Tag Archives: Hannah Marshall

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.

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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


 
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Birmingham Bass Night, 23rd April 2017

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.”


 
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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, 24th April 2017

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.


 

October 2016 – upcoming gigs – this weekend’s Wakizashi music festival in Bristol – two days of underground allsorts (22nd, 23rd)

19 Oct

Wakizashi Festival, Bristol, 22nd & 23rd October 2016There may still be tickets left for the “glut of experimental and cross-genre artists” descending on Bristol this weekend for the two-day, twenty-band Wakizashi music festival.

The shared brainchild of two Bristolian gig engines – PROBO Titans (who incubate and deliver bi-monthly rock, pop and experimental gigs) and Harry “Iceman” Furniss (restless jazz cornetter and leading fringeman within the Avon jazz underground), Wakizashi offers an exciting, intimate and intelligent spill of psychedelia, noise, post-punk, math rock, jazz strains, electronica and much more.

PROBO Titans & Harry Iceman Furniss present:
Wakizashi Festival:
– Get The Blessing + Hysterical Injury + Twin + Iyabe + Iceman Furniss Quartet + Human Bones + Charivari + Luui + Saltings (Saturday)
– Knifeworld + Edward Penfold + Evil Usses + Milon + Halftone + Drone Soul + Rafael Dornelles Trio + Uther Modes + Perverts (Sunday)
The Old Malt House, Little Ann Street, Bristol, BS2 9EB, England
Saturday 22nd & Sunday 23rd October 2016 – starts 1.00pm, Saturday
– information here and here

Harry Furniss makes the most of his own involvement by appearing with his Iceman Furniss Quartet. His flowing cornet leads punk-art jazz moves over dogged springy bass rhythms and shuddering No Wave electric-curtain guitar (care of Danny Le Guilcher from Dynamite Pussy Club, whose other career as a printmaker seems to have literally rubbed off on his playing).


 
Further jazz directions are provided by Saturday’s headliners Get The Blessing (founded sixteen years ago over a mutual appreciation of Ornette Coleman,) provide rumbling, doomy trip-hop-tinged jazz-rock. They boast a rhythm section of art-rock/trip-hop/drum & bass go-to-men Clive Deamer and Jim Barr (who between them have kept the pulse going for Portishead, Radiohead, Hawkwind, Peter Gabriel and Roni Size) plus saxophonist Jake McMurchie (of Michelson Morley) and trumpeter Pete Judge (Eyebrow and Three Cane Whale), with another Portisheader, Adrian Utley, sometimes guesting on guitar. Their music brings along some of the flash and flair of jazz pioneers, but also the sense of being trapped in a small room with a lumbering, powerful inscrutable beast – with an equal chance of being either impressed or squashed.


 
Post-punk bass/drums/voice duo Hysterical Injury have a toe in the improv scene and a touch of folk. Their recent press tagging as some kind of “better version of Savages” belies the hovering thoughtfulness and the gentle dignity in their music beyond the softly roiling industrial bass textures. Singing bassist Annie Gardiner has a way with the writing and delivery of a surreal, conceptually suggestive lyric which baffles and entrances.


 
There’s something similarly compelling about the voice of Sophie Dawes, who sings for Iyabe further down the bill. As it was with missing-in-action Delicate AWOL singer Caroline Ross, Annie and Sophie’s voices and words are clear, weightless and elusive – keeping you listening while you try to figure out the messages and hidden narratives floating past in slow streams of isolated moment and fleeting detail.

Regarding Iyabe – considering that they’re a five-piece, they sound remarkably skeletal. Soft pings, drum clicks, bass shadows. At their most expansive, they’re a pencil-sketch ghost of Seefeel’s dub-rock dreaminess: other tracks are a hypnotic rain-drip of slowly growing consciousness. Recent moves towards alliances with remixers, further fleshing out the band’s sound, may point the way forward: but, as with Hysterical Injury, there’s already plenty in place.


 
Two more of Saturday’s bands provide further dispatches from rock’s dissolving, dreamier side. The mystery brainchild of Christelle Atenstaedt, Twin’s drawn-out one-woman Gothpop offers a wealth of detail in its hypnotic overlaid folk drones and its reverberant, tangled-roots guitar chug, which seems to reference both Cranes and Sandy Denny. With electric cello adding occasional extra texture to a droning, crashing armoury of blood-stained guitar fuzz, Bath-based post-rockers Charivari have a sombre lysergic depth; plus a repertoire of zurna-like Mediterranean melodies to add to their gloaming-murmurs, their evenstar twinkles and their post-Mogwai cascades of noise.



 
Begun as a solo project by Andrew Cooke (inspired by ancient ghost stories and the concept of the English eerie), Saltings has evolved into a three-piece drone collective. Andrew (plus string players Liz Muir and Caitlin Callahan) gradually unveil an occult soundtrack full of marine and maritime references, maybe as much inspired by Andrew’s origins in the port of Dublin as by the current trio’s Bristol harbouring. Sampler-moulded sounds (noise-grates, hull-knocks, whistles, water-throbs and motors) are enfolded with double bass and cello parts – whispered, minimal elegies for the undetermined; or baleful shadings; or queasy, discombobulated, John Adams-styled loops both shaken and slurred.



 
The sole hip hop representative on the bill, Luui, rolls out complex, constantly unfolding raps over seductively silky, time-flexed instrumental samples: slurred, narcotic Rhodes piano doodles, bits of glowing solo jazz guitar smeared into something blunted and sinister. Arced out in short, enveloping doses – most of his tracks are over and done in a couple of minutes – it’s both intimate and claustrophobic: a growing autumnal darkness, a slowly moiling confusion.


 
As Luui harmonises with himself (in subtle dischords), his flow folds over and over onto itself like piling lava, journeying from memories of childhood cheeriness into an increasing broody adult disaffection, shot with regrets, spiked with quick vicious jabs of obscenities and flashes of temper. As with the best, most unsettling confessional rap, you get a crooked window onto Luui’s unresolved world, see him wrestle with his conscience and his instincts and, though you see a little too much of him for comfort, for a while you’re matching breath with him too.


 
Initially known for upbeat Lou Reed drawls larded with guitar fuzz, Human Bones now seem to be moving towards a languorous cardboard-box take on Americana. Multi-instrumental looper Steve Strong, meanwhile, has set himself up as a one-man trip hop/math rock band, in which much of the emphasis seeming to be on the drum rhythm. See below for his Godspeedian live take on a grim, violent found story of road anarchy, in which his hopeful, orderly and dreamy guitar introduction gives way (under the growing brutality of the tale on tape) to the controlled heat of a drum beat through which he seems to be trying to slough off the increasing horror.




 

* * * * * * * *

It’s an odd festival indeed in which Knifeworld (Sunday’s headliners) are virtually the straightest act on the bill. That this is the case says plenty about Wakizashi, but it also says something about where Knifeworld are at the moment. Currently cruising on self-created, sunny psychedelic uplands, the London octet are enjoying a period of relative bliss and (for now) a more familial creative approach, as Kavus Torabi starts to share more of the writing with the crew of expert instrumental heads who make up his band. But if Knifeworld are the closest that the festival comes to pop, it’s still a zestfully spiked pop – brazen and crenellated, filled with monkey panache, their tunes still running exuberantly out of the ears with loopy spirals of melody and unexpected double-backs. If Henry Cow had woken up one morning and decided to steal a march on The Flaming Lips, they couldn’t have done much better than this.


 
More lysergic hints string through the day via the sleepy, lo-fi acidic pop of Edward Penfold, whose songs and instrumentals halo the everyday with a softly vibrating warmth. Sometimes they hint at a might-have-been Syd Barrett; one who ducked the madness and fled away to a healing West Coast hideaway, sending missives back to Cambridge in a rested, sprawling hand; faint blue ink on pale blue paper. On the other side of the coin are The Evil Usses – a deconstructive, fiercely humorous No Wave jazz-rock quartet, who share some of Knifeworld’s brassy exuberance but take it over the escarpment and down into a stomping, seven-league-booted Beefheart country.


As with Saturday, two fringe full-jazz groups will be taking the stage. Led by saxophonist Dino Christodoulou, Milon are a mostly acoustic quartet, edging into something more speaker-warping via Neil Smith’s electric guitar and Pasquale Votino’s judiciously over-amplified double bass: Eager Legs sounds like Charles Mingus being pursued down a stuck groove by a bounding ball of Sharrock/McLaughlin electric guitar grit, with Dino keeping one hand on the wheel by some riffling, ruffling Coltrane-ish sax lines. While the Rafael Dornelles Trio might have Brazilian roots, don’t expect samba or even Tropicália: electric guitar, bass and drums are aiming for somewhere far more heatedly lyrical and direct. Tunes like Slave’s Escape and Indigenous Mass grab you straight from the title and power off in muscular, quick-sprung directions, with a fierce and formidable vigour (plus a buccaneering hint of the knife).



 
Saltings’ double bass player Caitlin Callahan returns as one-quarter of part-improvising, part-compositional, female quartet Halftone, alongside two similarly-inclined Bristolians (violinist Yvonna Magda, flautist Tina Hitchens) and a London ally (cellist Hannah Marshall). Formed earlier this year, the foursome play an unsettling, absently beautiful post-classical music evoking wind in the trees, unresolved conversations and difficulties around corners.


 
Drone Soul boast about their “sheer bleak nihilism” and stake a claim to the abrasive post-punk heritage of The Pop Group. At least part of that’s true – the post-punk bit, anyway – but I’d bat away the nihilistic posturings. This music might be on the dark and cavernous side, but it’s illuminated with a vivid energy which belies the band’s collective grizzliness. If they’re bringing you news of falling buildings or collapsing people, they’re doing it with an exuberant dark snarl. Think of Iggy Pop in-yer-face, think Suicide’s assault-by-sine-wave; and also give a little credit to a lost Bristol band, Lupine Howl, whose gonzo millenial motorik finds a fresh echo here.


 
Rhodri Karim – the Welsh-Arabian heart of Uther Modes – used to be a mournful pop scientist, making his name with sepulchural computer-pop songs which bobbed gently at the juncture of philosophy, physics and bedsit soul. More recently he’s swapped this for a new kind of songcraft, strapping up a bass guitar and pulling in other musicians. Now he reels out shifting part-sombre part-jazzy mutters, winding slate-grey but sensual vocals around echoing guitar curlicues; like a fresh breed of post-rock which refuses to stagnate and instead flexes its muscles and goes haring around the park.


 
While he can sometimes be found paddling around in the warm, shallow pools of downtempo electronica, Traces will shake the drips off his feet once he’s warmed up enough. His studio recordings are fine, but it’s his live improvisations that show him at full strength. They’re heart-warmingly intimate and cheery stretches of pick-you-up synthery – like an enthusiastic half-drunken 2am conversation between Max Tundra and Guy Sigsworth, following which they track down Jean-Michel Jarre, drag him away from his pyramids and lasers and force him back into a kitchen full of analogue keyboards. From tabletop synth noodles to Pong blip and cheekily squirting techno, a cunning wonkiness prevails without diminishing the music’s straightforward ambition. Traces sometimes labels it “devotional”, and I’m not entirely sure that he’s joking.


 
Finally, there’s the fall-apart electronic gagpunk of Perverts, with their squalling songs about angry muppets and guilty onanists; their one-finger clickstab of synth drums; their beady-eyed sampler-shreddings of lachrymose film music. I guess that they’re there to remind musicians and punters alike not to take it all too seriously. It’s just that they’re staring me out a little too intently. On record, at least, Perverts deliver their spoofs and squibs with a crazed and chilly eye: a brattier Residents with a crappier laptop; a young digital Punch waiting to knock everything down.


 

June 2016 – upcoming London jazz – Entropi & Mike Chillingworth Trio at the Vortex, The Tommy Remon Quartet at Map (both on the 5th), and nearly ten hours of international LUME festival at the end of the month (26th)

31 May

There’s an imminent weekend of jazz coming up, plus an all-dayer at the end of the month…

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LUME presents:
Entropi & Mike Chillingworth Trio
Vortex Jazz Club, 11 Gillett Street, N16 8JH.
Sunday 5th June 2016, 7.30pm
more information

“To round off this season of LUME at The Vortex, we’ve got an exciting double bill of new and improvised music.

Entropi (photo by Carl Hyde)

Entropi (photo by Carl Hyde)

Entropi is a vehicle for Dee Byrne‘s ‘space-jazz’ compositions, exploring a narrative of life-pondering, stargazing and risk-taking. Juggling order and chaos, composition and improvisation, the group takes listeners on a journey with compelling group interplay, strong themes, open-ended improvisation, dark grooves and interweaving melodic textures. The ensemble comprises Dee (on alto saxophone), trumpeter Andre Canniere, keyboardist Rebecca Nash, drummer Matt Fisher and bassist Olie Brice. Having performed live together for some time, the band has achieved a striking empathy and freedom to take risks. Their debut album ‘New Era’ was released on the F-IRE Presents label in June 2015, with their second album to come on Whirlwind Recordings in 2017.

Mike Chillingworth

Mike Chillingworth

“We are really looking forward to welcoming alto saxophonist and composer Mike Chillingworth and his trio. In his own words:

“‘I formed this trio last year as a means to play music with an emphasis on spontaneity and improvisation. I have another project, a septet, which is all about detailed written compositions. This trio is the antidote to that. I will be performing with two fantastic improvisers: US drum legend Jeff Williams (who has played with everybody, including two of my favourite saxophonists Joe Lovano and Stan Getz) and Conor Chaplin on bass (who plays in many of the most exciting new UK bands at of the moment).

“I often deliberately avoid choosing repertoire for a gig until the last moment, often writing new tunes in the days leading up to a performance, or taking ideas from whatever I happen to be listening to at the time. Whatever we choose to play on this occasion the emphasis will be on improvising, communicating, listening and exploring together.'”

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On the same night, you’ve also got the chance to check out some new start-of-career talent at one of London’s nicest small venues – the Map Studio Café, tucked away in the Kentish Town side-streets. I’ve wanted to talk about this place since discovering it on a random stroll after a swimming session at the Prince of Wales Baths, when its easygoing atmosphere and hopeful spirit provided an ideal wind-down opportunity: the compact performance space upstairs and the talk of a built-in recording studio piqued my interest, and this week’s gig gives me something solid to plug…

Map Studio Café presents:
The Tommy Remon Quartet
Map Studio Café, 46 Grafton Road, Kentish Town, London, NW5 3DU, England
Sunday 5th June 2016, 8.00pm
more information

Tommy Remon, 2016

Tommy Remon, 2016

Led by up-and-coming guitarist Tommy Remon, this quartet has emerged from the Tomorrow’s Warriors Organisation, which encourages young British jazz talent (focussing on people from the African diaspora, with an additional focus on encouraging girls and women into the form). Currently playing hard bop and modal tunes from the jazz canon, as well as their own original compositions, the band are at a self-confessed early stage despite their collective musical strength, and are hungry to develop further insight and breadth. Now, however, is the ideal time to catch them while they’re young, hungry and open, and about to start on their first significant expansion.

The other members of the band are double bass player Rio Kai (who’s played with Jason Yarde and Alex Garnett), drummer Patrick Boyle (Tomorrow’s Warriors Big Band, Nathaniel Facey) – both of whom previously worked with Tommy in a trio – and trumpeter Dylan Jones, who’s still an undergraduate at Trinity Laban, but is already a member of EZRA Collective. Between them, the band members have also worked with Tomorrow’s Warriors founder Gary Crosby, Nérija, Binker Golding and Kokoroko.

* * * * * * * *

Three weeks later we’ll be back with LUME, who are summarising their current state of play via their first festival, which they successfully crowdfunded following an appeal earlier in the year (with backup from Arts Council England, and the Austrian Cultural Forum). It looks as if it’s going to be both a broad and a familial occasion, with many LUME regulars reappearing in a variety of bands and contexts, with strong playing contributions from the LUME organisers themselves, and with a substantial presence as regards the female jazz musicians which LUME in part encourages (just over a quarter of the twenty-seven players involved are women, most of them also being group leaders, co-leaders and composers). Tickets are limited and are going on sale at the start of June.

LUME Festival 2016

LUME presents:
LUME Festival: Word Of Moth + Ant Traditions + Hot Beef Three + Little Church + Kjær/Musson/Marshall + Blueblut + Article XI
IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, Waterloo, London, SE1 7LG, England
Sunday 26th June 2016, 1.00pm-10.30pm
more information

  • The day’s headliners are Word Of Moth, the London-based collaborative quartet which includes the two LUME founders on saxophones (Dee Byrne on alto, Cath Roberts on baritone) alongside Seth Bennett (bass) and Tom Greenhalgh (drums).
  • Article XI is a freewheeling large ensemble led by guitarist Anton Hunter, originally put together for the 2014 Manchester Jazz Festival but deemed too good not to continue with. Mingling free improvisation with tightly-composed contrapuntal writing, it also features Oliver Dover (alto sax, also of Saxoctopus and many others), Tom Ward (tenor sax), Cath Roberts (baritone sax), Johnny Hunter (drums), Seth Bennett (bass), Graham South and Nick Walters (trumpets), and Tullis Rennie and Richard Foote (trombones).
  • Vienna-based Blueblut was founded by three musical powerhouses, famous in their respective spheres of jazz, electronic and avant-rock music. The band have the intensity of rock, the space and openness of electronica and the razor-sharp precision and wild improvisation of jazz. Featuring Led Bib’s Mark Holub on drums, Pamela Stickney on theremin and Chris Janka (flying machine maker, sound engineer, automata creator and Viennese Caractacus Potts figure) on guitar and overall production.
  • Musson/Kjær/Marshall are a fantastic London trio of committed European-scene improvisers and extended-technique instrumentalists, all of whom happen to be female: Rachel Musson (tenor sax), Julie Kjær (alto sax) and Hannah Marshall (cello).
  • Little Church are a Birmingham-based fusion quartet, playing compositions both from and inspired by Miles Davis’ electric period. Led by keyboard player David Austin Grey, the rest of the band is made up from Aaron Diaz (trumpet), Rachael Cohen (alto sax), Chris Mapp (double bass, bass guitar and electronics) and Tymek Joswiak (drums). Little Church fuses live acoustic instruments with synthesizers and electronics to produce a wonderfully ambient soundscape, which moves from meditative and hypnotising through to driving and funky with a seamless fluidity.
  • Hot Beef Three brings some of Leeds’ finest improvisers together: saxophonist Oliver Dover (see above),  guitarist Craig Scott (Ikestra, Craig Scott’s Lobotomy) and drummer Andrew Lisle. (All three already play together as part of Leeds’ notorious eclecti-chaos band Shatner’s Bassoon.)
  • Ant Traditions are a top-notch Manchester improv duo featuring Adam Fairhall (toy pianos) and Dave Birchall (electric guitar).

There’s a sonic buffet provided below to keep you happy until the end of June:








 

April 2016 – upcoming gigs – London jazz (imminent gigs for Bright Moments Trio with Graham Clark and for Madwort Sax Quartet; plus a crowdfunder for a LUME festival in June).

14 Apr

Two imminent London jazz gigs which might be of interest…

* * * * * * * *

Bright Moments Trio with Graham Clark, 15th April 2016

Jazz at The Richmond presents:
Bright Moments Trio with Graham Clark
The Richmond Arms, 1 Orchardson Street, Lisson Grove, London, NW8 8NG, England
Friday 15th April 2016, 8.00pm
more information

A low-key concert of “originals and standards” from the Bright Moments Trio (who are Jonathan Cohen on keyboards and vocals, Dave Fowler on drums and Francois Moreau on double bass. At this gig, they’re augmented by Graham Clark on violin.

All of which sounds bland – just another earnest listing at another jazz pub – unless you’re looking into the pedigree of the people involved. With Dave’s involvement with assorted Flimflam acts (such as free-yak London improv favourites Ya Basta!), a near-thirty-year journey for Francois across the New Wave of British Heavy Metal en route to blues and jazz, and Jonathan’s own tireless and enthrallingly broad body of work across multiple genres and instrumentation, theatre and conceptual songwriting (including, for the jazz purists, work with Alec Dankworth and Christine Tobin.) As for Graham – while he mostly presents as an obliging Buxton-based jazz violinist these days, his history takes in a stint with Gong and a long history of hook-ups with fervid Manchester improvisers and London players. Come along to this one: I think that you’ll be surprised.

* * * * * * * *

Madwort Sax Quartet, 2016

LUME presents:
Madwort Saxophone Quartet
Hundred Years Gallery, 13 Pearson Street, Hoxton, London, E2 8JD, England
Saturday 16th April 2016, 7.30pm
more information

Blurb compiled from various sources:

“We’re very happy to welcome the Madwort Sax Quartet – Tom Ward (alto saxophone/compositions); Chris Williams (alto/soprano saxophone); Andy Woolf (tenor sax); Cath Roberts (baritone saxophone) – to Hundred Years Gallery for an exciting event in the group’s life: the recording of their debut album. Yes indeed, this gig will be expertly captured by the technical wizardry of Alex Bonney for a future release. Having played a sold-out gig at Manchester Jazz Festival in the summer – ably assisted at the last minute by LUME’s own Dee Byrne – the quartet are now back on home turf for this special performance.

The band explores irregular grooves and unusual harmonies inspired by mathematics and numerology, framed by the intuitive expressionism of free improvisation. This is a challenging line-up that allows for beautifully blended harmonies, intricate polyrhythms and abrasive dissonances. Inspirations include the movement of the planet earth through space, Steve Coleman, pioneering saxophone quartet Rova, Tim Berne, and transcriptions of bird song. The group also explores contemporary techniques such as complex time signatures and metric modulations without the presence of a dedicated drummer or percussionist, and harmony without a chordal instrument. All of the members bring their own individual, contrasting voices to the saxophone: Andy’s warm-toned, mellifluous tenor; Chris’s assertive, energetic alto (familiar to fans of Led Bib); Tom’s lyrical, passionate but more reserved alto; and Cath’s fluid, assured baritone. When required, though, the ensemble manages to blend beautifully into a homogenous whole that belies these contrasts.”

Here’s a gig recording for you:


 

* * * * * * * *

While on the subject of LUME gigs, they’ve just put out a call for crowdfunding for their planned end-of-June London festival:

LUME Festival, 26th June 2016

“We’re rounding off our 2015/16 season of gigs with the first ever LUME Festival. On Sunday 26th June we’re taking over IKLECTIK Art Lab near Waterloo for a one-day celebration of all things LUME: original and improvised music from the UK and beyond, friendly vibes and good times. To make it happen we’ve launched a Kickstarter campaign – and we need your support.

After three days of intensive listening and discussion, we’ve put together a day of fresh, cutting-edge new music that your ears won’t be able to get enough of. We had a tough time narrowing it down, but the final lineup is as follows:

  • Ant Traditions (Manchester)
  • Musson/Kjær/Marshall (London)
  • Little Church (Birmingham)
  • Hot Beef Three (Leeds)
  • Blueblut (Austria)
  • Anton Hunter‘s Article XI (Manchester)

Our core programme of LUME gigs this year is supported by Arts Council England, and there will be part of this funding left for the festival. There’s enough to put on about three bands and have a nice evening. But after all the amazing music we’ve listened to, that’s not quite enough for us. We want to do more – and this is where you come in. With your help, we can put on everyone in the list above and pack the day full of music. We’ve also invited Gina Southgate to come and capture the day on canvas, and Alex Fiennes to record the performances!

To make this happen we need to hit a Kickstarter target of £3500, all of which will go towards artist fees and travel expenses. Help us get there by treating yourself to a plethora of exciting rewards including early bird festival tickets and exclusive LUME Festival merchandise: posters, stickers and even limited edition LUME Festival t-shirts. Make sure you’ve got your fix of new original/improvised music sorted for the next twelve months by becoming a LUME member for 2016/17. Join LUME founders Cath and Dee on a special trip to the London Aquarium as an homage to our power animal, the anglerfish. Or for those of you who seek a more exclusive, one-off experience: commission leading avant-jazz quartet and LUME house band Word Of Moth to compose a tune in your honour, perform it at the festival and record it for inclusion on their forthcoming debut album. Yes, that’s a thing that could actually happen. Join us. Let’s do this!”

If you’re interested, here’s the link, and I’ve tracked down a couple of soundclips here.



 

January 2016 – upcoming gigs – Britten Sinfonia At Lunch across the east of England (with an Anna Clyne premiere); David Cohen and friends play magical-journey chamber music by Michael Nyman, Schubert and Gavin Higgins in Norwich

11 Jan

More January gig previews – a lunchtime mini-tour of chamber music in London and the east of England, and a single interesting classical concert in unusual surroundings.

* * * * * * * *

A recent trip to Norwich (still a prime ‘Misfit City’ stomping ground, partly thanks to all of those hometown Burning Shed concerts in the past decade or so) brought me into touch with the next set of gigs. The classical ensemble Britten Sinfonia has close links with the east of England and is honouring that with its At Lunch mini-tours, which swing in a loose arc between Norwich, Cambridge and London, bringing sturdy classical repertoire plus new premieres with them. Here’s information on the second of these tours (sorry, I missed the first one) which takes place mid-month:

Anna Clyne (photo by Javier Oddo)

Anna Clyne (photo by Javier Oddo)

Britten Sinfonia presents ‘At Lunch Two’

  • St Andrew’s Hall @ The Halls, St Andrews Plan, Norwich, Norfolk, NR3 1AU, England, Friday 15th January 2016 – £3.00 to £9.00 plus booking fee – tickets
  • West Road Concert Hall, 11 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DP, England, Tuesday 19th January 2016, 1.00pm – £3.00 to £9.00 – information & tickets
  • Wigmore Hall, 36 Wigmore Street, Marylebone, London, W1U 2BP, England, Wednesday 20th January 2016, 1.00pm – £11.00 to £13.00 – information & tickets

Programme:

Johann Sebastian Bach – Gott versorget alles Leben (from Cantata BWV187)
Domenico Scarlatti (arr. Salvatore Sciarrino) – Due arie notturne dal campo
Arvo Pärt – Fratres (for string quartet)
Johann Sebastian Bach – Seufzer, Tranen, Kummer, Not (from Cantata BWV21)
György Ligeti – Continuum
Anna Clyne – This Lunar Beauty (world premiere tour)
Johann Sebastian Bach – Tief gebückt und voller Reue (from Cantata BWV199)

Performers:

Julia Doyle (soprano)
Maggie Cole (harpsichord)
Jacqueline Shave, Miranda Dale (violins)
Clare Finnimore (viola)
Caroline Dearnley (cello)
Marios Argiros (oboe)

A pre-occupation with texture permeates this programme, beginning with two arias from the grand master of counterpoint, J. S. Bach. Ligeti’s ‘Continuum’ tests not only the limits of the soloist but also the exhilarating knife-edge between hearing individual notes and continuous sound. A world premiere from Grammy-nominated composer of acoustic and electro-acoustic music, Anna Clyne, whose music seeks to explore resonant soundscapes and propelling textures, completes the journey from the baroque to present day.

* * * * * * * *

Back to Norwich, to drop in on a classical chamber music series assembled by acclaimed Belgian cellist David Cohen and assorted friends.

Usually when I cover classical or modern classical concerts it’s because they feature premieres of new pieces or intriguing new interpretations and juxtapositions. While this one does feature a premiere (Gavin Higgins’ ‘Howl’) as well as a recent Michael Nyman string quartet from 2011, in this case I was intrigued by the venue – the John Innes Centre, a long-established plant and microbial research centre which lends its lecture theatre for these concerts. If you’re of an intellectual, associative and site-specific mindset, you can listen to the structures in the music unfold while simultaneously considering that you’re surrounded by the echoes of people thinking about – and unravelling the shape of – vegetable genomes.

Cello Con Brio ‘Magical Journeys’ (Norfolk & Norwich Chamber Music @ John Innes Centre, Norwich Research Park, Colney Lane, Norwich, NR4 7UH, England, Sunday 17th January 2016, 7.30pm) – £1.50 to £25.50 – informationtickets

Programme:

Michael Nyman – String Quartet No. 5 (‘Let’s not make a song and dance out of this’)
Gavin Higgins – Howl (for solo cello & string quartet) – world premiere
Franz Schubert – String Quintet in C

Performers:

David Cohen (cello)
Henri Sigfridsson (piano)
Corinne Chapelle (violin)
The Smith Quartet (strings)

Music performed by the ensemble on the other two days of the residency (15th and 16th January) includes chamber works by Brahms, Arensky, Schnittke, Beethoven and Paganini – the full listing is here.

* * * * * * * *

More gig news next time, including shows by Laura Cannell, Ichi and Tom Slatter.

January 2016 – upcoming London gigs – Fortuna Pop Winter Sprinter and Repeater alt/indie/noisepop mini-festivals; Hannah Marshall/Korbik Lucas playing a LUME slot

3 Jan

Happy New Year everyone. While I sort myself out, put the review of 2015 together and decide which approaches to take with ‘Misfit City’ this year, here’s what I know about so far in terms of January shows. Firstly, a couple of mini-festivals of indie pop/garage rock/punk/noise rock and indie folk in London, plus an afternoon of free improvisation in a Kentish Town record shop.

* * * * * * * *

Several of the characters who showed up for the Arrivée/Départ II festival last month are also showing up for this next one: it’s a similar aesthetic, and involves many of the same musical and professional friendships.

Fortuna Pop Winter Sprinter, January 2016

The 6th Annual Fortuna POP! Winter Sprinter (2016) (The Lexington, 96-98 Pentonville Road, Islington, London, N1 9JB, England, Tuesday 5th to Friday 8th January 2016, various times) – £10.45 (or £32.70 for four-day pass) – informationtickets

It’s happening again… The 6th Annual Fortuna POP! Winter Sprinter 2016 is Go! Four nights, twelve bands, DJs… the perfect antidote to the post-Christmas blues with the creme de la creme of the Fortuna POP! roster – including former members of Broken Family Band and The Loves – plus special guests.

Tuesday 5th January – Steven James Adams + Simon Love + The Leaf Library plus DJ Paul Wright (The Track & Field Organisation).



Wednesday 6th January – Tigercats + Flowers + Chorusgirl plus DJ Paul Richards (Scared To Dance).



Thursday 7th January – Withered Hand (full band) + Evans The Death + Pete Astor, plus DJ Darren Hayman.



Friday 8th January – Martha + Milky Wimpshake + Bleurgh (a Blur covers band featuring members of Allo Darlin’‎, Fever Dream, Night Flowers and Tigercats) plus DJs Sandy Gill & Karren Gill (Stolen Wine Social Club Night).


* * * * * * * *

Overlapping the Winter Sprinter is something a little noisier, over in Shacklewell…

Repeater Festival, January 2016

Repeater Festival (Bad Vibrations @ The Shacklewell Arms, 71 Shacklewell Lane, Shacklewell, London, E8 2EB, England,
Thursday 7th to Saturday 9th January 2016, various times)
– free entry – information

To break in the new year, Bad Vibrations will be putting on a 3-day residency of free-entry gigs at The Shacklewell Arms featuring a selection of garage, noise-rock and indie-folk bands. People playing include Taman Shud, The Wharves, Strange Cages, Virgin Kids, The Eskimo Chain, Honey Moon, Lucifer’s Sun, Night Shades and St. Serf. The usual strip of soundclips and video is below.








* * * * * * * *

LUME, whose London jazz and free improvisation events I tracked during 2015, are continuing to expand their efforts. While they seem to have found themselves a more regular slot at the Vortex, early 2016 shows are taking place at assorted venues around the capital – galleries, shops, any suitable space. The first of these is in a heavy-duty experimental record shop in Kentish Town, which – although it’s only a short walk or bus hop away from the ‘Misfit City’ flat – I’ve not noticed up until now. I should visit it and go through my usual masochistic experience of being intimidated by serried racks of music made by people I’ve not heard of before; or perhaps I should just go to this show.

Hannah Marshall + Kordik Lucas (LUME @ Electric Knife Records, 16b Fortess Road, Kentish Town, London, NW5 2EU, England, Saturday 16th January 2016, 1.30pm) – pay-what-you-like, £5.00 minimum

The first LUME gig of the year features a solo set from improvising cellist Hannah Marshall (whose collaborators have included Veryan Weston, Evan Parker, Lauren Kinsalle, Alex Ward and former Henry Cow members Tim Hodgkinson and Fred Frith), followed by a performance by the improvising duo Kordik Lucas duo (Slovakian analogue synth player Daniel Kordik and trombonist Edward Lucas, who also run the Earshots concert series and record label). This will be an in-store show so space is limited. There’s not much more information available on the evening at present, so keep an eye on the LUME and Electric Knife sites for updates (if anything new shows up, I’ll add it in here…)


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