noon until 5.00pm (giving a lecture and offering feedback on pieces any composers care to bring in) and, prior to the concert on the Tuesday, participating in a public talk with Frances Morgan at 7.00pm.

Opening in the Fresh Klang slot is Dawn Scarfe, a sound artist preoccupied with “things that seem to sound themselves, such as resonating glasses, Aeolian wires and self-opening swell boxes”, and who’s brought this preoccupation to sound installations between Cumbria and London, Exeter and Estonia, Brussels and Seoul. Her projects include the livestreamed ‘Reveil‘ “an annual crowdsourced live broadcast which “tracks the sound of the sunrise around the world for twenty-four hours” using open microphones provided by streamers around the world: she’s described it as intending “to open a space for listening to something else – especially from places where humans and not humans meet – and in the course of one earth day to provide a sketch of this emerging field.” 2017’s edition included contributions from Maputo, Tehran, New York, Kolkata, Santiago de Cali, nature reserves in Cumbria’s Walney Island and Australia’s Noosa Biosphere Reserve, and even the Fukushima Exclusion Zone. On this occasion, Dawn will be performing ‘Tuning to Spheres’, written for wine glasses, sine tone generators and turntables.

Closing the evening out will be a free experimental duet between raw Danish Trio Riot saxophonist Mette Rasmussen (who works with both plain and prepared instruments) and Swedish/Norwegian singer/composer Sofia Jernberg (who works with a twisting barrage of vocal techniques including split tone singing, pitchless singing and distorted singing)

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Fresh from some well-publicised collaborations with avant-rock godfathers Faust, countercultural Salford sound wizards Gnod are returning to their ongoing “R&D” tour. For more on their London weekender from last year, click here; at the moment, they’re stripped back down to their core duo of Chris Haslam and Paddy Shine in order to explore the next, as-yet-undecided developments from last year’s seethe of slow, dirty riffage on their bed of dub, urban discontent, psychic reportage and ritual. As part of that development, they’re throwing the stage open to volunteer collaborators on the night, “be it singing , shouting, dancing, bringing an instrument/device to the table or just simply tuning in and coming along for the ride.” Dust off your home-made Azimuth Co-ordinator or pocket Tettix Wave Accumulator; grab that Aztec death whistle from the back of the kitchen drawer; head down and dive in.

Following the Italian/Slovenian leg in November (in which they toured with Italian noise-rock guitar/voice/drums duo OvO and Godspeed-associated Montreal wallcrashers Big ‡ Brave), the British tour will see a blurring of support slot and Gnod expansion. The band’s ranks will be pre-swollen in Glasgow by drummer and oscillator king Julian Dicken (from Glaswegian psych-rockers The Cosmic Dead) and in Bristol by murky industral-technoist Tony Child (a.k.a. Surgeon) and drummer Dan Johnson (from jazz-punkers Run Logan Run). In London, they’ll be augmented by a five-strong gang of John Doran (head ‘Quietus‘ ranter), heavy electronicist Mark Dicker (ex-Trencher, Palehorse, Bruxa Maria), Mark O. Pilkington and Michael J. York of synth-and-bagpipe psychonauts Teleplasmiste and Teeth Of The Sea trumpeter Sam Barton. In addition, the London gig has a clearly defined support act in the shape of URUK, a teamup of bass player Massimo Pupillo (of expansive no-wave trio Zu) and synthesist/multi-instrumentalist Thighpaulsandra (Coil, Spiritualized, various Julian Cope bands). URUK originates from 2016 when mutual fans Massimo and Thipe finally got together; the resulting music, debuted on this year’s ‘I Leave A Silver Trail Through Blackness’ album, references both Coil and Zu but sinks deeper into the world of highly textured dark-ambient drones.

Dates:

Corsica Studios, 4-5 Elephant Road, Elephant & Castle, London, SE17 1LB, England, Thursday 7th December 2017, 8.00pm – information
Broadcast, 427 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow, G2 3LG, Scotland, Friday 8th December 2017, 7.00pm – information
Exchange, 72-73 Old Market Street, Bristol, BS2 0EJ, England, Sunday 10 December 2017, 7.30pm – information

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Just time, too, to mention another Xposed Club incident over in Cheltenham, in which there’ll be a meet-up duo of pianist Alexander Hawkins and saxophonist Raymond MacDonald (who between them have notched up work and/or leadership duties with Convergence Quartet, Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra, Decoy and more – we also recently saw Raymond exploring the art of the graphic score in London). Also on the bill is well-respected London experimental vocalist/Resonance FM founder Sharon Gal, engaging in duo work with Ghost Mind percussionist (and Xposed host) Stuart Wilding; and a solo set from avant-garde bass clarinet virtuoso Chris Cundy who, as mentioned here some time back, “dips into everything from the philosophical experiments of Cornelius Cardew and John Cage to out-and-out improv to theatre work.”

Various tasters below:

Xposed Club presents:
Alexander Hawkins & Raymond MacDonald + Sharon Gal & Stuart Wilding + Chris Cundy
The Xposed Club @ Francis Close Hall, University of Gloucestershire, Swindon Road, Cheltenham, GL50 4AZ, England
Friday 8th December 2017, 8.00pm – information

Tags: Alexander Hawkins, Ashley Paul, Baba Yaga’s Hut (event/promoter), Bristol (England), Cheltenham (England), Chris Cundy, Dan Johnson, Dawn Scarfe, Ghost Mind, Glasgow (Scotland), Gnod, John Doran, Kammer Klang (event), London (England), Lucy Railton, Mark Dicker, Mary Jane Leach, Mette Rasmussen, Palehorse, Raymond MacDonald, Run Logan Run, Sam Barton, Sharon Gal, Sofia Jernberg, Stuart Wilding, Surgeon (Tony Child), Teeth Of The Sea, Teleplasmiste, The Quietus (publication/event/record label), The Xposed Club (event/promoter), Thighpaulsandra, Thurston Moore, Tom James Scott, URUK, Yoni Silver, Zu

December 2017 – upcoming London classical etc. gigs – Tre Voci’s spacework (3rd); Keith Burstein’s chamber music (11th)

26 Nov

As a matter of course, London-based Anglo-Norwegian cello trio Tre Voci (consisting of Torun Saeter Stavseng, Gregor Riddell and Colin Alexander) sit on a triple cusp. Their work focusses on Early music, contemporary compositions (they’ve premiered work by composers including Mica Levi, Alex Nikiporenko, Bryn Harrison, Kit Downes, Peter Wiegold, Edwin Hillier and Sergei Zagny) and improvisations. Much of this early December concert (played twice in a single day, under the aegis of the Nonclassical organization) sees them explore the third of these directions, creating “meditative” new surround-sound music in combination with outstanding Iranian hand-drummer Mohammad Reza Mortazavi. Laid out in the ICA’s performance space, it will be part gig, part walk-through three-dimensional installation, with further synaesthesic dimensions added by the live visuals from Norwegian artist Henrik Koppen.

For part of the concert’s second half, the trio will play unspecified new compositions of their own as well as teaming up with Norwegian soprano Silje Aker Johnsen to premier a new work by David Stephen Grant. In a recent interview on the Nonclassical blog, Colin Alexander states that the Grant piece will “cover the listeners in thick, interwoven layers of sound… David writes rich, warm and engulfing electro-acoustic music that will fill the space at ICA with shifting harmonies and blurred timbres. My first experience of his writing was through a duo for violin and cello with electronics that I performed with Mira Benjamin in Oslo and London. Although simple and relatively short it was incredibly effective through its nuanced beauty and delicately judged movement.”

Nonclassical & Tre Voci Cello Ensemble present:
Tre Voci: Orbits
Institute of Contemporary Arts, The Mall, Westminster, London, SW1Y 5AH England, United Kingdom
Sunday 3rd December 2017, 4.00pm & 8.00pm – information here and here

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There was a time when Keith Burstein could barely stay out of trouble. As a conductor and commissioner of New Music, he was a rising pillar of British contemporary classical music during his twenties. However, his discovery of his own composing voice – staunchly tonal, in fervent reaction to the austere high-modernist abstractions of the times – drew him into a series of vicious joustings and spats in the early ‘90s, played out first within the musical community, then in the press, in the concert hall and ultimately in the libel courts. He fought hard. The establishment he’d jilted and criticised fought equally hard. There’s not been much forgiveness on either side.

Ten years later, his opera ‘Manifest Destiny’ (which took a broad-brush metaphysical approach to the War on Terror) was performed in Edinburgh in the wake of the London suicide bombings of 2005. Further spats followed over alleged glorification of terrorism. There was another court case, and a bankruptcy. As before, Keith would argue (and continues to argue) that he was fighting not just for his own right to musical self-expression and political challenges, but for everyone else’s. Subsequent adventures have been quieter (and his rebellions subtler), but even as he approaches his sixtieth year he’s never entirely lost that self-appointed role as vehement high-culture renegade.

With all that said, the ultimate Burstein concerns and preoccupations seem more suited to metaphysical and spiritual realms rather than the political and strategic trappings of the battles he’s fought, and their scale and fervour have tended to overshadow the music: the water-pageant melancholy of ‘Requiem for the Young’, the entanglement of manners and compressed frenzy in his ‘Dance of Love/Dance of Death’ string quartet; the foreboding elegance of his choral Holocaust meditation ‘The Year’s Midnight’ and the lucid romantic panorama of his ‘Elixir’ symphony. When writing to a grander scale, he composes work that in some respects resembles the Whitehall of his beloved London – looming and aspirational; fascinated by the power of architecture and history, yet at the same open to and ownable by passers-by; his structures echoing the antique yet repurposing them to modern ends, and being buffeted and reshaped by contemporary impacts; an meticulous admixture of historicism and retrofitting.

This month’s lunchtime recital, however, provides the opportunity to appreciate his music on a smaller magnitude, at a remove from grander clutter of conflicts and history. Packing various shorter Burstein works for piano, violin and cello into its forty-five minutes, it includes assorted piano preludes and the final movement of Keith’s recent ‘Wiosna’ cello sonata (one of several recent works in which he retraces his family history back through his parents’ work as violinists with the Brighton Philharmonic and Halle Orchestra to their Eastern European roots and Russian/Lithuanian connections). Keith (on piano) is joined by notable solo cellist Corinne Morris – whose ‘Macedonian Sessions’ reached number 2 in the classical charts this year – and by violinist/composer Roland Roberts (Solaris Quartet, City of Oxford Orchestra, Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra and many more). Both Corinne and Roland have worked with Keith before; the former premiering ‘Wiosna’… and the latter co-premiering the piano/violin duet Keith composed this year in honour of his late mother Barbara.

Lunchtime Recital of the Works of Keith Burstein (with Keith Burstein, Corinne Morris, Roland Roberts)
1901 Club, 7 Exton Street, Waterloo, London, SE1 8UE, England
Monday 11th December 2017, 12.00pm – information here and here

Tags: cello music, Colin Alexander, Corinne Morris, David Stephen Grant, duo music, Gregor Riddell, Keith Burstein, London (England), Mohammad Reza Mortazavi, Nonclassical (event/promoter/record label), piano music, Roland Roberts, Silje Aker Johnsen, Torun Saeter Stavseng, Tre Voci Cello Ensemble, trio music, violin music

November 2017 – upcoming London jazz/experimental gigs – Jazz in the Round with Arun Ghosh and Eddie Parker (27th); noise and costume chaos in ‘Beyond the Mask’ with Flange Zoo, Isn’tses, Pranic Attack and Madonna Vagina (25th)

20 Nov

As if Monday 27th wasn’t crowded enough already, up pops an interesting jazz gig…

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Jazz In The Round presents:
Jazz In The Round: Arun Ghosh + Eddie Parker (solo) + tbc
The Cockpit Theatre, Gateforth Street, Lisson Grove, London, NW8 8EH, England
Monday 27th November 2017, 7.00pm – information here and here

British-Asian jazz clarinettist, keyboard player and composer Arun Ghosh (perhaps best known for Arkestra Makara, the pan-Asian chamber-jazz orchestra which made a colourful cross-continental splash at the London Olympics five years ago) is making his Jazz In The Round debut. He’ll be leading a new band featuring saxophonists Idris Rahman and Chris Williams, guitarist Shirley Tetteh, bass player Liran Donin and drummer Dave Walsh.

The concert showcases his newest release, ‘But Where Are You Really From?’ – a keyboard-heavy album of rolling multi-cultural twenty-first century jazz-rock which not only touches lightly on the likes of Yusef Lateef, early ‘70s Miles Davis grooves and Punjabi music but also on A.R. Rahman, David Axelrod, Soft Machine and Egg as well as pulling in touches of kletzmer, hip hop and northern English brass bands (Arun was raised in Manchester). Part-pastoral and part-stirring, it’s a slow-cooking hot-pot of a record.

In the middle of the bill there’s a rare solo spot from Eddie Parker. Perhaps best known as the brilliant flautist for Loose Tubes, he’s also got years of group-leading work under his belt as well as a history of large-scale compositions, community music and dazzling guest spots. For more on what I’ve said about Eddie in the past, click here: but on this occasion, it’s just him and his flutes: no group work, no cunning arrangement, just the chance to see an undersung instrumental master bouncing on his heels, throughly self-reliant. Should be exceptional.

There’s another act yet to be confirmed (in what Jazz In The Round call “jazz lucky dip”), but it’s worth going along for these two alone. From the 7pm doors time, rooting us to past and present, there’ll be the usual Jazz FM DJ sets from event presenter Jez Nelson and his decks colleague Chris Phillips.

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IKLECTIK presents:
‘Beyond the Mask’: Flange Zoo + Isn’tses + Pranic Attack + Madonna Vagina
IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, Waterloo, London, SE1 7LG, England
Saturday 25th November 2017, 6.30pm – information here and here

If you’re in the mood for a more unruly kind of improvisation, something odder and wilder is stirring in Waterloo a few days earlier and providing “a night of otherworldly misrule, noise and musicality by artists with specially-made masks and costumes, bringing live art, animation, installation and lighting to your senses.”

Ready to romp are human-insectoid modular-electronic/vocal duo Pranic Attack (with their “giant life force swarm of sonic, non-Newtonian synthesis” and “cacophonous cocoon of stroboscopic ear worm sequences”); Isn’tses (who mythscape “paganism, political anger, intergalactic heroism and pop-culture parodies” via self-built synths, noise boxes, circuit-bent toys and mangled vocals amidst luminous props and costumes) and “mythical musical animal” troop Flange Zoo (playing dub-echo psych-political rants and noise-stews on theremin, recorder, free drumkit, custom didgeridoo and stylophone; plus anything else which they can ram through their bevy of effects pedals).

Lurking variously behind these masks and personae and the sonic messy-play are rainbow-rap electronicist Janine A’Bear, dark-drone crooner Listen Lisse, Merkaba Macabre’s Steven McInerney, Tim Drage of Cementimental and multimedia artists Miyuki Kasahara and Calum F. Kerr (plus at least one member of The International Wind Up Toy Orchestra). The evening’s completed by a colourful, textural live-art performance from yet another mask-and-costumerie enthusiast, Paola de Ramos (under her own “Madonna Vagina” persona, which might be referencing the blessed Christian virgin-mother-goddess or La Ciccone: she’s cheeky enough be referencing both).

FLANGE ZOO

All of this is happening at 7.30pm, with a ‘Behind the Mask/ Recreate your Face’ workshop and a display of original masks from the artists, drawings, interactive installations starting an hour earlier. Bring your own alter-egos in for fine-tuning.

Tags: Arun Ghosh, Calum F. Kerr, Cementimental, Eddie Parker, Flange Zoo, IKLECTIK Art Lab (promoters), Isn’tses, Janine A’Bear, Listen Lisse, Miyuki Kasahara, Paola de Ramos (Madonna Vagina), Pranic Attack, Steven McInerney (Merkaba Macabre), The Cockpit Theatre (venue) - Lisson Grove - London, The International Wind Up Toy Orchestra

November/December 2017 – Sō Percussion ensemble tour their multi-media coal-mining piece ‘From Out A Darker Sea’ through Derbyshire, Lancashire, London and Kent (22nd, 24th, 25th and 30th November, 2nd & 5th December)

12 Nov

Brooklyn contemporary percussion quartet Sō Percussion (a.k.a. Eric Cha-Beach, Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, and Jason Treuting) are travelling to England in late November to tour a particular commission around various churches in the heart of former coal country. More information below:

“Sō Percussion present an audio-visual exploration of the social history of British coal mining in ‘From Out a Darker Sea’. For two centuries, the coal industry formed the backbone of many towns and cities across England. Entire communities sprang into existence as fervent mining activity fuelled the industrial revolution. Integrating art, narrative, photography, film and an original musical soundscape performed live, Sō Percussion – known for their innovative and original productions – capture the environment, personal stories, and aspirations of a community fighting against industrial decline.

“Born out of a collaboration between the quartet and Amber Films, ‘From Out A Darker Sea’ is inspired by the reinvention of East Durham after the crushing loss of its mining industry. Combining live performance with community education programmes, Sō Percussion are bringing ‘From Out A Darker Sea’ to sacred spaces in former coal mining areas, from Derby to Deal, this Autumn.”

‘From Out A Darker Sea’ was originally initiated by East Durham Creates and premiered back in August at St John’s Church in Seaham, East Durham – in the heart of the region which inspired the original work. The original show dressed out the church interior with an immersive audio-visual installation created by people of the region, and incorporated personal stories and memories contributed by local residents including students from East Durham College.

Regarding the other visual content, Amber Films comment “we’ve wanted to make a film with Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen’s photographs of The Coal Coast since the completed exhibition was premiered at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art back in 2003. We’ve also been talking about doing a live score film project for a while. When Forma/East Durham Creates suggested a possible Coal Coast collaboration with Sō Percussion, we were more than happy to meet up with them. Sitting round a table in a cafe in Seaham, both Amber and Sō felt the collaboration could work… Sirkka set to digitising her negs, expanding the range of the imagery. We experimented with timelapse video and the rhythms it generated. We exchanged material with Sō Percussion, who were writing pieces back in New York. In the middle of this we were drawn to the storytelling of Easington ex-miner Freddie Welsh. We’re currently working on the standalone film – watch this space!”

See below for band and audience responses to the Seaham show, plus a discussion between Sō Percussion and EDC’s Nikki Locke:

Dates for the autumn tour:

Derby Cathedral, 18-19 Iron Gate, Derby DE1 3GP, Wednesday 22nd November 2017, 6.30pm – information here and here
St Giles-without-Cripplegate, Fore Street, London, EC2Y 8DA, Friday 24th November 2017, 8.00pm – information here
St Giles-without-Cripplegate, Fore Street, London, EC2Y 8DA, Saturday 25th November 2017, 8.00pm – information here
Holy Trinity Church, Mount Pleasant, Blackburn, Lancashire, BB1 5DQ, England, 30th November 2017, 7.00pm – information here
St George’s Church, 6A St Georges Road, Deal, Kent, CT14 6BA, England, 2nd December 2017, 7.00pm – information here
All Souls Church, Cheriton High St, Folkestone, Kent, CT19 4HE, England, 5th December 2017, 7.00pm – information here

Tags: Adam Sliwinski, Blackburn (England), Deal (England), Derby (England), Eric Cha-Beach, Jason Treuting, Josh Quillen, London (England), New York City (USA), percussion music, Sō Percussion

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Categories 2017, 21st century classical music, acoustic music, classical (Western art music), classical fusion, cross-cultural music, instrumental music, New Music, performance art, political music, previews, storytelling

November 2017 – upcoming London classical gigs – the 20th London New Wind Festival including Giorgio Coslovich and Michiko Shimanuki premieres (17th); Daniel Okulitch, Lucy Schaufer and Kim Criswell join an evening of the songs of Glen Roven (22nd November)

10 Nov

Every Sunday on Oxford Street a bland corporate doorway disgorges a full Salvation Army wind band which, rain or shine, tramps up and down past the shoppers, playing hymns on busy corners or (at Christmastime) adding a numinous aural glow to the grandeur of Selfridges storefront. Should you choose to sneak inside the same door, you’ll find yourself in Regent Hall, a five-hundred-and-fifty seat venue, once a Victorian rollerskating rink but subsequently transformed by Sally Army founder William Booth into a worship hall. It’s one of central London’s hidden-away concert glories, much like the splendid Bolivar Hall tucked away at the Venezuelan Embassy ten minutes northwards (which you’re only likely to have heard of if invited to a Latin American event).

I’ve only recently discovered that Regent Hall hosts the annual London New Wind Festival, directed by oboeist and composer Catherine Pluygers, and that the 2017 concert takes place next Friday. The evening sports a double-quintet ensemble of Simon Desorgher and Gavin Morrison (flutes), Judy Proctor and Catherine Pluygers (oboes), Phil Edwards and Ian Mitchell (clarinets), Henryk Sienkiewicz and Gillian Jones (horns), Glyn Williams and Anna Feild (bassoons) plus pianist Robert Coleridge and conductor David Sutton-Anderson; promising “a concert in our usual style… a varied and memorable programme of new music with focus on wind symphony orchestras, brass ensembles, new music by women composers and improvisation.”

The concert notes add “as is our trademark, we are presenting an exciting concert of new pieces especially written for double wind quintet (ten wind players) as well as piano and electronics, composed in a huge variety of styles ranging from the edgy ‘Rape Of The Moone’ by Elisabeth Lutyens (for eight wind instruments), and the mobile ‘Shadow Play’ (for flute and clarinet) by George Nicholson, to the atmospheric ‘Windchanges’ (for ten wind instruments) by Michael Christie and the dynamic ’Metropolis’ (for all eleven players and electronics) by Catherine Pluygers.”

Full programme:

George Nicholson – Shadow Play for Flute and Clarinet
Giorgio Coslovich – A Winter’s Tale (world premiere)
Michiko Shimanuki – Ordinary Things in My Garden (world premiere)
David Sutton-Anderson – Nachtritt
Elisabeth Lutyens – Rape of the Moone (Op.90)
Catherine Pluygers – Metropolis
Michael Christie – Windchanges
Paul Patterson – Phoenix Sonata (2nd movement) for oboe and piano

London New Wind Festival, The Hinrichsen Foundation, Holst Foundation & the Performing Rights Society present:
The 20th London New Wind Festival
Regent Hall, Salvation Army, 275 Oxford Street, London, W1C 2DJ, England
Friday 17th November 2017, 7.30pm – information

* * * * * * * *

With his roots and his heart in Broadway (where he debuted as a musical director at the tender age of nineteen), recognition which includes four Emmy Awards, and skills that span piano, composing, lyric-writing, conducting, opera translation and producing, Glen Roven is pretty much the complete musician.

This is particularly true if you start by looking at things through the rosy lens of adult contemporary music. Glen’s a globetrotting polymath of those spangled and sometimes self-regarding spheres within which Presidential inaugurations and all-star galas, light and heavy concert music blend with tuxedo-donning pop stars, power brokers and opera premieres. His adventures include writing a musical with Armistead Maupin, conducting high-profile live Steven Spielberg extravaganzas and Leonard Bernstein tributes, and leading orchestras for (among others) Sinatra, Domingo, Sammy Davis Jr and Kermit the Frog.

Yet for all of the pops-gala glitz that can surround Glen, he’s also deeply embedded in the formal classical world, translating Mahler, Schubert and Mozart and generating prolific amounts of his own original work – notably, thirty-five different song cycles which have worked their way into repertoire around the world). In part, he’s the deliverer of a kind of sumptuous, sugarplum American classical – deceptively complex and with a shrewd mind brought to bear on its audience, bridging the inclusive easy-listening dynamics of pop-orchestral and classical fusion with the edgier harmonic depth of unsublimated modern music. He’s arguably best known these days for his adaptations of classic children’s narratives ‘The Runaway Bunny’ and ‘Goodnight Moon’, both of which are latterday successors to the likes of Prokofiev’s ‘Peter and the Wolf’ and Don Gillis’ ‘The Man Who Invented Music’ (and, all right, Kleinsinger and Tripp’s ‘Tubby the Tuba’) – accessible and dramatic music full of colours, moods and ready universal emotion: functioning both as stepping stones into a wider classical world and as witty, heartfelt works in their own right. On a harder note, his taut and emotional contributions to ‘The AIDS Quilt Songbook’ project suggest a man who’s anything but lost in showbiz.

If you fancy an up-close London evening in which Glen himself pares his work down to its greatest simplicity and directness – just his own piano plus three leading singers from classical and musical theatre – you’ve got a chance to attend one. At Waterloo’s 1901 Arts Club, Glen will be joined by Canadian bass-baritone Daniel Okulitch (soon to be seen in the world premiere of Nico Muhly’s ‘Marnie’ at English National Opera), and international mezzo sopranos Lucy Schaufer and Kim Criswell for various UK premiere performances, including a world premiere.

Jonathan Blalock & Tintagel Music present:
Kim Criswell, Daniel Okulitch and Lucy Schaufer sing The Music Of Glen Roven
1901 Club, 7 Exton Street, Waterloo, London, SE1 8UE, England
Wednesday 22nd November 2017, 7.30pm – information here and here

Programme:

Two Songs by Edna St. Vincent Millay (Love Is Not Love, An Ancient Gesture) (performed by Lucy Schaufer) (UK premiere)
Saraband from ‘Symphony No.2’ (performed by Glen Roven) (world premiere)
Songs from the Underground (performed by Daniel Okulitch) (UK premiere)
The Hillary Speeches (performed by Kim Criswell) (UK premiere)
Goodnight Moon (performed by Daniel Okulitch) (UK premiere)

For examples I’ll leave you with performances of ‘Goodnight Moon’ in its full orchestral/soprano version, a Roven Yeats setting and the AIDS Quilt piece ‘Retro’ (the latter two sung by Daniel Okulitch) plus a hour-long interview with Glen himself, which ought to throw his work into a more detailed light as well as displaying his own confident, breezy pragmatism about his method and motives (pragmatic enough to make most of my critical hopscotching above a little redundant).

https://soundcloud.com/glenroven/lauren-flanigan-goodnight-moon

https://soundcloud.com/glenroven/glen-roven-interview

Tags: Anna Feild, Catherine Pluygers, Daniel Okulitch, David Sutton-Anderson, Don Gillis, Elisabeth Lutyens, Gavin Morrison, George Nicholson, Gillian Jones, Giorgio Coslovich, Glen Roven, Glyn Williams, Henryk Sienkiewicz, Ian Mitchell, Judy Proctor, Kim Criswell, Lucy Schaufer, Michael Christie, Michiko Shimanuki, Paul Patterson, Peter Maxwell Davies, Phil Edwards, piano music, Regent Hall (venue) - Soho - London, Robert Coleridge, Sergei Prokofiev, Simon Desorgher, wind instrument music

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Categories 2017, 20th century classical music, 21st century classical music, acoustic music, cabaret, chamber music, classical (Western art music), classical songs, crossover, easy listening, instrumental music, New Music, oratorios, previews, salon events, song cycles, theatre music, vocal music

November 2017 – upcoming London gigs – ‘Anonymous Was a Woman’ with Anne Garner, Mary Currie, Lis Stewart (9th November); Powerdove and Ashley Paul (15th November)

4 Nov

There’s a pair of interesting female-focussed gigs coming up over the next two weeks in two of London’s more creative music corners, mingling elements of latterday folk, post-punk, Rock In Opposition, experimental noise and avant-garde pop…

Partly due to the pressure of time, and partly due to the eloquence of the press releases, I’ll let them speak for themselves…

* * * * * * * *

Club Integral presents:
‘Anonymous Was A Woman’: Anne Garner + Mary Currie + Lis Stewart
IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, Waterloo, London, SE1 7LG, England
Thursday 9th November 2017, 8.00pm – information here and here

“A night of music by women. Three very different sets from three extraordinary artists.

“Anne Garner‘s lyrical work is inspired by curiosity and a sense of wonder, a hunger to explore and explain the emotional inner life. The magic lies in the ambiguity, in the unanswered question and the breath between notes. It’s in poetry and harmony that Anne finds her safe space, in enveloping and beguiling moods, a place from which to speak the unspoken. Anne will be performing music from her upcoming album, joined by Jack Hayter on pedal steel guitar, Nick Samuel on saxophone and James Murray on guitar.

“Mary Currie is a singer perhaps best known for her work with Gareth Williams (This Heat). Williams and Currie recorded a limited-run cassette-only album, ‘Flaming Tunes‘, in 1985, which over time has become a classic of the lo-fi DIY underground. Since Gareth’s death at forty-eight from cancer, Mary has worked with several collaborators including Howard Jacques (These Records, Bermuda Triangle Test Engineers) and Mick Hobbs (Officer!) in folk group Bucket, and with Mick, Howard and Monica Ruud on a project called Whole New Concept. Mary will be be singing with Alison Craig (Shötley Crüe) – essentially traditional sea songs and modern folk songs.

“Lis Stewart plays mostly folk music on a 1918 Lachenal 55 key Maccann Duet concertina. She plays from time to time with south London folk collection The No Frills Band. For Iklectik, she will be performing English, French and Scandinavian folk tunes, both traditional and modern. Expect driving rhythms and haunting melodies.”

* * * * * * * *

Muckle Mouth, 33 Chatsworth Road + Murailles Music present:
Powerdove + Ashley Paul
33 Chatsworth Road/The Old Dentist, 33 Chatsworth Road, Homerton, London, E5 0LH, England
Wednesday 15th November 2017, 7.00pm – information here, here and here

“Annie Lewandowski is a composer, improviser (piano, accordion), and multi-instrumentalist (singer, guitarist, and keyboardist) whose work has situated her between the worlds of improvisation and independent rock music.

“In the Powerdove combination – in which she’s joined by trouble-makers Thomas Bonvalet (once of Cheval de Frise) and Chad Popple (Collossamite, Behemoth), and previously John Dieterich of Deerhoof – Annie’s songwriting is transformed into singular, arresting, and strange pop music that sees graceful melodies set against raucous percussion arrangements; a music that ”rumbles with immediate beauty and unsettling events.” The band has released eight recordings and performed at festivals and venues across the United States and Europe. Currently touring their new album ‘War Shapes’, this will be their first full-band show in the UK.

“They are joined by the awesome London-based American composer/performer Ashley Paul, who uses an array of instruments including saxophone, clarinet, voice, guitar, bells and percussion, mixing disparate elements to create a colorful palate of sound that works its way into her intuitive songs; free forming, introverted melodies. This blend manifests beautiful and simple musical forms against acoustic experimentation. She’s known for her tense, raw and delicate compositions, playfully combining introverted melodies, free-form song-like arrangements and an unadorned approach to improvisation.”

Tags: Anne Garner, Annie Lewandowski, Ashley Paul, Chad Popple, Cheval de Frise, Gareth Williams, IKLECTIK Art Lab (promoters), Jack Hayter, James Murray, Lis Stewart, listening to women, London (England), Mary Currie, Muckle Mouth (event/promoter), Nick Samuel, Powerdove, This Heat, Thomas Bonvalet, women of heart and mind

November 2017 – experimental gigs in England – Christine Ott on tour in Salford, Leeds and London (5th-8th November)

29 Oct

French experimental keyboard player Christine Ott – a sometime collaborator with Radiohead, Yann Tiersen and Tindersticks – is about to visit England as part of an ongoing European tour.

There are only three dates on this part of the tour, but they reveal a constantly shifting focus as Christine moves between different projects and presentations. In Salford, she’s part of a Gizeh Records-sponsored triple bill shared with two Manchester area experimental acts. In Leeds, she’s performing a live, self-penned soundtrack to a classic 1930s silent film blending romantic drama and docufiction, while in London, she’s got an evening split between a solo set and a performance of her duo project Snowdrops, in which she and fellow keyboard player Mathieu Gabry blend assorted keyboards and soundscapes. All will feature Christine’s work on piano and on the ondes Martenot, an antique années folles proto-synthesizer from the 1920s using vacuum tubes, slide controls, early filters and a selection of varied speaker devices to create eerie swooping cadences and strangely-coloured sonic outputs.

Dates:

The Eagle Inn, 18-19 Collier Street, Salford, M3 7DW, England, Sunday 5th November 2017, 7.30pm (with A-Sun-Amissa & ARC Soundtracks) – information here and here
Leeds International Film Festival @ Victoria Hall, Victoria Square, Leeds, West Yorkshire, LS1 3.., England, Monday 6th November 2017, 8.15pm (TABU live) – information
IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, Waterloo, London, SE1 7LG, England, Wednesday 8th November 2017, 8.00pm (solo performance + Snowdrops performance) – information here and here

November 2017 – upcoming London classical/experimental gigs – pieces by Javier Álvarez, Jonathan Harvey, Trevor Wishart and Lauren Marshall at Kammer Klang (8th November); Kim Macari, Raymond McDonald and Club Inegales look into the art of the graphic score (10th November)

28 Oct

For the launch of their new season, Kammer Klang team up with the London Sinfonietta for a set of chamber pieces performed by Sinfonietta solo instrumentalists or as playback items, all of which dovetail into the Sinfonietta’s 50th anniversary celebrations.

Kammer Klang & London Sinfonietta present:
Kammer Klang: Tim Gill + Alistair Mackie (playing Javier Álvarez/Jonathan Harvey/Lauren Marshall) + Trevor Wishart
Café Oto, 18-22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London, E8 3DL, England
Wednesday 8th November 2017, 7.30pm – information here, here and here

Cellist Tim Gill and trumpeter Alistair Mackie (assisted by sound design setups from Sound Intermedia) will be applying their talents to electro-acoustic pieces. One, by the late Jonathan Harvey, sees a solo trumpet transformed into a garrulous ensemble. Another, by the Mexican-Korean-influenced Javier Álvarez is a fabulously dramatic ritual, teeming and menacing, for string sounds and and-bowed-gong ritual inspired by a pairing of two short silent films from the 1920s (a Man Ray image sequence, preceded by horribly compelling footage of a feeding snake). There’ll also be a stereo diffusion playback of Trevor Wishart’s software-driven studio piece ‘Globalalia’, a rapid-fire collage of vocal samples which he describes as “a universal dance of human speech as revealed in twenty tales from everywhere, spoken in tongues”.

In addition, Tim will be performing the evening’s usual ‘Fresh Klang’ item – in this case, a cello-and-electronics piece by Lauren Marshall, principal composer with the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. Online examples of Lauren’s work are still quite rare, but I’ve included a couple of her Soundcloud clips in the roundup below: ‘Hi-Seas’, her violin/string ensemble/electronics mediation on disassociative loneliness, and her luxuriant expanded-orchestra fantasia ‘Suspended Between Earth And Air’ (hailed in ‘Seen And Heard‘, after its premiere back in January, as “a miracle of inspiration (with) stupendous impact”). Both display the work of a young composer with a remarkable flair for slow reveal and the implementation of artful drones with a dreamy Romantic melodicism. Her assured talents translate down well from full Wagnerian orchestras to smaller ensembles, so the same should hold true of this new duet between cellist and software.

Programme:

Fresh Klang: Lauren Marshall – Chang’e flies to the moon (for cello and electronics) – performed by Tim Gill
Jonathan Harvey – Other Presences (for trumpet & electronics) – performed by Alistair Mackie with Sound Intermedia electronics
Jonathan Harvey – Ricercare una Melodia (for trumpet & electronics) – performed by Alistair Mackie with Sound Intermedia electronics
Javier Álvarez – Le repas du serpent & Retour à la raison (for cello & electronics) – performed by Tim Gill with Sound Intermedia electronics)
Trevor Wishart – Globalalia (stereo diffusion)

* * * * * * * *

For those of you interested in the workings and applications of the graphic score, there’s an event a couple of days after Kammer Klang which delves into the world of this intriguing avant-garde tool, as part of the Royal Academy’s Jasper Johns exhibition…

Club Inégales & EFG London Jazz Festival presents:
‘Visualising Music: The Art of the Graphic Score’
The Reynolds Room @ Burlington House, Royal Academy of Arts, Piccadilly, Mayfair, London, W1J 0BD, England
Friday 10th November 2017, 6.30pm – information here and here

“In response to the dynamic that brought Jasper Johns and John Cage together in the 60s, musicians from Club Inégales combine with trumpeter/composer Kim Macari (leader of Family Band, founder of the Apollo Jazz Network and the Orpheus Project) and saxophonist/composer Raymond MacDonald (Professor of Music Psychology and Improvisation at Edinburgh University, co-founder of the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra, and veteran of over sixty album releases), for a performance and discussion exploring the world of graphic scores, improvisation and structure.

“A ground-breaking composer and associate of Jasper Johns, John Cage was a keen graphic score composer, using visual symbols beyond traditional music notation to guide musicians in the performance of his work. Since then, composers and artists have played with pictures to create extraordinary visual scores to redefine the possibilities within composition, merging art and sound.

“In this exclusive event, Kim Macari will then be joined by founder of Club Inégales Peter Wiegold and Professor Raymond MacDonald, chair of Music Psychology and Improvisation at The University of Edinburgh, to explore the art of the graphic score.”

Tags: Alistair Mackie, Apollo Jazz Network, cello music, Club Inégales (venue/promoter), Family Band, Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra, graphic scores, Jasper Johns, Javier Álvarez, John Cage, Jonathan Harvey, Kammer Klang (event), Kim Macari, Lauren Marshall, London (England), London Jazz Festival (event), Man Ray, music for electronics, Peter Wiegold, Raymond MacDonald, Tim Gill, Trevor Wishart, trumpet music

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Categories 2017, 20th century classical music, 21st century classical music, acoustic music, chamber music, classical (Western art music), DIY music, electro-acoustic music, experimental music, instrumental music, jazz, New Music, previews, salon events, spoken word

November 2017 – upcoming London classical gigs – SOLO presents Eliza McCarthy (7th November); Chamber Sundays at The Rosemary Branch (12th November); Scordatura Women’s Music Collective performs duets by women composers (10th November)

23 Oct

Three of the imminent, interesting classical gigs in London this coming month… some contemporary solo piano in Shoreditch, some disparate contemporary chamber music taking over an Islington theatre, and a celebration of women composers by a female music collective in Stoke Newington…

* * * * * * * *

SOLO presents:
SOLO 04: Eliza McCarthy
Shoreditch Treehouse, 34 Charlotte Road, Shoreditch, London, EC2A 3PB, England
Tuesday 7th November 2017, 7.00pm – information

“SOLO is back and this time we’re heading to a cosy loft right in the heart of Shoreditch for an intimate recital from acclaimed pianist Eliza McCarthy! Eliza specialises in contemporary music and has worked with a whole bunch of composers from John Adams to Tansy Davies and Andrew Hamilton to Mica Levi. Expect a veritable smorgasbord – contemporary pieces by John Adams, John Luther Adams, Mica Levi and more, a side order of J.S. Bach, and the world première of ‘Curved Form (No. 4)’ by Alex Groves.”

Here’s Eliza playing some Levi at Kammer Klang a while back…

* * * * * * * *

At the moment, there’s no more info on which Bach, Levi and Adams(es) pieces Eliza will be playing: but you might like to know that the next in Alex’s sequence of ‘Curved Form’ pieces – ‘Curved Form (No. 5)’ – will be played the following week at the Rosemary Branch’s informal Chamber Sundays evening, curated by mezzo-soprano Rosie Middleton, at which you’ll also hear compositions by Adam Gorb and Jonathan Dove.

Chamber Sundays: Rosie Middleton & Friends
The Rosemary Branch Theatre, 2 Shepperton Road, De Beauvoir Town, London, N1 3DT, England
Sunday 12th November 2017, 7.00pm – information

Sorry – I’ve not got much more information on that either, other than what’s above; but here are some sample pieces from Adam, Alex and Jonathan…

https://soundcloud.com/alexgroves-1/on-reflection

* * * * * * * *

Finally…

Scordatura Women’s Music Collective present:
‘Duos and Duels’
The Old Church, Stoke Newington Church Street, Stoke Newington, London, N16 9ES, England
Friday 10th November 2017, 7.30pm – information

“Scordatura Women’s Music Collective is a group of musicians who want to extend the established repertoire by performing and championing music written by women. With interests ranging from Baroque Historical Performance to contemporary composition to world music, members of the collective will be performing from a huge, varied and beautiful body of music.

“On this occasion, the group are performing an evening of duos for cello, clarinet and viola composed by some of the most exciting women of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.”

Programme:

Rebecca Clarke – Prelude, Allegro and Pastorale
Sally Beamish – Duel
Kaija Saariaho – Oi Kuu
Judith Weir – St Agnes
Chen Yi – Happy Tune
Shulamit Ran – Private Game
Charlotte Bray – Midnight Interludes
Libby Larsen – Yellow Jersey
Caroline Shaw – Limestone + Felt

Encouraging that this is going on: encouraging, too, that I managed to track down performances of seven of those nine pieces in a further attempt to persuade you to go along.

https://soundcloud.com/astral-inc/caroline-shaw-limestone-felt-with-gabriel-cabezas-cello

https://soundcloud.com/charlottebray/midnight-interludes

Tags: Adam Gorb, Alex Groves, Caroline Shaw, Charlotte Bray, Chen Yi, Eliza McCarthy, Johann Sebastian Bach, John Adams, John Luther Adams, Jonathan Dove, Judith Weir, Kaija Saariaho, Katrina Damigos, Libby Larsen, listening to women, Mica Levi, premieres, Rebecca Clarke, Rosie Middleton, Sally Beamish, Scordatura Women's Music Collective, Shoreditch Treehouse (venue) - Shoreditch - London, Shulamit Ran, SOLO (event/promoter), The Old Church (venue) - Stoke Newington - London, The Rosemary Branch Theatre (venue) - De Beauvoir Town - London

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Categories 2017, 20th century classical music, 21st century classical music, acoustic music, Baroque music, chamber music, classical (Western art music), instrumental music, minimalism, New Music, previews, West Coast classical music

November/December 2017 – more assorted Smithery – BarmyFiveseveN play Tim Smith at Connector V, Amsterdam (2nd November); Spratleys Japs’ Wonderful Winter Wonderland tour of England (14th-17th December)

15 Oct

Coverage of the complex, perverse and joyful musical work of the sadly incapacitated Tim Smith – whether inside or outside his mothership Cardiacs band – frequently figures in here. It’s good to bring you all more about his continued crossover from cult status to something wider: this time, with news of a conservatory jazz gig in Amsterdam and of the continued afterlife of Spratleys Japs.

Broedplaats Lely & Steim present:
Connector V
Steim, Schipluidenlaan 12-3E, 1062HE Amsterdam, Netherlands
Thursday 2nd November 2017, 8.00pm – information

“Composers are not necessarily dead. They also do not necessarily write symphonies in D flat minor in a 4/4 time signature.

“Tim Smith, frontman of the British band called Cardiacs, is a great composer who wrote lots of music permeated with energy, humour, beauty, Britishness. By people who only partly open their ears (or their minds for that matter), his music has been defined as being “chaotic”. The opposite is true, however: it is strongly organised music and all one needs to be able to do is count past four (and not forget about prime numbers). This challenging mix of punk, prog rock, orchestral and live electronic music (also known as “pronk”) will be performed by BarmyFiveseveN, a “small big band” ensemble of around fifteen players from the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, armed with live electronic extensions.”

Connector V is part of a monthly series at Steim: regular readers should recognise this particular one as a follow-up to the Smith-covering set by Alex Brajkovic Ensemble at Amsterdam’s Jazz Ensemble Festival back in April, and it does in fact feature most or all of the same players, put together by rebel prog professor Jos Zwaanenburg. No-one seems to have recorded/posted evidence from the last time, so I can’t show you how it went – but as before, I can give you some very loose indications as to how this concert might might turn out by referring you to English Rose Orchestrations’ string quartet version of one of the featured pieces, The Duck And Roger The Horse.

* * * * * * * *

The following month, Spratleys Japs consolidate the success of their Brighton and London reunion shows over the last couple of years by setting out on a bigger, broader English tour taking in Yorkshire and the West as well as the south east, with a mass of current/former Cardiacs and friends coalescing as support around the tour dates.

Read more about SJ here: in brief, though, they’re a short-lived and swampy alternate-universe pop project (part alien folk maunderings, part glam-punk punch and part spindly antiprog) which Tim put together in the mid-’90s with then-girlfriend/muse Jo Spratley. Now revived by Jo and a collection of Brighton art rockers, they’ve got a second wind and have been rattling through fresh gigs partially in tribute to Tim and partially because the enthralling, infuriating puzzle-box songs have a peculiar life of their own.

As regards the backup, looming raconteur Stephen Evens brings his scowling, sardonic British pop along to the London, Brighton and Bristol shows (possibly with full band in tow for all of them). In a similar vein, Yorkshire dark-melodrama rockers The Scaramanga Six pile in at the Huddersfield date, while the Brighton show also sports vigorous dream poppers Hurtling and noisy art-rock goons Ham Legion (the latter performing their Syd Barrett tribute as “Vegetable Men” (plus another acoustic set from Kavus Torabi, squeezing in time in between fronting Gong, Knifeworld and his radio broadcasts). At Bristol there’s another onetime Cardiacs guitarist, Jon Poole, possibly bringing both solo stuff and one-man versions of his clever-pop work with The Dowling Poole; plus ZOFFF (the reverberant south coast kosmische/deep-psych band featuring Crayola Lectern‘s Chris Anderson and yet another ex-Cardiac six-stringer, Bic Hayes).

As with most Cardiacs-related events, these give you a cross-section of a under-celebrated ongoing British sub-scene; stretching from surprisingly accessible, sharply written latter-day take on Britpop right through to mantric pedal noise and squirts of lysergic space-cadet juice. Here’s a selection of sundries from all concerned:

Full dates:

The Parish, 28 Kirksgate, Huddersfield, Yorkshire, HD1 1QQ, England, Thursday 14th December 2017, 7.30pm (with The Scaramanga Six) – information here and here
Exchange, 72-73 Old Market, Bristol, Avon, BS2 0EJ, England, Friday 15th December 2017, 7.30pm (with Jon Poole + ZOFFF + Stephen Evens) – information here and here
The Green Door Store, 2-4 Trafalgar Arches, Lower Goods Yard, Brighton Train Station, Brighton BN1 4FQ, England, Saturday 16th December 2017, 6.00pm (with Kavus Torabi + Stephen Evens (full band) + Hurtling + Ham Legion As Vegetable Men) – information here and here
The Windmill, 22 Blenheim Gardens, Brixton, London, SW2 5BZ, England, Sunday 17th December 2017 (with Stephen Evens + others tbc) – information t.b.c.

UPDATE, 18th October – apparently we can also expect a couple of imminent fundraising Cardiacs cover versions from Spratleys Japs and Stephen Evens (Odd Even and Two Bites of Cherry), plus other surprises they’re keeping a little tightlipped about for the moment.

Meanwhile, Cornish psychedelic folkie Emily Jones (another Spratleys friend from previous gigs) has been added to the Brighton concert, which now also features a Torabi/Steve Davis DJ set. Support for the Brixton Windmill show in London is going to be thrashy prog-pop stuntmeisters The Display Team and rapidly rising Windmill favourites Black Midi. Below are a couple of moments from Emily and the ‘Team. (There’s not much more I can give you about Black MIDI. They’re so new that the paint’s hardly dry on them, and their Soundcloud page is still empty; but I did manage to establish that they’re an experimental/instrumental rock five-piece of teenage Croydonians and that they’re “purveyors of the darkest dreamscapes”…)

Tags: Amsterdam (Netherlands), BarmyFiveseveN, Black MIDI (British band), Brighton (England), Bristol (England), Cardiacs, Emily Jones, English Rose Orchestrations, ensemble music, Gong, Ham Legion, Huddersfield (England), Hurtling, Jo Spratley, Jon Poole, Jos Zwaanenburg, Kavus Torabi, Knifeworld, London (England), Stephen Evens, Syd Barrett, the buds and spawn of Cardiacs and Tim Smith, The Display Team, The Scaramanga Six, Tim Smith, Tim Smith's Spratleys Rats (Spratleys Japs), ZOFFF

October 2017 – upcoming London classical/experimental gigs – Howard Skempton at 70 (13th October), Rarescale’s New Baroque (14th October)

5 Oct

A couple of quick referred notifications of a pair of upcoming gigs on the classical/experimental cusp – just the blurb…

* * * * * * * *

Club Inégales presents:
Howard Skempton at 70
Hall Two @ Kings Place, 90 York Way, Kings Cross, London, N1 9AG, England
Friday 13th October 2017, 10.00pm – information here and here

“Club Inégales’s live club nights in Euston create the unexpected chemistry that enables the special to happen as brings in the best in new and spontaneous performance. Its house ensemble Notes Inégales was created by two innovators in British music (Peter Wiegold and David Purser) and features some of the finest players in the country, dedicated to improvisation as well as other contemporary repertoire. Peter has been a pioneer of bringing together composition and improvisation, working directly with musicians in the creation of new work.

“Vocalist, accordionist and composer Howard Skempton has made two delightful visits to Club Inégales, performing his solo accordion pieces and singing and playing with the ensemble. In this special concert at Kings Place, Howard will be joining Notes Inégales to improvise and perform new arrangements of pieces including ‘In Cuba They Play With Maracas’, ‘Chorale Inégales’, Show Me The Limelight’, ‘Trapeze’ and a seventieth birthday tribute to American composer Christian Wolff, entitled ‘Forget the Minuet’.”

* * * * * * * *

rarescale presents:
New Baroque (with Carla Rees & Michael Oliva)
IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, Waterloo, London, SE1 7LG, England
Saturday 14th October 2017, 8.00pm – information here and here

“The first in a series of concerts combining new and old repertoire for baroque flute, ‘New Baroque’ explores how a historical instrument can be used in modern times through a series of collaborations with imaginative contemporary creators. In this eclectic programme, hear new works for baroque flute solo and with electronics by a range of living composers interspersed with music from the baroque era.

“The performers are rarescale regulars Carla Rees and Michael Oliva. A British-based low flutes player and arranger, Carla is the artistic director of rarescale and runs low-flutes publishing company Tetractys, working frequently in collaboration with composers to develop new repertoire and techniques. Originally trained as a biochemist, Michael is rarescale’s composer-in-residence: an electronic musician, with a fondness for woodwind he lectures in and teaches electroacoustic music and music technology at the Royal College of Music and Imperial College. In addition, he runs and premieres multimedia opera work with madestrange opera, a company dedicated to producing new forms of the genre for modern audiences. Recent works include a requiem commissioned by the choir Mosaic (2010) and a new full length opera, ‘Singularity’ (2015).”

The programme is still to be confirmed, but here’s a double taste of what’s likely to be involved:

&nsbp;

Tags: Carla Rees, Christian Wolff, Club Inégales (event/promoter), David Purser, flute music, Howard Skempton, London (England), Michael Oliva, music for electronics, Peter Wiegold, rarescale

October/November 2017 – upcoming London experimental gigs – post-various loops and shades from Rothko, Yellow6 and Darkroom (12th October); Moondog For Gamelan plus Steve Lawson/Corey Mwamba duo (28th October); Steel Pan Fusion plays Philip Glass (23rd November)

4 Oct

Several longstanding Misfit City experimental favourites (all veterans of the liminal cross-encroachments between British post-rock, noise and electronic explorations during the 1990s) feature in a mid-month triple bill of shifting noise, words and melodies down at IKLECTIK.

Champion Version presents:
Edition 1: Rothko + Yellow6 + Darkroom
IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, Waterloo, London, SE1 7LG, England
Thursday 12th October 2017, 7.30pm – information here and here

Though they’ve passed through a shifting variety of lineups and different instrumentation, Rothko are based around a single constant: Mark Beazley’s resonant post-industrial bass guitar, which speaks stern granite-y notes and impressionistic chthonic drones and blurs, sketching and deepen evocatic musical landscapes from unyielding post-punk city visions to soft-edged post-rock hillscapes.

On this occasion they’re appearing in an expanded version of the beautifully bleak words-and-shades trio last mentioned in ‘Misfit City’ just under a year ago (in which Mark was joined by recitateur Johnny Brown from Band of Holy Joy, and by Inga Tillere on projected visuals). In place for tonight’s show is a fourth member – Mark’s Low Bias colleague Graham Dowdall (a.k.a. Gagarin), whose synth wizardry’s brought him into collaboration with Pere Ubu, Suns of Arqa, Roshi and no less than two former Velvet Undergroundeers (Nico and John Cale).

Intermittent and elusive, yet steadily prolific, Jon Attwood’s solo guitar project Yellow6 has links with the undersung east London post-rock scene of the 1990s (which also spawned A.R. Kane, Disco Inferno, Moonshake and Bark Psychosis (BP’s drummer Mark Hartnett would later put in a Yellow6 stint). Moving away from his initial goth and anarcho-punk roots (tempered with soul), Jon was drawn into the world of minimalism, repetition and reverbed/distorted drone loops. Shaped equally by Jon’s natural humility and his “obsessive need to create” toward an artistic peak he’s not yet reached, Yellow6 has produced over fifty releases with results variously described as “gentle shape-shifting misery” and “beautiful, shimmering and blissful”.

With roots in Cambridge science culture, propulsive and unorthodox ambient duo Darkroom initially found their feet in the fertile 1990s ferment surrounding art-poppers No-Man (initially sporting the latter’s singer Tim Bowness as a member, and providing that particular scene’s experimental edge alongside Steven Wilson’s electrodrones as Bass Communion). Since then, like a wide-orbiting comet, synthworker Os and guitarist Michael Bearpark have forged their own idiosyncratic path in and out of various drone, loop, texture and improv clusters, as well as becoming in-house soundtrackers for brain investigations at the Hub. Moving on from their earlier minglings of boiling starstuff, ambient techno and gasping tidal experimental textures, their more recent music is moody, beating improvised electronica increasingly shaped by Mike and Os’ rediscovery of attenuated blues tones, troubled elongated Neil Young guitar churns and dark bass clarinet voicings. For more assorted ‘Misfit City’ froth and musings on Darkroom, click here. Less celebrated than their gigmates, they’ll be opening the show. They could just as well be closing it.

This concert has been set up by boutique vinyl art-music label Champion Version, who’ll have one of their limited-edition vinyl EP featuring all three acts available on the night.

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Towards the end of the month, there’s an intriguing reconnection between late twentieth-century New York and the Indonesian form which inspired so much of it…

Europalia Arts Festival Indonesia presents:
Iwan Gunawan & Stefan Lakatos’ ‘Moondog For Gamelan’ + Steve Lawson/Corey Mwamba
LSO St Luke’s, 161 Old Street, St Luke’s, London, EC1V 9NG, England
Saturday 28th October 2017, 7.30pm – information

“Few musicians are the source of as much intrigue as Moondog. A blind man from Kansas transplanted to New York City, he dressed as a Viking and chose to live on the streets. His compositions reflect his experiences of hearing his way through the city – motifs borrowed from Jazz, Classical and Native American music unwind over the constant beating of a tom-tom drum, like the thumping of a subway train. Occasionally field recordings of traffic noise or crying babies sneak in, as if leaking through an open window. It’s the sound of a city, the sound of a wealth disparate parts coming together to create a complex whole – a kind of urban gamelan.

“For this concert, Moondog’s output is literally reimagined as gamelan by Iwan Gunawan (a reknowned contemporary Javanese gamelan composer known for combining the tradition with the use of electronics and computers) and Moondog’s friend and pupil Stefan Lakatos (who performs using a homemade percussion instrument given to him by the composer himself). Featuring instruments built especially for the occasion, this performance takes gamelan out of its traditional context, taking on Moondog’s experimental yet optimistic compositions. Almost minimalist in its construction – indeed, Moondog alleged that Phillip Glass once called him the “father of minimalism” – the influential outsider musician’s melodies resonate amid the controlled chaos of gamelan.”

In support, there’s a duo performance by another ‘Misfit City’ favourite – bass guitar looper Steve Lawson and experimental vibraphonist Corey Mwamba. Collaborators for at least a decade, they’re a pair of accessible yet stubborn musicians creating their own long-distance version of village music on the outskirts of the music business. Recorded/filmed evidence of what they do is surprisingly thin on the ground (I can’t find any) so you’ll have to go on word-of-mouth info about their past gigs. Expect some aspects taken from jazz and fed through sundry loops, delays and perky processors, but don’t expect them to be confined by that – their musical minds stretch from contemporary classical and process music to goofy tunes, and their textural tastes from lowdown murmur to ear-piercing noise. A big bucket to dip into.

* * * * * * * *

While we’re still on the topic of New York minimalism and Philip Glass, look out next month for what sounds like it’ll be an enthralling conjunction of Big Apple pulse and Caribbean tonal warmth…

‘Steel Pan Fusion Plays Philip Glass’
The Jazz Café, 5 Parkway, Camden Town, London, NW1 7PG, England
Thursday 23rd November 2017, 7.30pm – information here and here

“One of the most influential and important composers of the twentieth century, Philip Glass is a pioneer of minimalist music alongside fellow luminaries Steve Reich and Terry Riley. With a body of work that stretches beyond contemporary classical music into film scores, operas and more, the source material is rich for reinterpretation. We have commissioned London based ensemble Steel Pan Fusion to perform a selection of works from Glass’ extensive repertoire, from his peerless ‘Glassworks’ to the soundtrack for ‘The Truman Show’.”

Tags: Champion Versions (record label), Corey Mwamba, Darkroom, IKLECTIK Art Lab (promoters), Iwan Gunawan, LSO St Luke's (venue) - St Luke's - London, Moondog, Philip Glass, Rothko, Steel Pan Fusion, Stefan Lakatos, Steve Lawson, The Jazz Café (venue) - Camden Town - London - England, Yellow6

October 2017 – upcoming London experimental gigs – the Radiophonic Workshop takes over the British Library (13th October)

3 Oct

A quick reposting…

The British Library presents:
Late at the Library: The Radiophonic Workshop & Guests
Entrance Hall @ The British Library, 96 Euston Road, Kings Cross, London, NW1 2DB, England
Friday 13th October 2017, 6.30pm –
information

“The Radiophonic Workshop are one of the most influential electronic music groups of all time. Founded in 1958 by Desmond Briscoe and Daphne Oram, it was home to a maverick group of experimental composers, sound engineers and musical innovators including the late Delia Derbyshire. In a series of small studios within the labyrinthine corridors of the BBC Maida Vale complex, the Workshop set about exploring new ways of using – and abusing – technology to create new sounds.

“Their influence on popular music has been profound. As the in-house composers of music and effects for the BBC they created the sonic backdrops for ‘Doctor Who’, ‘The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’, ‘Tomorrow’s World’ and countless others. From The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Prince and Pink Floyd through to some of the most innovative contemporary electronic artists and DJs, the Workshop’s legacy continues to grow as new generations of musicians discover their catalogue of extraordinary recordings.

“Now, nearly two decades after the Workshop was decommissioned, original members Peter Howell, Roger Limb, Dr Dick Mills, Paddy Kingsland and long-time associate composer Mark Ayres are back working together. They soundtracked the childhoods of several generations, now they’re back to soundtrack your Friday night with a two part set. The first is a live version of their first studio album for twenty-five years, the improvised work ‘Burials On Several Earths’, with guest collaborator Martyn Ware (Heaven 17, The Human League and BEF). The second is a heritage archive set in which the Workshop perform some of their best known material – including the high water mark of early British electronica – the signature tune for ‘Doctor Who’.

“Join the Radiophonic Workshop at 6.30pm for a special in-conversation event ‘Soundhouses: The Radiophonic Workshop at 60’. Tickets include entry to the Late event. Visuals for the night are performed by Obsrvtry, a collaboration between Michael Faulkner (founder of D-Fuse) and Ben Sheppee (creator of Lightrhythm Visuals), with a guest DJ set from Tom Middleton of Global Communication.”

Tags: BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Ben Sheppee, D-Fuse, Daphne Oram, Delia Derbyshire, Desmond Briscoe, Dick Mills, Global Communication, Lightrhythm Visuals, Mark Ayres, Michael Faulkner, Obsrvtry, Paddy Kingsland, Peter Howell, Roger Limb, The British Library (venue) - Kings Cross - London

October-December 2017 – opera and musical theatre – the ‘Rough For Opera’ scratch night in London (9th October); Lucy Steven’s Kathleen Ferrier bio-show tours England (21st/26th/27th September, 3rd December)

2 Oct

Next week in London, a window on some nascent opera work…

Second Movement present:
Rough For Opera #16: A Scratch Night For New Opera
Cockpit Theatre, Gateforth Street, London NW8 8EH
Monday 9th October 2017, 7.30pm – information

“…’Rough For Opera is a performance platform for composers to share new work and opera in progress. Each event is a snapshot and celebration of contemporary opera making, with most work being brought from page to stage for the very first time. With an informal and intimate atmosphere and a Q&A following each performance, Rough For Opera is a great way for audiences to engage directly with opera makers and for composers to get invaluable feedback about their work at an early stage in its development.”

This month’s edition features the following short opera performances (between ten minutes and half and hour apiece):

Michael-Jon Mizra – ‘Can you Give Up Your Seat Please?’
Georgina Bowden – ‘Radium’ (libretto by Eleanor Knight, directed by Ruth Knight)
Voicings Collective – ‘Voicings’ (composed by Michael Betteridge, written by Rebecca Hurst, directed and performed by Freya Wynn-Jones)

Post-performance Q&As will be led by Professor Paul Barker (RCSSD).

* * * * * * * *

Over the course of October (and at the beginning of December), a labour-of-love musical staging of the life of classical and folk singing legend Kathleen Ferrier is touring some of the more out-of-the-way venues in England. From the sound of it, it’s a pretty portable show, so if you’re interested in booking it for your own venue, drop the production company a line.

Dramatic Solutions presents:
Kathleen Ferrier: Whattalife!

Lucy Stevens (as Kathleen Ferrier)

“This new one-woman play with music tells the story of the great English contralto, whose voice and recordings are treasured to this day. Kathleen Ferrier was one of Britain’s phenomenal women of the twentieth Century. ‘Whattalife!‘ tells her story from her debut as a singer in 1940, her meteoric rise and her tragic death in 1953. ‘Whattalife!’ is the first staged dramatisation of Ferrier’s life, evoking the spirit of the war and post war years. Just like Kathleen during her short but full life, the show has a great sense of fun and talks straight from the heart.

“Professional actress and contralto Lucy Stevens has researched and created a unique and totally engaging performance. The play is written in Kathleen’s own words taken from her letters and diaries. Sung music with piano accompaniment from her repertoire is woven through the text.”

There’s a ‘Guardian’ article on the piece here, in which Lucy reveals how the piece was put together and throws light on the life, moods and artistry of a strong-minded and talented woman who went her own way during a time when such things weren’t so readily accepted.

Dates:

Holy Trinity Church, New Road, Bengeo, Hertfordshire, SG14 3JJ, England, Saturday 21st October 2017, 7.30pm – email for details
Cooper Hall, Selwood Manor, Frome, Somerset, BA11 3NL, England, Thursday 26th October 2017, 7.30pm – information
Anthony Minghella Theatre @ Quay Arts, Sea Street, Newport Harbour, Isle of Wight, PO30 5BD, England, Friday 27th October 2017, 7.30pm – information
Dorchester Arts, Corn Exchange, High East Street, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1HF, England, Sunday 3rd December 2017, 2.30pm – information

And purely to indulge myself, here’s Jocelyn Pook‘s mid-’90s setting of a Ferrier loop as part of her minimalist song-cycle ‘Deluge’: best known as the theme for a mobile phone advert (and, as the video image shows, as fodder for numerous new-age compilations), it’s a little classic of minimalist fusion.

Tags: Bengeo (England), Dorchester (England), Eleanor Knight, Freya Wynn-Jones, Frome (England), Georgina Bowden, Jocelyn Pook, Kathleen Ferrier, London (England), Lucy Stevens, Michael Betteridge, Michael-Jon Mizra, Newport (Isle of Wight - England), Rebecca Hurst, Ruth Knight, Voicings Collective

June 2017 – upcoming London/German gigs – Lindsay Cooper remembered by Half The Sky (22nd June – plus Avantgarde Festival appearance on 25th June)

15 Jun

Half The Sky (photo © Jean-Hervé Péron)

Long before the knot of current pop culture wrangling over women’s control over the music they make, the late Lindsay Cooper was plugging away in her own corner, striving (and ultimately succeeding) for much the same thing in the often arid and unforgiving spaces of British art rock, improv and jazz. Later this month, the Half The Sky ensemble (led by vigorous curator/arranger /multi-instrumentalist Yumi Hara) will be bringing their showcase of her music both to London and to a small town outside Hamburg, re-animating the work she created for Henry Cow, News From Babel and Music For Films between the late ’70s and the mid-’80s.

Originally formed in 2015 for festival appearances in Japan and France, Half The Sky derive their name from the Maoist/feminist maxim, “women hold up half the sky”, as used by Lindsay as a composition title on Henry Cow’s ‘Western Culture’ album, back in 1978) and feature an impressive alliance of British and Japanese art-rock musicians. As well as Yumi on keyboards, lever harp and vocals, the ensemble features two members of Cicala-Mvta (Miwazow on koto, ching-dong percussion and voice; Wataru Okhuma on alto saxophone and clarinet), the Korekyojinn/Altered States bass guitarist Nasuno Mitsuru; Chlöe Herington (the reeds and melodica player from Knifeworld, Chrome Hoof and V Ä L V Ē) and finally two of Lindsay’s former Henry Cow/News From Babel colleagues (singer Dagmar Krause and drummer Chris Cutler). As Yumi points out, “the gender split follows Lindsay’s general practice and the example of the original bands – Henry Cow (50% female) and News from Babel (75% female).”

Yumi’s comments on the music:

“In 2013, soon after Lindsay passed away, Matthew Watkins made a call for arrangements of her mini-composition ‘Slice’ for a special edition of his podcast ‘Canterbury Sans Frontières‘. I made a transcription of the piece and recorded it for solo clavichord. Chris Cutler and I also played it in Japan and New York. A little later, inspired by the three memorial concerts Chris Cutler organised in 2014 with the original bands, I put Half The Sky together to play Lindsay’s music in Japan.

“With the exception of ‘Slice’, it was only after – and because of – the 2014 concerts that any working scores for the Henry Cow pieces became available, having been painstakingly assembled from Lindsay’s notebooks, original band-members’ surviving parts and careful analysis of the recordings. A handful of the News from Babel songs – none of which had ever been performed live – had already been reconstructed for the memorial concert by Zeena Parkins; the rest I had to work out from scratch – as well as rearranging everything for a mixture of occidental and oriental instruments.

“This programme is approached very much as a music of the present – and not as an academic reconstruction.”

In addition to Half The Sky’s performance, the London show will feature DJ sets from two of London’s more interesting musical personalities. Marina Organ’s known both for three decades of staunch work as writer/co-driving force of ‘Organ’ magazine and for her indefatigable DJ/interviewing work on ‘The Other Rock Show’. James Larcombe is the keyboard player and sometime composer with Stars In Battledress, Arch Garrison, North Sea Radio Orchestra, Zag & The Coloured Beads and the William D. Drake band; now he seems to be extending his talents (or at least his brassy neck), to disc-spinning.

Half the Sky: Music of Lindsay Cooper

Café Oto, 18-22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London, E8 3DL, England, Thursday 22nd June 2017, 7.30pm – information here and here
Avantgarde Festival, Steinhorster Weg 2, 23847 Schiphorst, Deutschland, Sunday 25th June 2017, 2.15pm – information here and here

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Pinning down the nature of a woman’s work in art – or women’s work in general – is not always an easy thing, nor even desirable. Even the most positive intentions can produce more restrictive categories, more unwanted boxings and demands to conform. In the case of Lindsay, whose career always foregrounded honest effort and end product over personality showboating, and which was tinted by doubt and determination, it’s probably best to concentrate mostly on the mind behind the music: to listen to the querying voice coming through.

Operating over a set of times in which both contemporaries and colleagues had a tendency towards answers and stances, stated in both bald pronouncements and modernist-baroque ornamentations, she opted to bring a more questioning tone which nonetheless carried some of its possible answers in both action and presentation. Hers was a polymathic but purer musicality: an instrumental voice which voyaged alongside others’ often harsher pronouncements, détournements and doctrines and drew from them while never being subject to them, and which always kept a gentler, more accommodating side open to allow growing space and to consistently rebuild.

Although she also put in stints with both the cheery Canterbury fusioneering of National Health and the terrifying dark-folk band Comus during the 1970s, Lindsay was probably best known for her work with the powerful political chamber-prog of proto-Rock In Opposition ensemble Henry Cow (a creative ferment which she joined and left twice and, like most Cow-ers, never entirely left behind). Having initially brought in her toolkit of reeds, woodwind and piano skills to play on the band’s second album ‘Unrest’, she subsequently made small inroads into the writing, contributing to a number of group compositions on ‘In Praise of Learning’ and the ‘Concerts’ set. As a composer, though, she finally came into her own on the band’s final, all-instrumental statement ‘Western Culture’, on which she was responsible for most of the piled jazzy grandeur of the second side (finding previously unexplored links between the music of New York, Canterbury and Switzerland).

Lindsay Cooper

Perhaps more significantly, by this point in the late ’70s Lindsay had already formed the witty, subversive Feminist Improvising Group, or FIG; a project which she co-ran with vocalist Maggie Nichols in parallel with her Cow work. Generally considered to be the preoccupation and property of educated, intense, white men, the British and European free improvising of the time tended to be a little short on jokes (bar occasional pranking along the lines of the Free Art Research Trio). FIG allied Lindsay and Maggie with various other musical and performance talents – “feminist rock” trumpeter Corine Liensol (who’d played in Jam Today with a young Deirdre Cartwright), pianist Cathy Williams (who’d worked with another Cow-er, Geoff Leigh, in the Rag Doll duo), future filmmaker Sally Potter, latterday Cow cellist Georgie Born and Swiss free-jazz pianist Irène Schweizer (the last being allegedly the only European female improviser on the ‘60s and ‘70s scene). In classic feminist tradition, FIG not only enabled previously sidelined female voices onto the improv scene but deliberately upturned expectations as to what such a scene could achieve.

In comparison to the demanding and abstruse Maoist politics of Henry Cow (which, in private, sometimes resembled a brutally masculine university debating society preoccupied with games of political high-grounding), FIG were spontaneous, mutually supportive and – just as importantly – funny. With a strong and personal rooting in lesbian, class-based and feminist activism (plus parallel feelings of sidelining and denial on the part of others) but a suspicion of dogma, they expressed frustration and political challenge by drawing on a collective sense of the absurd and of the sympathetic. In addition to the music, their shows featured parodic stagings and examinations of domestic work (such as kitchenwork and cleaning) and of consumer preoccupations. Vegetables were peeled onstage; household tools such as dustpans and brooms pressed into service as props and noisemakers; oppressive or manipulative memes transformed into call-and-response singing.

Reading accounts of FIG work reveals a tale of tough gigs, audience misunderstandings and frequent frustration. Men carped, frowned and cold-shouldered; women laughed, argued and sometimes welcomed; the group members continually challenged their own sense of self and role; but the work itself sounds joyously unshackled – something I would have loved to have been around to see. It’s a shame that much improv and theatrical work is always of the moment and tends to vanish like dew in the morn. Without recorded evidence or restaging, it fades into hearsay, and in this case an important chapter in Lindsay’s work has to dwell in a kind of word-of-mouth samizdat.

Post-Cow and FIG, Lindsay ran her own Film Music Orchestra to create and record arthouse soundtracks (often working in cinematic cahoots with Sally Potter). She rejoined another former Cow colleague ((the now-mellowed Chris Cutler) for the 1980s post-Marxist art-song project News From Babel: here, Chris’ social and political musings would make a happier marriage with the pop-cabaret end of Lindsay’s music. She also contributed to the counter-cultural jazz colours of various Mike Westbrook and John Wolf Brennan bands, played with Pere Ubu ranter David Thomas, worked in theatre and (in the ’90s) composed a more formal chamber music which nonetheless retained the edge and inquiring spirit of her work in avant-rock and political art. She’d collaborate with Potter again for the Cold War song cycle ‘Oh, Moscow’ in the late ’80s, to which Chris Cutler also contributed. If encroaching multiple sclerosis (which had privately dogged her throughout her post-Cow career) hadn’t dragged her into early retirement in the late ’90s, there would have been more.

Half The Sky provide a welcome re-introduction to Lindsay’s work, performed by committed people whose sympathy with Lindsay Cooper’s music is absolute. However, they should also be viewed as a window onto the wider career of a quietly remarkable woman whose death in 2013 forced a premature coda onto the work of a mind whose personal humility had been more than balanced by its nimbleness, thoughtful and flexibility. Come along to these concerts and hear some of that mindwork and heartwork come alive again.

Tags: Altered States, Café Oto (promoter/venue), Chloe Herington, Chris Cutler, Chrome Hoof, Cicala-Mvta, Dagmar Krause, Feminist Improvising Group, Free Art Research Trio, gone too soon, Half The Sky, Henry Cow, James Larcombe, Knifeworld, Korekyojinn, Lindsay Cooper, listening to women, Marina Organ (broadcaster), Miwazow, Nasuno Mitsuru, News From Babel, V A L V E, Wataru Okhuma, women of heart and mind, Yumi Hara

June 2017 – the month’s Daylight Music gigs in London – Jherek Bischoff, Emma Gatrill & Liam Byrne (June 3rd); Epic45, The Great Albatross, and B. J. Cole & Emily Burridge (June 10th); Louis Barabbas, Melissa Parmenter and Ben McManus & Clara Delfina (June 17th); Trans-Siberian March Band, Antony Elvin & His Men and Toby Hay (June 24th)

25 May

The people behind eclectic, free, family-friendly London event (and ‘Misfit City’ favourite) Daylight Music are swirling back into action in June with four weekly gigs to start their summer season (even if two of them aren’t nominally DM events, the Daylight imprint shows clearly). Here’s me simply boosting the existing signal…

* * * * * * * *

Arctic Circle presents:
Daylight Music 252 – Jherek Bischoff + Emma Gatrill + Liam Byrne
Union Chapel, 19b Compton Terrace, Islington, London, N1 2UN, England
Saturday 3rd June 2017, 12.00pm – free event (recommended donation: £5.00) – information

“Only Jherek Bischoff would record an album in an empty, two-million-gallon underground water tank (with a reverb delay lasting forty-five seconds). A fabulously inventive and playful musician, Jherek is a mostly self-taught composer whose music dazzles, confounds and delights.

“Liam Byrne divides his time between playing very old and very new music on the viol. ‘The Times’ praised his “nuanced and expressive, stylish virtuosity”. He’s worked with artists including Damon Albarn, Nils Frahm and Matthew Herbert, and the likes of Nico Muhly have written works for him.

“Emma Gatrill is a multi-instrumentalist based in Brighton. Playing live, she augments her harp and vocal with ambient analogue synths and drums machines, layered with guitar atmospherics from Marcus Hamblett.”

* * * * * * * *

Arctic Circle presents:
Daylight Music 253 – Epic45 + The Great Albatross + B. J. Cole & Emily Burridge
Union Chapel, 19b Compton Terrace, Islington, London, N1 2UN, England
Saturday 10th June 2017, 12.00pm – free event (recommended donation: £5.00) – information

“The much-loved epic45 — championed by the much-missed John Peel — have been making music for over twenty years. Their celebrated EPs and albums are inspired by the ever-changing English landscapes.

“The Great Albatross tug gently on the heartstrings with their sweetly shimmering indie songs. Formed in Glasgow by A. Wesley Chung (formerly of Boris Smile), the group has an expansive, international list of contributors and collaborators.

“If you had to combine any two instruments, you might not immediately think of putting cello and steel guitar together, but B. J. Cole and Emily Burridge confound expectations with their dynamic, sophisticated music. Hailed as “languorous, sensuous, moving music…amazing!” by ‘Art Nouveau’, these fine musicians weave around each other, mixing their intuitive improvisations with inspired, moving interpretations of classic pieces.”

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Arctic Circle presents:
Louis Barabbas + Melissa Parmenter + Ben McManus & Clara Delfina
Union Chapel, 19b Compton Terrace, Islington, London, N1 2UN, England
Saturday 17th June 2017, 12.00pm – free event (recommended donation: £5.00) – information

“Louis Barabbas is a Daylight Music favourite, thrilling the audience and tearing up the stage with his caustic love songs and energetic show. A writer, performer and label director, he’s performed all over the world and shared stages with acts including Motörhead, Supergrass and The Blockheads.

“Melissa Parmenter is a well-respected film producer, who’s collaborated closely with director Michael Winterbottom over the last fifteen years, including producing all three series of ‘The Trip’ trilogy. She’s also an accomplished composer and pianist, having scored a number of films including ‘Genova’, ‘The Killer Inside Me’ and ‘Comes A Bright Day’.

“After repeatedly meeting at various festivals last year, Ben McManus & Clara Delfina decided to join forces to sing American old-time and bluegrass music, blending banjo, fiddle and guitar with their beautiful harmonies.”

* * * * * * * *

Arctic Circle presents:
Trans-Siberian March Band + Antony Elvin & His Men (with Nina Miranda) + Toby Hay
Union Chapel, 19b Compton Terrace, Islington, London, N1 2UN, England
Saturday 24th June 2017, 12.00pm – free event (recommended donation: £5.00) – information

“Summer Solstice edition…

“It’s always a party when the Trans-Siberian March Band are around! A riotous jumble of cabaret, carnival and overwhelming joy, this 13-piece Balkan brass band have delighted audiences at Glastonbury, Woman and the Royal Albert Hall. The Times called them “hugely entertaining… perfect festival crowd-pleasures.” They’ll be playing their winning mix of traditional Turkish and gypsy tunes, Russian sing-alongs and swinging klezmer.

“Antony Elvin (“a Noel Coward for the Noel Fielding generation!’, according to Julian Barratt of The Mighty Boosh!) is a singer/songwriter from London. His songs take the listener out on a ridiculous spree, in ‘Perfect London’ – a London of your dreams, gaslit yet modern, pastoral yet subliminally violent. In a strong English accent, he sings about the characters he meets and the romances of the day without the vulgar baggage of angst. Special guest for this concert is Nina Miranda of Smoke City, Shrift and Zeep – she of ‘Underwater Love’ fame.

“Toby Hay makes instrumental music inspired by the landscape, people and history of Mid Wales. A guitarist and composer, ‘Folkroom‘ claim that “he’s one of the finest storytellers… and he’s never sung a word.”

* * * * * * * *

As ever, there are likely to be interstitial musical acts filling in the gaps between acts (via loops, atmospheres or turns on the venue’s grand piano or massive church organ), plus late in-the-day extra recruitments. These will be announced closer to the time.

Good to see Toby Hay on one of the bills – his debut EP featured in ‘Misfit City’ several years ago, and since then he’s become a mainstay of the Lamplight acoustic nights up at Regather in Sheffield…

Tags: acoustic guitar music, Antony Elvin & His Men, Arctic Circle (promoter), B. J. Cole, Ben McManus, big bands, cello music, chamber ensemble, Clara Delfina, Daylight Music (event), Emily Burridge, Emma Gatrill + Liam Byrne, epic45, hapr, Jherek Bischoff, London (England), Louis Barabbas, Marcus Hamblett, Melissa Parmenter, Michael Winterbottom, multi-instrumentalists, Nina Miranda, pedal steel guitar music, Sheffield (England), Smoke City, The Great Albatross, The Lamplight Club (event), Toby Hay, Trans-Siberian March Band, viol music

June 2017 – upcoming London classical/experimental gigs – Kammer Klang double event – ‘Soarings: A Salon on Else Marie Pade’ (5th June); Apartment House and Jacob Kirkegaard play Pade and Henning Christiansen, plus Vitalija Glovackyte (6th June)

24 May

The June Kammer Klang is a double event centred loosely around Danish composers Else Marie Pade and Henning Christiansen, who variously pioneered mid-twentieth century electronic music and cross-genre intermedia Fluxus experiments.

Kammer Klang presents:
‘Soarings: A Salon on Else Marie Pade’
Café Oto, 18-22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London, E8 3DL, England
Monday 5th June 2017, 7.30pm – information here and here
and
Apartment House (performing Henning Christiansen) + Jacob Kierkegaard (presenting Else Marie Pade) + Vitalija Glovackyte + Aguirre DJs
Café Oto, 18-22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London, E8 3DL, England
Tuesday 6th June 2017, 7.30pm – information here and here

“The sounds outside became concrete music, and in the evening I could imagine that the stars and the moon and the sky uttered sounds and those turned into electronic music.” – Else Marie Pade.

Increasingly recognised as Denmark’s first composer of electronic music, Else Marie Pade imagined “aural pictures” during a childhood afflicted by illness, and later learned jazz piano. Operating within the Danish resistance in the Second World War while still a teenager, she was captured by the Nazis and imprisoned in the Frøslevlejren internment: an experience which must have had a long-lasting and damaging effect since it undermined her post-war attempts to train as a classical pianist. Undaunted, she concentrated on composing instead: finding her particular niche after hearing a 1952 Danmarks Radio programme on Pierre Schaeffer’s musique concrète and realising that he’d given aural shape to the same ideas she’d had as a child. From the mid-1950s she was in at the start of art programmes on Danish television, establishing a lifelong position for herself both as a Danmarks Radio producer and as a pre-eminent radio and television composer (at a time when that strand of musical work offered as much genuine creative opportunity as anything in the avant-garde).

Over the course of her lifetime Pade produced a wide variety of sensuous, stimulating electronic compositions to entwine with various broadcast work: avant-garde documentary work, audiovisual ballet and more. Having studied with Schaeffer during the 1950s, she also attended the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt during the 1960s and early 1970s, studying under Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez and György Ligeti (and impressing Stockhausen enough that he’d use her own ‘Glass Bead Game’ piece as a lecture topic). Apparently taken for granted in her home country, Pade’s reputation was greater abroad – her work was eventually compiled in a three-LP retrospective on Important Records (‘Electronic Works 1958-1995’) in 2014, two years before her death.

Regarding the ‘Soarings’ salon:

“…”Soarings” is a rough translation of the Danish word “svævninger” – a word coined by Pade to encompass both the phenomenon of different frequencies colliding to make an interference beat, and the more poetic image of soaring through the air. The ‘Soarings’ salon event is a special opportunity to hear more about her work via talks, film screening and discussion.

“The evening begins with a talk from artist and composer Jacob Kirkegaard, a long-time friend and colleague of Pade’s. Jacob will speak about Pade’s life and work from his unique perspective, having both produced her three-LP retrospective and collaborated with her on their joint composition ‘Svævninger’ (released by Important Records in 2012, and from which the evening takes its name). His presentation will include new images (including recently digitised scores) never previously shown in public.

“The evening will include the UK premiere of Pade’s extraordinary audiovisual piece ‘En dag på Dyrehavsbakken’: one of her very earliest works, which was first broadcast in 1955 by DR (the Danish Broadcasting Corporation). It consists of pictures and sounds recorded over two summers at Dyrehavsbakken, near Klampenborg in Denmark, and also includes electronically-produced sine tones and echo effects. This makes it the first piece of musique concrete and electronic music made by a Danish composer.

“The salon will conclude with a panel discussion with diverse contributions and reflections on Pade’s work and its wider context from Danish musicologist (and ‘Seismograf‘ editor) Sanne Krogh Groth, sound designer/studio manager Jo Langton and ‘Wire’/’Sight & Sound’ writer Frances Morgan. There’ll also be a reading by sound artist Ain Bailey (whose work includes sonic autobiographies and investigations of both architectural acoustics and the role of sound in the formation of identity).”

Jacob Kierkegaard returns for the full Kammer Klang show the following night, where he’ll be presenting Pade’s 1962 work ‘Faust Suite’, generally considered her masterpiece and described by Jennifer Hor of ‘The Sound Projector’ as “beautiful and mysterious, elegant and eerie music that can express deep solitude or wonder… a secret three-dimensional universe where the most amazing experiences may be had.” Over half an hour of sensually chiming oscillator churn (with nimble, challenging digressions of timbre, tone and emphasis), it places Pade’s work in parallel to the electrophonic imaginings of Delia Derbyshire and Daphne Oram – similarly thoughtful, similarly detailed and discursive; part of a wave of highly individual and original female composers and sonic réalisatrices with much of their work taking place within broadcast media, dancing apart yet in step.

Opening the show is composer/performer Vitalija Glovackyte, who “creates deep-felt chirpy music, bringing together conventional and homemade instruments, electronics, lo-fi devices and visuals. Her works span intimate solo sets and large-scale multimedia performances. Aside from her solo work, Vitalija co-runs the Almost Credible Music Ensemble and is one-half of the experimental pop duo Kinder Meccano.”

The track above stems from an eighteen month residency Vitalija spent with modern chamber ensemble Apartment House, who are also contributing to the evening in a seven-piece formation of Gordon MacKay (violin), Lucy Railton (cello), Frank Gratkowski (bass clarinet), Simon Limbrick (percussion), Kerry Yong (keyboard/piano), Loré Lixenberg (voice) and AH founder Anton Lukoszevieze as conceptualizer and director. They’ll be presenting the UK premiere of Anton’s adaptation of ‘Requiem of Art (NYC) – Fluxorum Organum’, a Henning Christiansen piece originally performed in 1967 (and reworked three years ago by Anton for an Ultima New York performance).

An adherent to the Fluxus art movement, Christiansen spent his artistic life rejecting standard distinctions of stylistic boundaries (including those between nominally different art forms) and the concept of the lone genius. Instead, much of his work was based on direct, implied or encouraged collaboration, whether he was encouraging others to freely interpret his ideas or whether he was actually working in equalized tandem with another artist. In its original form, ‘Fluxorum Organum’ is an example of the latter situation (having been created as the soundtrack portion to a film collaboration between Christiansen and conceptual art godfather Joseph Beuys) while its Lukoszevieze reinterpretation brings it back under the first method. You can view the original Beuys/Christiansen collaboration below:

The month’s Kammer Klang DJ slot is taken care of by representatives of Belgian record label/mail order distributors Aguirre who release and/or stock a wide range of electronic, ambient, experimental to rock, jazz, new wave and reggae. (including Pade and Christiansen recordings plus reissues from the revered French avant-garde record label Shandar. They’ll be playing various selections both from their catalogue and from their enthusiasms.

Programme:

Fresh Klang: Vitalija Glovackyte
Henning Christiansen – ‘Requiem of Art (NYC) – Fluxorum Organum’ (1967-68) adapted by Anton Lukoszevieze for Ultima New York at Issue Project Room, 2014 (UK premiere) – performed by Apartment House
Else Marie Pade – ‘Faust Suite’ (1962) performed by Jacob Kirkegaard
DJs: Aguirre

Tags: Aguirre (record label), Ain Bailey, Anton Lukoszevieze, Apartment House, Café Oto (promoter/venue), Else Marie Pade, ensemble music, Fluxus, Frances Morgan, Frank Gratkowski, Gordon MacKay, György Ligeti, Henning Christiansen, Jacob Kirkegaard, Jo Langton, Joseph Beuys, Kammer Klang (event), Karlheinz Stockhausen, Kerry Yong, Kinder Meccano, listening to women, London (England), Lore Lixenberg, Lucy Railton, music from Denmark, Pierre Boulez, Pierre Schaeffer, Sanne Krogh Groth, Shandar (record label), Simon Limbrick, Vitalija Glovackyte, women of heart and mind

June 2017 – upcoming English gigs – the return of Pram with the immersive ‘Under the Blossom That Hangs On The Bough’ event in Birmingham (June 3rd); Zarjaz Baby and Jon Slade/Night of the Comet in London (June 3rd); Arthur Russell’s ‘Calling Out Of Context’ revisited in London (June 7th)

23 May

Some shows and events to start June off. In Birmingham, experimental dream pop/post rock band Pram (one of the most original and charming groups ever to work in either genre) have resurfaced and are taking over an Edgbaston park for a very different kind of performance. Back in London there are opportunities to catch up with Zarjaz Baby (one of the wilder characters from the original wave of British post-punk) an acoustic set from Jon Slade (who’s navigated his way through a heap of scenes from art-punk to Riot Grrl to a thousand indie DJ nights); and a recreation of the cello/pop songs of Arthur Russell, one of the darlings of the 1980s New York loft music scene.

* * * * * * * *

for-Wards, MAC Birmingham and Pram present:
Pram: ‘Under the Blossom That Hangs On The Bough’
Martineau Gardens, 27 Priory Road, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B5 7UG, England
Saturday 3rd June 2017, 4:30pm – free event – information here, here and here

“Composers and sonic artists Pram have been exploring south Birmingham with the help of local community groups to uncover the sounds of the locality. The results are both familiar and surprising.

“Let Pram take you on a journey through the city, a sound trail through the four wards of Birmingham’s Edgbaston district. Hear the world from the perspective of a bee as it flutters and forages. The snuffles of a tiny baby become the snores of a lion, the gurgle of a stream a mighty cataract. Come along and follow the woodland trail, bring a picnic and settle down for a performance inspired by the sound of the city as you’ve never heard it before.

“Set in the magical surroundings of Martineau Gardens, ‘Under the Blossom that Hangs on the Bough’ is an installation and performance by Pram, celebrating the sounds of Edgbaston. It will take place at Martineau Gardens on the afternoon of Saturday 3rd June, concluding at 6.30pm with a Pram performance inspired by sound recordings made in the wards of Quinton, Harborne, Edgbaston and Bartley Green. Free admission if you register at Eventbrite…”

This isn’t quite the same Pram that charmed us and subverted pop for a surprisingly long stint in the ’90s and noughties across a string of albums which included ‘Dark Island’ and ‘Sargasso Sea’ and a sound that seemed to be part child’s murmur, part clinking post-kosmische stroll and part friendly haunted house. Most obviously, singer and lyricist Rosie Cuckston (she who used to mount her keyboard on an ironing board at concerts) is absent, having moved on into academia and a more direct form of the social activism which the band’s eclectic inclusiveness and tendency to take philosophical side roads only hinted. That said, the rest of the band’s original creative core (multi-instrumentalists Matt Eaton, Sam Owen and Max Simpson) are all present, having spent the interim years of Pram downtime working with wonky loops as Two Dogs, creating film and theatre sound and making sonic art out of books with the Sound Book Project.

This also isn’t the first time that the post-Rosie Pram’s reappeared. Earlier in May they made an appearance at Imaginary Musics in Switzerland, playing a “music for Kopfkino” audio-visual set in a festival dedicated to “cinematic, recomposed and fictional musics”, and it seems as if losing Rosie’s quiet reflective voice and cocooned lyrics has shifted them further over into the areas suggested by Matt’s sound design and by Sam and Max’s live sound art. On-spec, it seems as if they’ve succeeded in becoming a kind of “post-band”, with a foot in their old live work, song-structures and performance coherence, but leaning towards something far more abstract and ego-free. ‘Under the Blossom That Hangs On The Bough’ sounds as if it will be something fascinating to be immersed in – an urban psychedelic afternoon stroll with the family, an aural refraction of Birmingham through leaves, greenery and company.

* * * * * * * *

Zarjaz Baby + Jon Slade
The Horse Hospital, The Colonnade, Bloomsbury, London, WC1N 1JD, England
Saturday 3rd June 2017, 7.00pm – information

“An existentialist extravaganza featuring a solo acoustic set from Zarjaz Baby (Freakapuss and former Tronics). Zarjaz will be performing dark atmospheric songs, full of imagery, with jazz, blues, early ’60s beat and pop influences, with live performance artists, in a style not seen since the basement and candles days of Beatniks.

“Also featured on the night is a solo acoustic Love-Rock revival set from Jon Slade/Knight Of The Comet, incorporating songs from his former bands Huggy Bear and Comet Gain, plus a Fire Department number, some Electric Bull re-workings, as well as songs he wrote with Wolfy Jones.

“’60s European pop music in between sets, Francoise Hardy, Brigitte Bardot, Gillian Hills. Expect sombre girls dressed in black and boys in Breton shirts.”
For more information contact incoming@freakapuss.com

For more on Zarjaz’s chequered life and career, have a read of this interview he did with ‘The Quietus’ three years ago, featuring accounts of brushes with mental illness, of releasing surreal post-punk songs with titles like Shark Fucks, of arguing with ‘2000AD’ over his stage name, and of having his image ripped off by Sigue Sigue Sputnik.

* * * * * * * *

XOYO Live and Milestones present:
‘Arthur Russell – A Classic Reinterpreted’
XOYO, 32-37 Cowper Street, St Lukes, London, EC2A 4AP, England
Wednesday 7th June 2017, 7.00pm – information here and here

“It’s been said that “Arthur’s songs were so personal that it seems as though he simply vanished into his music.”

“Twenty-five years after Arthur Russell‘s death, some of the most exciting, forward-thinking faces in music are set to present a unique rendition of Arthur Russell’s timeless album ‘Calling Out Of Context’. A posthumous album that brought together twelve incredible tracks from across two previously unreleased LPs, ‘Calling Out Of Context’ represents Arthur in his prime. Two decades later and the music sounds as contemporary as ever – a huge inspiration for those performing on the night. We’re very excited to hear this new rendition.”

Bringing together elements of electropop, classical minimalism, post-disco, hip hop and singer-songwriter work, the ‘Calling Out Of Context’ songs span twenty years of Arthur’s composing and creative history while he was battling to fuse the parallel New York worlds of dance culture and art music between the late ’70s and the early ’90s – a pioneer of the freewheeling musical eclectism which today we pretty much take for granted. Take a look at this salvaged 1987 interview feature from the ‘Melody Maker’ for more on the topic, featuring reflections from Arthur and others on Indian music, the pulse shared by formal minimalism and New York dance clubs, and the social and cultural challenges of the time regarding blending “high” and “low” cultures.

The band for this London performance consists of Ashley Henry (keyboards), Midori Jaeger (cello), Alica Higgins (vocals), Sam Gardner (drums) and Joe Downard (bass).

Tags: Arthur Russell, Ashley Henry, Birmingham (England), Comet Gain, Freakapuss, Huggy Bear, Joe Downard, Jon Slade, Knight Of The Comet, London (England), Midori Jaeger, Pram, Sam Gardner, Tronics, Zarjaz Baby

May 2017 – upcoming London gigs – Muckle Mouth bring us Le Ton Mité plus Chris Cundy (May 25th), and The Family Élan plus Plague Dogs (May 27th); Papernut Cambridge’s Beehive Yourself gig-hosting series continues with The Great Electric, Deerful and Mat Flint (May 27th)

20 May

More on that second set of May gigs at the Dentist in Homerton, plus a continuing set of gigs over in Bow…

* * * * * * * *

Muckle Mouth and The Dentist present:
Le Ton Mité + Chris Cundy
33 Chatsworth Road/The Dentist, 33 Chatsworth Road, Homerton, London, E5 0LH, England
Thursday 25th May 2017, 7.30pm – information here and here

“This is the first ever London show of Le Ton Mité, a Belgian musical cooperative that revolves around the compositions of itinerant musician, instrument maker and fine artist McCloud Zicmuse, an American expatriate in permanent residence in Brussels.

“Having left the United States in the mid-noughties on a European sojourn that never ended, McCloud wound up in the Belgian capital in the fall of 2008. Half a decade on, a time in which he has embedded himself in European life via puppet shows, archery guilds, folkloric events, theatre projects and a catalogue of idiosyncratic solo and group works (perhaps most recognisably the 2011 Hoquets album on Crammed Discs called ‘Belgotronics’), McCloud returned to the States, to revisit places he had not seen, in some cases, for fifteen years. This informs his current musical set – an idiosyncratic blend of pop, folk, childrens music and jazz performed by a baroque-style quartet.

“To open the evening, there’s be a solo set by Chris Cundy performing his own works for bass clarinet. Chris is a musician, composer, and visual artist working on the fringes of experimental and popular music. He has long been interested with the material properties of acoustics and his music explores self-developed playing techniques such as multiphonics, circular breathing, micro-tonality and (generally speaking) a more tactile approach to the instrument.

“Chris performed with Mercury Award nominated indie-pop band Guillemots and continues to work with the bands frontman Fyfe Dangerfield. He has also collaborated with a variety of alt-pop artists both in Canada and the UK including Little Annie, Baby Dee, Timber Timbre, and Cold Specks.”

* * * * * * * *

Muckle Mouth and The Dentist present:
The Family Élan & Plague Dogs
33 Chatsworth Road/The Dentist, 33 Chatsworth Road, Homerton, London, E5 0LH, England
Saturday 27th May 2017, 7.30pm – information here and here

“Muckle Mouth and The Dentist welcome Bradford psych-folk rockers The Family Élan (and their heady blend of party hits, Hindi film song and Turkish folk dances) back for a fling.

“The Family Élan generally performs as a trio, featuring Krzysztof Hładowski (of A Hawk and A Hacksaw, The One Ensemble, Nalle, Scatter fame) on Greek bouzouki, elektrosaz and vocals, Harry Wheeler on fancy bass, and Shakeeb Abu Hamdan (of Please, Ygrec, Cleckhuddersfax, The Wub) on Western drum kit. The scope of The Family Elan’s output ranges from self penned meditations in the key of Z minor and the odd party hit, to irreverent interpretations of everything from Hindi film songs to Turkish folk dances, delivered with the countenances of psychedelic rockers. Perhaps the unifying strand in all this is a deep interest in traditional music forms and their reinvention through group rock-outs.”

As with the Alex Rex gig earlier in the month, Plague Dogs will be in support… but now I know who they are. They’re an alliance of Trembling Bells/Alex Rex kingpin Alex Neilson with writer/curator/artist/cultural geographer Amy Cutler (at least, I’m assuming that it’s that Amy Cutler)… In which case, expect something textural, folk-tinged and audio-visual, probably provoking more questions than it answers..

(UPDATE, 26th May 2017 – this show’s been cancelled, with the hope that it can be rescheduled later in the summer…)

* * * * * * * *

I’ve been slow on picking up on renewed gig activity at the Dentist. Likewise with this set of shows over at the Beehive in Bow (the latest of which clashes with the Family Élan show, but there you go…)

Sound Event Solutions & Papernut Cambridge present:
Beehive Yourself #2: Papernut Cambridge + The Great Electric + Deerful + Mat Flint DJ set
The Beehive, 104-106 Empson Street, Bromley-by-Bow, London, E3 3LT, England
Saturday 27th May 2017, 7.00pm – information

“The second of three Saturday night shows for spring and early summer featuring Papernut Cambridge and a hand-picked selection of friends’ bands and DJs.

“Papernut Cambridge is led by former Death In Vegas and Thrashing Doves guitarist (and now prolific underground producer/engineer) Ian Button, who has a list of current projects and collaborations that include Go Kart Mozart, David Cronenberg’s Wife, Deep Cut, Darren Hayman, Pete Astor, Rotifer, Paul Hawkins etc. The band is based on an imaginary band from a dream Ian had in 1990 and brought to life in 2013 by assembling a group of friends and collaborators. Papernut Cambridge have now released two albums (‘Cambridge Nutflake’ in 2013, ‘There’s No Underground’ in 2014) and a covers album (2015’s ‘Nutlets 1967-80’), all on Gare Du Nord Records. The next album release is ‘Love The Things Your Lover Loves’ in May 2016.

“As ever with this gig series, Papernut Cambridge will be playing the opening set. The very special guests to follow on May 27th are:

“The Great Electric – electronic/motorik supergroup featuring Malcolm Doherty (guitars, effects), Rob Hyde (drums), Darren Hayman (synth), Duncan Hemphill (tones, drones and effects) and Pete Gofton (bass). With a band members’ past pedigree that includes Hefner, Kenickie, Go-Kart Mozart and Mum & Dad, expect a determined, nuanced yet mind-melting set inspired by German electronic and prog via Stereolab, music made in space, and radical hypnosis techniques.

“Following on from her past work backing or contributing to the work of Darren Hayman, Pete Astor, Owl & Mouse and Enderby’s Room, Emma Winston’s solo electronic project Deerful takes bright melodic indie pop and fuses it with crisp chiptune and electro shimmers, Gameboy beats, and emotive thought-provoking lyrics. Her live shows using an array of TFL-portable synths and devices are always a delight. Deerful’s first full length album ‘Peach’ is released this year on June 2nd.

“Former Revolver frontman, Death In Vegas bassist, and now leader of bravado dreampop project Deep Cut, Mat Flint is also a frequent record spinner at The Social, playing sets that range from Northern Soul and hip hop to dub and garage rock. We’re chuffed he’s coming along to pilot the wheel of steel for this show!”

Tags: A Hawk and A Hacksaw, Alex Rex (Alex Neilson), Amy Cutler, bass clarinet music, Chris Cundy, Cleckhuddersfax, Darren Hayman, Death In Vegas, Deerful (Emma Winston), Duncan Hemphill, Go-Kart Mozart, Harry Wheeler, Hefner, Kenickie, Krzysztof Hładowski, Le Ton Mité (McCloud Zicmuse), London (England), Malcolm Doherty, Mat Flint, Muckle Mouth (event/promoter), Mum & Dad, Nalle, Papernut Cambridge, Pete Gofton, Plague Dogs, Please, Rob Hyde, Scatter, Shakeeb Abu Hamdan, The Family Élan, The Great Electric, The One Ensemble, The Wub, Thrashing Doves, Trembling Bells, Ygrec

May 2017 – upcoming London gigs – I’m This I’m That play Moondog, plus Ed Dowie (19th May); Trembling Bells spinoff Alex Rex plus The Left Outsides and Plague Dogs (20th May)

14 May

It’s always good to hear that Homerton’s 33 Chatworth Road – a.k.a. “The Dentist” – is hosting another of its gig-cum-house-parties. I’ve still got fond memories of the first concert I ever went to there: a mixture of jazz atmospheres, experimental folk and mythic New York chamber pop from Sealionwoman, Foxout! and Liam Singer (which you can read all about here.)

I’ve been out of the loop regarding their activities for too long, but here’s quick news on another couple of imminent shows there in collaboration, one in collaboration with folk promoter Muckle Mouth and the other with the Tin Label. (There are another two coming in the following week…).

* * * * * * * *

Muckle Mouth and 33 Chatsworth Road present:
I’m This, I’m That (playing the songs of Moondog) + Ed Dowie
33 Chatsworth Road/The Dentist, 33 Chatsworth Road, Homerton, London, E5 0LH, England
Friday 19th May 2017, 7.00 pm – information here, here and here

Assembled rapidly from the gig publicity, and from Wikipedia:

“Louis Thomas Hardin, better known as Moondog, was an American composer, musician and poet. His music took inspiration from street sounds, such as the subway or a foghorn. It was characterized by what he called “snaketime” and described as “a slithery rhythm, in times that are not ordinary […] I’m not gonna die in 4/4 time.” Many of his works were highly contrapuntal, and he worked hard on perfecting his counterpoint. He was also the inventor of several musical instruments (including a small triangular-shaped harp known as the “oo”, another which he named the “ooo-ya-tsu”, and a triangular stringed instrument played with a bow that he called the “hüs” (after the Norwegian, “hus”, meaning “house”). Perhaps his best known creation is the “trimba”, a triangular percussion instrument that the composer invented in the late 40s..

“Moondog was blind from the age of sixteen. In New York from the late 1940s, until he left in 1972, he could often be found on 6th Avenue between 52nd and 55th Street wearing a cloak and Viking-style helmet, sometimes busking or selling music, but often just standing silent and still. He was widely recognized as “the Viking of 6th Avenue” by thousands of passersby and residents who weren’t aware of his musical career.

“Dedicated Moondog interpreters I’m This, I’m That return to The Dentist performing their own arrangements/transcriptions of Moondog compositions with support from Ed Dowie (a Daylight Music favourite – there’s more about him here). Due to massive demand, there will be a double performance – an early show and a late show, with the one you see depending on when you’ve bought your ticket. Doors open at 7.00pm for fire/drinks/chat…”

Schedule:

7.30pm – first Ed Dowie set
8.15pm – first I’m This I’m That set
9.15pm – second Ed Dowie set
10:00pm -second I’m This I’m That set

Here are a couple of clips from the previous I’m This I’m That Moondog show back in July 2015, plus a taste of Ed Dowie:

* * * * * * * *

33 Chatsworth Rd and Tin Angel Records present:
Alex Rex + The Left Outsides + Plague Dogs
33 Chatsworth Road/The Dentist, 33 Chatsworth Road, Homerton, London, E5 0LH, England
Saturday 20th May 2017, 7.30pm – information here and here

“This is the one and only live outing with full band for Vermillion – Alex Neilson (of Trembling Bells)’ solo record as Alex Rex. Aside from a Cerys Matthews session the following morning, the material from this fantastic record will never be performed again.”

From ‘The Guardian‘:

“His debut solo album Vermilion presents him as a provocative, poetic lothario with the alter ego Alex Rex. On record, rose thorns grow in Rex’s throat and he sleeps with girls for their minds as well as their bodies… Written during a “particularly self-destructive” period in his life in late 2015, Vermilion begins with the Gregorian chant-inspired blues of The Screaming Cathedral, with a chorus telling of “horror heaped on horror”. Please God Make Me Good (But Not Yet) features a girl sticking pins into a voodoo sex doll of him, before he has a “hit on myself.”

“Getting the worst bits of himself out there was therapeutic and necessary for Neilson. “I wanted songs that spilt out of themselves. The records I cherish most are asymmetrical things, full of blemishes,” he says. But there’s plenty of perky, almost poppy moments too. Neilson wrote the skronky psych-blues of Song for Dora while reading “lots of Ovid and taking MDMA”, while Postcards from a dream has a remarkably radio-friendly, West Coast-brightened Hammond organ intro before it kills its A-list potential with lyrics about “a necklace of bungee cord” and Adam “cup[ping] his nuts behind the tree.” Sex is everywhere, but this shouldn’t surprising for a folk musician, Neilson laughs. “The oldest folk songs are lusty and carnal. And I like having sex! People do!”

This in from the promoters: “The Left Outsides have joined the bill, playing in an Alison/Mark guitar duo formation.” If you remember, these are further Daylight Music favourites, so I’ll just steal the blurb from a previous DM show I posted about – “Mark Nicholas and Alison Cotton (are) a London-based husband and wife duo whose atmospheric, hypnotic songs echo Nico’s icy European folk, pastoral psychedelia and chilly English fields at dawn.”

The third act is Plague Dogs, about whom I’ve been able to find out precisely nothing: but they must have impressed Muckle Mouth, since they’re also playing at the Family Élan gig the following. Maybe when I get around to posting about that I’ll have found out more…

Tags: Alex Rex (Alex Neilson), Ed Dowie, I'm This I'm That, London (England), Moondog, Muckle Mouth (event/promoter), Plague Dogs, The Left Outsides, Trembling Bells

May 2017 – upcoming London gigs – new SIKE! psych-rock night in Holloway (featuring The Spanish Infanta, Dazy Crown, Eyre Llew and Niris, May 11th); dance/pop/jazz with Agar Agar and Lucien & The Kimono Orchestra plus Is Tropical DJ set (May 16th); a womantronic evening with electric:indigo, A’bear and Lisa Busby (May 18th)

4 May

gigmit presents
SIKE! (featuring The Spanish Infanta + Dazy Crown + Eyre Llew + Niris)
Nambucca, 596 Holloway Road, Upper Holloway, London, N7 6LB, England
Thursday 11th May 2017, 7.00pm – information here, here and here

A new psychedelic rock night, launching at Nambucca in upper Holloway this month, attempts to capture the whole of the range within the genre. Good luck with that – Baba Yaga are still scooping up variations after years of plugging away at it.

That said, SIKE!’s debut night scintillates across a determined four-act psych spectrum from gritty backstreet hardness to sunkissed airiness. There’s the lysergic gutbucket garage sludge of The Spanish Infanta; the gentler post-punk-meets-West Coast-y songs of Dazy Crown, the soaring Icelandic-inspired raptures and wreckage of Nottingham’s Eyre Llew; and the Balearic chillout of instrumental duo Niris (a teaming of guitarist/multi-instrumentalists Nick Engel and Chris Hatwell which covers a broad range between uplit flamenco-inspired guitar duets, ambient sunrise electronica, and breezy dance songs). Examples below.

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Snap Crackle & Pop Live presents:
Agar Agar + Lucien & The Kimono Orchestra + Is Tropical (DJ set)
The Moth Club, Old Trades Hall, Valette Street, Hackney, London, E9 6NU, England
Tuesday 16th May 2017, 7.30pm – information here and here

Over in Hackney, the Snap Crackle & Pop label are running a Cracki Records night featuring a couple of French and Belgian acts who explore luminous, involved dance-and-groove styles (plus a DJ set from squat-party experimentalists turned international poptronicists Is Tropical).

The ’80s synth pop/acid disco hybrid of Agar Agar mixes resurrected old analogue tech with art school smarts and fluid contemporary sensibilities on identity and expression. Blending electro sunniness with the feeling of a haunt in the full noon brightness, there’s also (as with Elephant) an ineffable bruised melancholy creaming off the top. Their songview’s full of interesting propositions – from Prettiest Virgin’s dancefloor ballad of yearning, slightly predatory female longing (complete with suggestive, part-animated video clip of lost girl, naked dancers, dolphins and fleshy tunnelling) to the surreal night journey of I Am That Guy (with its burnishings of ominous analogue hornsynth, its intimations of housebreaking, and the profanity-laden, deracinated blues-growl of its cross-gender vocal).

Like Agar Agar, Lucien & The Kimono Orchestra draw on the 1980s (predominantly in their attempts to recapture impressions of French cinema and Japanese funk) but also look back towards the ’70s. Like Carl Hudson’s Moon Unit, they breathe new life into Lonnie Liston Smith cosmic jazz-funk, retool a handed-down Horace Silver vocabulary, and flood jazzy cascades and stabbing Wurlitzer syncopations through contemporary dance club sensibilities. On their vocal collaborations – such as Ship, with FM Laeti – they coast towards a Morcheeba cool. Left to their own devices, they’ll veer towards warm, skittish brain-grooves, occasionally like a slightly less oblique French take on Weather Report (or, as on Galaxies, like Brand X or the more fusionesque moments of Genesis).

* * * * * * * *

The Engine Room + Austrian Cultural Forum + The Wire presents:
electric:indigo + A’bear + Lisa Busby (DJ Set)
IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, Waterloo, London, SE1 7LG, England
Thursday 18th May 2017, 8.00pm – information

If you’re more interested in an evening of female musicians working way out in the left-field, IKLECTIK are offering the first British gig in twenty years for Austrian electro-polymath Susanne Kirchmayr – a.k.a. electric:indigo. Composer, DJ, producer and founder of female:pressure (the go-to directory for women in electronic music), on this occasion she’ll be performing “a unique version of her six-channel sound art piece ‘109.47 degrees’. The title of the ultra-wide hyper-stereo piece refers to “the ideal tetrahedral angle in foams as described in Plateau’s laws”. From a set of small acoustic particles ‘109.47 degrees’ creates complex sonic structures that “live on friction, cohesion and constant movement”…” Suzanne will also be being interviewed by ‘The Wire’s Emily Bick.

In support, “vocal/techno/experimental/rap/rainbow workout” artist Janine A’Bear will be performing a synths-and-voicewarp-and computers set of “electronic poetry” boasting “carefully constructed verse combined with themes of a cosmic nature.” That’s quite a lot of grab-quotes there. I’ve also grabbed a few examples of her work and laid them out here – shimmering, layered rivulets of synthesis at a post-techno pulse rate, there’s plenty in there, but if you want to explore her verse it sounds as if you’ll have to tease it out of the soundscaping with a wool-comb.

Working the DJ decks for the evening is musician, Goldsmiths music lecturer and Editions Of You head Lisa Busby; also known for her work with The Nomadic Female DJ Troupe, noise/improve/playback crew Rutger Hauser and electro-Dada duo Sleeps In Oysters (as well as a solo career as singer-composer exploring “the fringes of song… using domestic or outdated playback media as instruments, but also work(ing) in text-based score, installation and site specific performance…”). Come and listen to her uncrate her mind.

If you want to dig a little deeper, it’s worth noting that this concert is part of international sound art exhibition The Engine Room, running between 4th May and 1st June between IKLECTIK and the nearby Morley College.

Tags: A'bear, Agar Agar, Chris Hatwell, Dazy Crown, electric:indigo (Susanne Kirchmayr), Emily Bick, Eyre Llew, FM Laeti, IKLECTIK Art Lab (promoters), Is Tropical, Lisa Busby, listening to women, Lucien & The Kimono Orchestra, Moth Club (venue) - Hackney - London, Nambucca (venue) - Upper Holloway - London - England, Nick Engel, Niris, Nomadic Female DJs, Rutger Hauser, SIKE! (event), Sleeps In Oysters, The Engine Room (event) - London - England, The Spanish Infanta, women of heart and mind

May 2017 – upcoming London classical/experimental gigs – Kammer Klang with Scenatet/Matt Rogers, David Helbich, Benjamin Oliver/Yshani Perinpanayagam (May 2nd); Ensemble in Process presents a showcase of modern American composers (May 15th)

27 Apr

Ensemble In Process presents:
Ensemble In Process: Americuration (featuring Zubin Kanga, Marsyas Trio, Jonathan Russell, Seth Bedford & Maria Fiore Mazzarini)
IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, Waterloo, London, SE1 7LG, England
Monday 15th May 2017, 7.30pm – information

Formed just under a year and a half ago, Ensemble In Process has progressed from being a small chamber ensemble (formed to compete in Nonclassical‘s annual Battle of the Bands Competition) to being a multiple-direction contemporary music project. Now straddling London and New York – and planning performances, programming and networking across the UK, America, Europe and the wider globe – they have a particular focus on helping contemporary composers without sufficient UK resources to achieve performances of their work within the UK.

Their debut concert as both performers and organizers showcases American composers. Bookended by performances of well-established Steve Reich pieces (from the ‘Counterpoint’ series), it also features works by George Crumb, Michael Gordon, Timo Andres, David Lang, Missy Mazzoli and Jonathan Russell as well as premieres of music by Seth Bedford, Ryan Brown and Ian Dicke, and by EIP’s artistic director Brian Mark.

Participating are the three members of the Marsyas Trio – pianist Zubin Kanga, flautist Helen Vidovich and cellist Valerie Welbanks – and violinist Maria Fiore Mazzarini (plus Seth Bedford and Brian Mark, performing voice and piano respectively on some of their own works and on those of others).

Programme:

Steve Reich – Vermont Counterpoint (for flute & tape)
Timo Andres – At the River (for piano)
David Lang – Killer (for violin & electronics)
Ian Dicke – Get Rich Quick (for piano & fixed media) (UK premiere)
Seth Bedford – Three Cabaret Songs (for piano & voice) (UK premiere)
George Crumb – Vox Balaenae (for electric flute, cello and amplified piano)
Jonathan Russell – Assorted Past (for piano)
Missy Mazzoli – Isabelle Eberhardt Dreams of Pianos (for piano & video installation)
Ryan Brown – Bedside Manner (for flute & cello) (UK premiere)
Brian Mark – Lucid Dreaming (for flute & cello) (world premiere)
Michael Gordon – Light is Calling (for violin)
Steve Reich – Piano Counterpoint (for piano & electronics)

Regarding the future, Brian claims that “Ensemble In Process… will be a rotating vehicle with respect to size, instrumentation, and nature of specific programming. Eventually, it will also feature a special annual transatlantic event, which will become a six-hour concert marathon that will take place between London and select US cities via live streaming. After its debut concert and the first year of operation, Ensemble in Process… will eventually launch into an annual series of multiple diverse concerts and other exciting outreach activities.”

Meanwhile, here are soundclips and video examples for the concert programme (where I could find them…):

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A little under two weeks previously, there’s another Kammer Klang session at Café Oto, presenting an evening of London loft music on the ground floor again. This time, the concert has a particularly strong theatrical tinge, though not necessarily in a conventional manner.

strong>Kammer Klang presents:
Scenatet performs Matt Rogers + David Helbich + Yshani Perinpanayagam performs Benjamin Oliver + Slips DJs
Café Oto, 18-22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London, E8 3DL, England
Tuesday 2nd May 2017, 7.30pm – information here and here

The Fresh Klang performance this month is a new keyboard duet by Benjamin Oliver ‘Mr. Turquoise Synth’, which “explores how the contrasting sonorities of the piano (acoustic) and synth (low memory electronics) and modes of production (human/computer agency) can be combined and juxtaposed. Initially the duet partners are isolated but gradually become entwined in a playful and dynamic relationship.” It’ll be performed as a solo by pianist/keyboard player Yshani Perinpanayagam (Del Mar Piano Trio, Rambert Dance Company, and ‘Showstopper! The Improvised Musical’) and features both the venue piano and a bespoke one-bit pulse synthesiser designed by chiptune jazzer Blake Troise (Protodome).

Brussels-based philosopher-composer David Helbich (perhaps best known for his ‘Belgian Solutions‘ project, which spots, photographs and documents various frequently absurd-but-human fixings and methods) goes beyond the territory of being a conceptual musician in order to explore and share along the very faultline which separates musical concepts from non-musical concepts. It’s worth noting that David is the kind of composer who chooses to write for air guitar. Having dispensed with instruments, sound and multi-media trappings, what he’s mostly now interested in is the audience, with whom he will be performing one of his “No Music” sessions,

“No Music is no music, but still a musical experience. No music, still for your ears. Since 2010 I have worked on scores for pieces that could be performed right at the spot, in whatever context, as long as one could freely use both hands and had two functioning ears. The pieces offer notated situations of organised listening and simple ear manipulations. I understand the this material more as a practice than as a series of composition, even though they can appear as such. Pieces appear in printed form as well as in spontaneous performances or entirely set theatrical or concert performances. These interventions are entirely personal and therefore not so much interactive as “inner-active”, self-performative. The reader as the performer as the listener.”

Below is an example from a performance in Brussels.

In between, there’s Scenatet – an ensemble working under the remit of “art music theatre in unusual spaces” and generally works with younger Danish composers, creating cross-genre performances involving elements of drama and “happenings” as well as music. Though the ensemble consists of twelve permanent musicians, for this concert, they’ll be down to a trio of Vicky Wright (clarinet), Mina Fred (viola) and My Hellgren (cello) in order to perform the world premiere of Matt Rogers‘ ‘Weep At The Elastic As It Stretches’ The piece is an attempt to “embody the attitudes and spirit” of N.F. Simpson’s 1958 absurdist play ‘A Resounding Tinkle’, which “ask(s) that we rejoice in all manner of unexpected objects, situations and concepts, taking great delight in the most categorical of descriptions and in a complete lack of distinction between the mundane and the exotic.”

This month’s Kammer Klang DJ set is provided by Tom Rose and Laurie Tompkins, the people behind the London/Berlin record label Slip (which specializes in “exploratory work which negotiates the fringes of new instrumental and electronic music” and is heavily involved with site-specific live events from instrumental performances through to club nights).

Programme:

Fresh Klang: Benjamin Oliver – Mr. Turquoise Synth
Matt Rogers – Weep at the Elastic as it Stretches (world premiere)
David Helbich – No Music (a performative rehearsal)
DJs: Slip

Tags: Benjamin Oliver, Brian Mark, Café Oto (promoter/venue), David Helbich, David Lang, duo music, Ensemble In Process, flute music, George Crumb, Helen Vidovich, Ian Dicke, IKLECTIK Art Lab (promoters), Jonathan Russell, Kammer Klang (event), London (England), Maria Fiore Mazzarini, Matt Rogers, Michael Gordon, Mina Fred, Missy Mazzoli, multimedia, music for cello, music for violin, My Hellgren, piano music, premieres, Protodome (Blake Troise), Ryan Brown, Scenatet, Seth Bedford, Slip (record label), Steve Reich, Timo Andres, Valerie Welbanks, Vicky Wright, Yshani Perinpanayagam, Zubin Kanga

April 2017 – upcoming jazz & improv instrumental gigs, Midlands, West and East – Theo Travis’ Double Talk in Essex (21st); Birmingham Bass Night with Steve Lawson, Dave Clarke, Russ Sargeant and Kevin Buckland (24th); improv in Cheltenham with Trevor Watts/Veryan Weston/Hannah Marshall Improvising Trio, Han Bennink & Pat Thomas, plus Chris Cundy (28th)

9 Apr

I focus too much on London with these news posts, so it’s refreshing to get a chance to look further afield now and again. Two of the regular gig-engines that I keep an eye on are Cheltenham’s friendly and broadminded improve evening Xposed Club, and Birmingham’s self-propelled compulsive bass collaborator Steve Lawson – so it’s good to be able to feature a gig by each of them here, plus news on the only 2017 gig planned (so far) for Theo Travis’s Double Talk quartet.

* * * * * * * *

With Double Talk, saxophonist Theo Travis pulls together his diverse influences and drives – his lyrical Stan Getz-ish jazz approach, his taste for ambient experimentalism, and the push-pull strands of his beloved English art rock and prog strands (spanning the likes of King Crimson, Gong and Porcupine Tree through to the influence of Theo’s other main gig as a member of Soft Machine) – more successfully than with any of his other projects. Allying Theo with drummer Nic France, Hammond organist Pete Whitaker and the extraordinarily malleable guitar of Mike Outram, Double Talk produce a warm, thoughtful, textured and propulsive jazz – managing their fusion leanings without falling into the trap of electric sterility, expressing their irreverent Englishness without drowning in soapy tweeness; an exhibition of subtle, graceful and reflective muscle.

At this Fleece Jazz gig, they’ll be mainly (though not exclusively) concentrating on music from their 2015 album ‘Transgression’.

Fleece Jazz presents:
Theo Travis’ Double Talk
Stoke by Nayland Hotel, Keepers Lane, Leavenheath, Colchester, Essex, CO6 4PZ, England
Friday 21 April 2017, 7.30pm – information here and here

* * * * * * * *

Birmingham Bass Night: Local Heroes! (featuring Steve Lawson, Dave Clarke, Russ Sargeant & Kevin Buckland)
Tower of Song, 107 Pershore Road South, Kings Norton, Birmingham B30 3EL, England
Sunday 23rd April 2017, 6.30pm – information

Another of Steve Lawson’s hometown low-end gigs-with-pals is coming up in the shape of this “all-West Midlands solo bass extravaganza” – more details below.

“Steve Lawson is the UK leading solo bassist – a former Bass Guitar Magazine cover star, Steve has been playing solo for 20 years, everywhere from The Royal Albert Hall to the Knitting Factory in LA. His solo work has also lead to numerous collaborations, most recently with Divinity Roxx, Reeves Gabrels, Tanya Donelly and Beardyman amongst many others. He’s released somewhere in the region of 45 solo and collaborative albums, but lost count some time in 2012…

“Midlands bass legend Dave Clarke has been a regular on the scene for twenty-five years, touring with Surinder Sandhu, Alvin Stardust, The Contours and Chairman Of The Board, and gigging in pretty much every pop style imaginable. Dave returns to Birmingham Bass Night with his much-loved looping piano/bass experimental duo, the Rowberry/Clarke Project.

“UK bassist Russ Sargeant uses his instruments, along with technology and effects, to create beautiful, layered music. His work has been described as “wonderfully immersive” and “subtle layers of sound that emerge gracefully like cinematic soundtracks”.

“Solo bassist and soundscapist Kevin Buckland – a.k.a. An Ending Ascend – brings his beautiful laptop-powered, eBow-laden ambient textures to Birmingham Bass Night. Currently studying for a Masters in experimental composition and sound art, Kevin’s musical journey takes the listener on a rich and rewarding ride through a world of mellow organic electronica.”

* * * * * * * *

A rather longer entry now for the latest Xposed Club show, featuring as it does a stack of coalescing musicians with long solo pedigrees…

Xposed Club presents:
Trevor Watts/Veryan Weston/Hannah Marshall Improvising Trio + Han Bennink & Pat Thomas + Chris Cundy (bass clarinet solo)
The Xposed Club @ Francis Close Hall, University of Gloucestershire, Swindon Road, Cheltenham, GL50 4AZ, England
Friday 28th April 2017, 8.00pm – information here and here

Friends and collaborators for more than forty years (since meeting in Trevor’s Moiré Music Group, which pursued a unique combination of African rhythmic structures with the European musical tradition) saxophonist Trevor Watts and pianist Veryan Weston have been at the forefront of many innovations and developments within the jazz/world and improvisational areas of music.

Trevor is the only surving founder member of The Spontaneous Music Ensemble, began the Amalgam group in 1967 (with bassist Barry Guy and trombonist Paul Rutherford), and was a founder member of Barry Guy’s London Jazz Composers Orchestra. He also founded The Drum Orchestra which, over a seventeen-year span from 1980, combined the talents of musicians from North and South Africa and Latin America. Initially a collaborator with Lol Coxhill and Eddie Prévost in the early ‘80s, Veryan reveals new aspects of an ever-changing improvised music identity depending on who he is playing with: he spent much of the ’90 working with vocalist extraordinaire Phil Minton, and other collaborations have included Carla Bley’s Escalator Over The Hill, John Zorn’s Cobra and (more recently) Sol6 and the 2014 Lindsay Cooper memorial project. His work with Jon Rose on the ‘Temperament Project’ uses assorted acoustic keyboards and violins with “selected tunings derived from science, history and the imagination”, and his formal composition work with the ‘Tessellations’ project produces pentatonic pieces for choir, piano, string quartet and other formats.

Sharing musical interests (particularly in rhythmic ideas), the two have maintained a long standing improvisation-focussed duo, highly acclaimed for their recordings and worldwide live appearances. Having previously joined forces with drummer Terry Day and bassist Dominic Lash, they’re currently operating as a trio with the involvement of free improvising cellist Hannah Marshall – a force on the UK scene and beyond who continues to “extract and invent as many sounds and emotional qualities from her instrument as she can… influenced by environmental sounds, western classical music, jazz, noise, traditional songs and blues amongst many things…” As well as work with Veryan on the Tuning Out Tour, the Trio of Uncertainty and Haste (and with others including Rachel Musson, Julie Kjaer, and Tim Hodgkinson), Hannah collaborates on and scores many other performing-arts works within theatre, dance, storytelling, film and live art.

Last time he played at Xposed Club (nine years ago) Han Bennink packed the place out. At the age of seventy-five, the onetime hard-swing drummer retains the lifelong energy that’s made him a linchpin of the Dutch improvisational scene. From backing various American stars on their visits to Holland in the 1960s, Han went on to co-found the musicians collective Instant Composers Pool in 1967 with pianist Misha Mengelberg and saxophonist Willem Breuker. With additional skills on clarinet, violin, trombone, piano, soprano saxophone and banjo (and a parallel career as a visual artist) he’s one of Europe’s most diverse improvisers, working with Derek Bailey, Misha Mengelberg and John Tchicai, amongst others.

Han’s also been in a number of trios, including the sax-cello-drums Clusone 3 (with Michael Moore and Ernst Reijseger, creating a “free-wheeling mix of swinging jazz standards, wide-open improvising, and tender ballads”) and a sax-piano-drums arrangement with Peter Brötzmann and Fred van Hove. His current main trios are his own Han Bennink Trio (with Joachim Badenhorst on clarinet and Simon Toldam on piano) and a piano-bass-drums alliance with Cor Fuhler and Wilbert de Joode. He remains a member of Mengelberg’s ICP Orchestra and the Tobias Delius Quartet. Throughout all of this, he’s also kept up his interest in non-standard/found object percussion, something which dates back to his first experiments with a kitchen chair at the start of his playing career (he still plays one whenever he had the opportunity).

Han also retains an active fondness for the spontaneous duo gig, and for this Xposed appearance he’s joined by pianist Pat Thomas. An improv festival veteran, Pat’s own history is one of mingling organic musical influences (jazz, reggae, classical) with electro-acoustic experimentation – when not playing piano, he’s working with programmable keyboards and with found-sound created by taping and editing random soundtracks from TV broadcasts. In the mid-’80s he played in Ghosts with percussionist Matt Lewis and wind/EWI player Pete McPhail, the latter of whom would also be a member of Pat’s experimental tentet Monads (which specialised in running a gamut of improvisational possibilities from saxophone-led pieces to others which foregrounded turntables, drum machines and computers). During the ‘90s Pat was a member of the intermittent quartet Scatter (with Phil Minton, Roger Turner and Dave Tucker). He’s also played extensively with Tony Oxley, Mike Cooper. Derek Bailey and Lol Coxhill, has a keyboard-and-percussion duo with Mark Sanders, and a trio with Steve Beresford and Francine Luce.

The opening act on the bill is extended-technique reedsman Chris Cundy: an Xposed Club regular and favourite with roots in Medway busking, a roving Cheltenham/Canada base, and a history that includes work with Fyfe Dangerfield (exploring both art pop with Guillemots and more avant-garde improvising terrain with Gannets), freak-folkers Timbre Timbre, doom-soul singer Cold Specks, florid transgender romantic Baby Dee, acclaimed indie/jazz/folk artist Devon Sproule and others. The master of a range of approaches (multi-phonics, circular breathing and microtonality) and of assorted standard and unusual woodwind and reed instruments, Chris dips into everything from the philosophical experiments of Cornelius Cardew and John Cage to out-and-out improv to theatre work. For this particular gig, he’ll be concentrating on his bass clarinet work.

Tags: Birmingham (England), Cheltenham (England), Chris Cundy, Colchester (England), Dave Clarke, Double Talk, duo music, Han Bennink, Hannah Marshall, Kevin Buckland, Leavenheath (England), Mike Outram, Nic France, Pat Thomas, Pete Whittaker, Russ Sargeant, Steve Lawson, Theo Travis, Trevor Watts, trio music, Veryan Weston

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Misfit City

December 2017 – strange and wonderful sounds in and out of London – Alien, Adrian Lane and Stuart Bowditch in Leigh-on-Sea (14th December); Dean McPhee, Sam McLoughlin, David Chatton Barker, Amy Cutler and Sylvia Hallett up in Homerton (16th December)

December 2017 – upcoming London jazz and improvisation gigs – London New Wind Festival’s improv evening at IKLECTIK (5th); Vlad Miller’s Notes From Underground back in Kentish Town (16th)

December 2017 – upcoming London classical etc. gigs – Tre Voci’s spacework (3rd); Keith Burstein’s chamber music (11th)

November 2017 – upcoming London jazz/experimental gigs – Jazz in the Round with Arun Ghosh and Eddie Parker (27th); noise and costume chaos in ‘Beyond the Mask’ with Flange Zoo, Isn’tses, Pranic Attack and Madonna Vagina (25th)

November/December 2017 – Sō Percussion ensemble tour their multi-media coal-mining piece ‘From Out A Darker Sea’ through Derbyshire, Lancashire, London and Kent (22nd, 24th, 25th and 30th November, 2nd & 5th December)

November 2017 – upcoming London classical gigs – the 20th London New Wind Festival including Giorgio Coslovich and Michiko Shimanuki premieres (17th); Daniel Okulitch, Lucy Schaufer and Kim Criswell join an evening of the songs of Glen Roven (22nd November)

November 2017 – upcoming London gigs – ‘Anonymous Was a Woman’ with Anne Garner, Mary Currie, Lis Stewart (9th November); Powerdove and Ashley Paul (15th November)

November 2017 – experimental gigs in England – Christine Ott on tour in Salford, Leeds and London (5th-8th November)

November 2017 – upcoming London classical/experimental gigs – pieces by Javier Álvarez, Jonathan Harvey, Trevor Wishart and Lauren Marshall at Kammer Klang (8th November); Kim Macari, Raymond McDonald and Club Inegales look into the art of the graphic score (10th November)

November 2017 – upcoming London classical gigs – SOLO presents Eliza McCarthy (7th November); Chamber Sundays at The Rosemary Branch (12th November); Scordatura Women’s Music Collective performs duets by women composers (10th November)

November/December 2017 – more assorted Smithery – BarmyFiveseveN play Tim Smith at Connector V, Amsterdam (2nd November); Spratleys Japs’ Wonderful Winter Wonderland tour of England (14th-17th December)

October 2017 – upcoming London classical/experimental gigs – Howard Skempton at 70 (13th October), Rarescale’s New Baroque (14th October)

October/November 2017 – upcoming London experimental gigs – post-various loops and shades from Rothko, Yellow6 and Darkroom (12th October); Moondog For Gamelan plus Steve Lawson/Corey Mwamba duo (28th October); Steel Pan Fusion plays Philip Glass (23rd November)

October 2017 – upcoming London experimental gigs – the Radiophonic Workshop takes over the British Library (13th October)

October-December 2017 – opera and musical theatre – the ‘Rough For Opera’ scratch night in London (9th October); Lucy Steven’s Kathleen Ferrier bio-show tours England (21st/26th/27th September, 3rd December)

June 2017 – upcoming London/German gigs – Lindsay Cooper remembered by Half The Sky (22nd June – plus Avantgarde Festival appearance on 25th June)

June 2017 – upcoming London classical/experimental gigs – Kammer Klang double event – ‘Soarings: A Salon on Else Marie Pade’ (5th June); Apartment House and Jacob Kirkegaard play Pade and Henning Christiansen, plus Vitalija Glovackyte (6th June)

May 2017 – upcoming London gigs – Muckle Mouth bring us Le Ton Mité plus Chris Cundy (May 25th), and The Family Élan plus Plague Dogs (May 27th); Papernut Cambridge’s Beehive Yourself gig-hosting series continues with The Great Electric, Deerful and Mat Flint (May 27th)

May 2017 – upcoming London gigs – I’m This I’m That play Moondog, plus Ed Dowie (19th May); Trembling Bells spinoff Alex Rex plus The Left Outsides and Plague Dogs (20th May)

May 2017 – upcoming London classical/experimental gigs – Kammer Klang with Scenatet/Matt Rogers, David Helbich, Benjamin Oliver/Yshani Perinpanayagam (May 2nd); Ensemble in Process presents a showcase of modern American composers (May 15th)

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