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July 2018 – upcoming London classical gigs – the three nights of the Music We’d Like To Hear 2018 series, with The Mark Knoop Supergroup, Apartment House and others playing Catherine Lamb, Kevin Volans, Laura Steenberge, Martin Arnold, Hermann Meier, Johanna Beyer, Robert Ashley, Gyrid Nordal Kaldestad, Michael Parsons, Georgia Rodgers and Maya Verlaak (6th, 13th, 20th July)

Since 2005, annual London concert series Music We’d Like To Hear has been offering “three concerts on three Fridays” curated by composers John Lely and Tim Parkinson, and performed in a City of London church. The 2018 season begins on the first Friday of July.

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The first concert, on 6th July, features The Mark Knoop Supergroup (led by pianist Mark Knoop and featuring flautist Ilze Ikse, trumpeter Chloë Abbott, cellist Alice Purton and electronics specialist Newton Armstrong).

“Catherine Lamb’s prismatic music is becoming better known in the UK. In this programme we present her 2010 piece ‘nodes, various’, an early work in her continuing exploration of the behaviour of frequencies throughout an open space.

“The remarkable work of Swiss composer Hermann Meier (1906–2002) has been gaining attention following a recent exhibition and symposium at the Hochschule der Künste, Bern. As far as we know, this may well be the first presentation of Meier’s direct and uncompromising music in the UK. Thanks to the assistance of Meier’s archivist Marc Kilchenmann, we present ‘Klavierstück 1968’ alongside a realisation of ‘Flecken’, a 1980 work of cluster fields and static blocks of sonic material for eight electronic sound sources.

“Perhaps best known as a composer of operas, Robert Ashley composed his flute concerto ‘Superior Seven For Barbara Held’ in 1988. After releasing a version with MIDI orchestra on New World Records, Ashley toured a live version. Thanks to the assistance of Mimi Johnson and Tom Hamilton, we have reassembled the score of this beguiling and mysterious work for this concert.”

Previously performed versions of three of the four pieces:

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The second concert, on 13th July, showcases four solo or duet works for which (in two cases) the composer is on hand to perform (and which, in all cases, are too recent or rare for me to be able to offer soundclips).

“We are very fortunate to be joined by Laura Steenberge from Los Angeles, who leads a performance of some of her ‘Byzantine Rites’, a rich ongoing collection of performance pieces for music and actions drawn from fascinations with myth and ritual.

“The second half of the concert features the UK premiere of ‘Music for Boxes’ by Norwegian composer Gyrid Nordal Kaldestad, an arresting sonic environment created in close collaboration with violinist Mira Benjamin.” (Gyrid herself will be performing the electronic half of the duet.)

“As a first interlude to these sets, keyboard players Francesca Fargion and Tim Parkinson give a rare performance of Kevin Volans’ ‘Matepe For Two Harpsichords’, a 1980 work which the South African composer has referred to as “invented folklore”, marrying African and European techniques and aesthetics.

“Our second interlude is an exquisite 1971 piano miniature performed by Francesca, ‘Variations’ by Michael Parsons, who celebrates his 80th birthday this year.”

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The third and final concert, on 20th July, features acclaimed New Music ensemble Apartment House playing four works for string quartet.

“Johanna Beyer (1888–1944) is chiefly known today as the composer of one of the first electronic works, 1938’s ‘Music Of The Spheres’. She was one of the most colourful and individual voices of the early American avant-garde, yet long under-represented in concert programming. Recently, though, Beyer’s work has been enjoying a renaissance. This evening’s selection is ‘String Quartet No. 2’ from 1936.

“Georgia Rodgers’ shimmering ‘Three Pieces For String Quartet’ is a 2015 work supported by the Sound and Music Embedded Scheme, and premiered by the Bozzini Quartet at Woodend Barn, Banchory, Scotland for their Composer’s Kitchen project.

“We are delighted to commission a brand new work from Maya Verlaak, curator of the Post Paradise concert series in Birmingham, which has exploded onto the scene in recent years with fascinating programmes of new sounds and voices.

“To end the 2018 series, there’s a performance of Canadian composer Martin Arnold’s 1997 reinvention of the string quartet – ‘Contact; Vault’. With its long, delirious melody and quiet intensity, this singular work will play us out as the sun sets on this summer’s selection of music we’d like to hear.”

Again, some previous performances…

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All concerts take place at St Mary-at-Hill, Lovat Lane, City of London, London EC3R 8EE, England.

Dates and links:

Music We’d Like To Hear 2018 I (featuring The Mark Knoop Supergroup) – Friday 6th July 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
Music We’d Like To Hear 2018 II (featuring Laura Steenberge, Gyrid Nordal Kaldestad, Mira Benjamin, Francesca Fargion and Tim Parkinson) – Friday 13th July 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
Music We’d Like To Hear 2018 III (featuring Apartment House) – Friday 20th July 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here

Tags: Alice Purton, Apartment House, Catherine Lamb, Chloë Abbott, duo music, Francesca Fargion, Georgia Rodgers, Gyrid Nordal Kaldestad, Hermann Meier, Ilze Ikse, Johanna Beyer, John Lely, Kevin Volans, Laura Steenberge, listening to women, Mark Knoop, Mark Knoop Supergroup, Martin Arnold, Maya Verlaak, Michael Parsons, Mira Benjamin, music for electronics, music for violin, Music We'd Like To Hear (event/concert series), Newton Armstrong, piano music, quartet music, Robert Ashley, St Mary-at-Hill (venue) - City of London - London, Tim Parkinson

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Categories 2018, 20th century classical music, 21st century classical music, acoustic music, chamber music, classical (Western art music), electro-acoustic music, electronic, experimental music, festivals, instrumental music, New Music, previews

May 2018 – upcoming London classical/experimental gigs – Hen Ogledd’s freak-folk roar plus performances of Conlon Nancarrow, Alice Jeffries and original work by Naomi Sato, Lore Lixenberg and Serge Vuille at Kammer Klang (1st May); Tre Voci & Kit Downes EP launch (15th May)

21 Apr

Kammer Klang presents:
Hen Ogledd + Lore Lixenberg + Naomi Sato + Serge Vuille
Café Oto, 18-22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London, E8 3DL, England
Tuesday 1st May 2018, 7,30pm – information here, here and here

Headlining this coming month’s Kammer Klang is the shifting noise-folk improv collective Hen Ogledd: named after the ancient Celtic kingdoms of northern Britain and centring on improvising harpist Rhodri Davies and the distorted bass and acoustic guitar of Richard Dawson (once described as “a one-man Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band“).

Richard and Rhodri initially used the name for a 2013 duo album before expanding it to a larger project. Writer-musician Dawn Bothwell (a sometime video-art-curator who also plays “altered electronic torch songs” as Pentecostal Party and drum machine experiments as half of Blep) joined as an equal partner in 2016, her vocals and electronic instrumentation (synths, loops, delay pedals, telephone) simultaneously pulling the project deeper into freak-noise and adding forthright song structures. On this occasion, Rhodri, Richard and Dawn will be accompanied by a fourth member – frequent Dawson collaborator Sally Pilkington – on keyboard, synth and voice; further thickening a startling brew of sound which seems to excavate, parasitize and transform ancient folk music with a roaring dirty-electric experimentalism.

The rest of the bill is solo sets of various kinds.

Outstanding avant-garde mezzo-soprano Lore Lixenberg will be flying in from her Berlin base to perform her own multi-tracked vocal version of Conlon Nancarrow‘s ‘Study for Player Piano No. 31’ (one voice live, the rest on tape). Nancarrow specialised in piano pieces with a forest of ecstatic multiple parts: impossible for one human to generate on a single standard piano with only ten fingers, but more readily performable via the automatic pedal-pumped player piano (whose system of playing programmed music from punched paper rolls like a computer or music box proved prime for hijacking).

Lore’s apparent aim is to demechanise the music – respecting its original method but bringing it closer to human performance. Though she’s jokingly dubbed this “Nankaraoke”, in a recent interview with NMC Records she also revealed “the idea is to keep the consistency of timbre of the player piano but with the liveness that Nancarrow couldn’t find in his lifetime. I was talking to David Alberman about the first time Nancarrow heard his music played in ensemble; apparently he nearly cried, having been told his whole life that his music was unplayable…”

Saxophonist and reedist Naomi Sato (of Duo X Project, Karooshi Vlinder Vangers and assorted orchestras) will be performing an unspecified solo set on shō (the Japanese 17-pipe bamboo mouth organ). To complete the evening, the Fresh Klang event of new and rare music will be performed by percussionist Serge Vuille – premiering a new work by emerging young British composer Alice Jeffreys, whose music “explor(es) emergent temporal paradoxes in listening”.

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I always seem to be doubling up news of Kammer Klang and Nonclassical events, and this time’s no exception. In mid-May, Nonclassical are putting on another Tre Voci gig as the cello ensemble launch their new ‘Auro’ EP with regular collaborator, jazz pianist and organist Kit Downes. (This follows up their previous shared concert) back in February.)

A quick burst of press release for the unfamiliar:

“Formed in 2012, Tre Voci is comprised of Norwegian cellist Torun Sæter Stavseng and British cellists/composers Gregor Riddell and Colin Alexander. Their repertoire ranges from medieval and renaissance vocal music to new commissions and their own compositions. The trio is also focused on structured improvisation, performing with live processed electronics as well as explorations of Scandinavian folk music.

“Kit Downes is a BBC Jazz Award winning, Mercury Music Award nominated, solo recording artist for ECM Records. He has toured the world with artists such as Squarepusher, Thomas Strønen, Aidan O’Rourke and Django Bates and written commissions for Cheltenham Music Festival, London Contemporary Orchestra, Stavanger Konserthus, Cologne Philharmonie, BBC Radio 3 and the Wellcome Trust.”

As is usual with Tre Voci concerts, there will be a mixture of site-specific improvisations plus written pieces, including original works by all performers. Presumably the setlist includes Kit’s Tre Voci ‘Auro’ commission ‘The Cult of John Frum’ plus the fifteenth century Josquin des Prez and Johannes Ockeghem pieces which also appear on the EP.

Nonclassical presents:
Tre Voci & Kit Downes
The Old Church, Stoke Newington Church Street, Stoke Newington, London, N16 9ES, England
Tuesday 15th May 2018, 8:00pm – information here, here and here

Tags: Alice Jeffreys, Café Oto (promoter/venue), Colin Alexander, Conlon Nancarrow, Dawn Bothwell, Gregor Riddell, Hen Ogledd, Kammer Klang (event), Kit Downes, London (England), Lore Lixenberg, music for cello, music for shō, Naomi Sato, Nonclassical (event/promoter/record label), quartet music, Rhodri Davies, Richard Dawson, Sally Pilkington (Pentecostal Party), Serge Vuille, The Old Church (venue) - Stoke Newington - London, Torun Saeter Stavseng, Tre Voci, trio music

April 2018 – The Ecstatic Music Festival in New York (part 3) with Margaret Leng Tan, ModernMedieval, Julianna Barwick, Patrick Zimmerli, Carla Kihlstedt and others, featuring premieres of new works by George Crumb, Suzanne Farrin, Kelly Moran, Jeremy Flower and Patrick Zimmerli (14th, 19th, 26th April)

1 Apr

During April, New York’s Ecstatic Music Festival comes to an end with its three final events. In the previous six concerts, we’ve seen (among other things) big band music, contemporary classical percussion, slam poetry, choirwork, experimental pop and progressive industrial metal. The closing three shows feature left-field jazz/classical/pop fusions, mix-and-match vocal ensemble music, and a finale of virtuoso contemporary classical piano (including toy piano).

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Jeremy Flower, John Hollenbeck, Ethan Iverson, Carla Kihlstedt, Christopher Tordini & Patrick Zimmerli: ‘Clockwork’ & ‘Songs of Mourning’
Saturday 14th April 2018, 7:30pm – information here and here

“The evening begins with a celebration of the release of composer-saxophonist Patrick Zimmerli’s ‘Clockworks’, an hour-long jazz quartet suite and a musical meditation on time, in all its forms, performed by Zimmerli with former Bad Plus pianist Ethan Iverson, bassist Christopher Tordini and composer-jazz drummer John Hollenbeck.

“In the evening’s second half, pop/art song composer-violinist-vocalist Carla Kihlstedt (Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Rabbit Rabbit, Charming Hostess, Tin Hat, The Book of Knots, Causing a Tiger and others) and composer Jeremy Flower joins Zimmerli, Tordini and Hollenbeck for the world premiere of ‘Songs Of Mourning’, an exploration of sorrow ranging from the political to the personal, and other works from their cumulative pasts.”

ModernMedieval & Julianna Barwick
Thursday 19th April 2018, 7:30pm – information here and here

“Some of the greatest voices in contemporary music come together! Julianna Barwick’s ethereal, powerfully emotive voice (usually layered on top of itself to stunning effect) is paired with three-member super-group ModernMedieval (celebrated performers of early music, featuring former Anonymous 4 founder Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek and Roomful of Teeth’s Martha Cluver and Eliza Bagg), ascending into a thrilling and truly ecstatic sonic world.

“Featuring premieres of new works by Barwick, Caleb Burhans (“New York’s mohawked Mozart” – ‘Time Out New York’), and Caroline Shaw (the youngest ever winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music).”

Margaret Leng Tan premieres George Crumb, Suzanne Farrin, & Kelly Moran
Thursday 26th April 2018, 7:30 pm – information here and here

“Margaret Leng Tan — the formidable doyenne of the avant-garde piano — has built a career on upending tradition, pushing her instrument into fresh, no-holds-barred sonic worlds,” raves the Washington Post. Tan gives the New York premiere of ‘Metamorphoses’, a major new work written for her by the seminal twentieth century composer George Crumb, for amplified piano, toy piano, percussion and voice. Metamorphoses is performed with Monica Duncan’s video projections, in which atmospheric visual textures complement the music.

“Tan will also premiere two new EMF-commissioned pieces by young composers responding to Cage and Crumb’s influence: a work for prepared piano by Kelly Moran, and a haunting new piece by 2017 Rome Prize winner Suzanne Farrin that acknowledges not only Crumb’s important contribution to American music, but, in Farrin’s words, “also Margaret Leng Tan’s special role as the artist who has brought the piano’s insides to life on stage.” Works by Toby Twining and John Cage round out the program.”

As with all the other EMF concerts, these will take place at Merkin Concert Hall @ Kaufman Music Center, 129 W 67th Street, Upper West Side, Manhattan, New York, NY 10023, USA.

Both the ModernMedieval/Julianna Barwick and the Margaret Leng Tan concerts are co-presentations with New Sounds Live: hosted by John Schaefer, they’ll be streamed live via the New Sounds homepage.

Same again next year?

Tags: Anonymous 4, Caleb Burhans, Carla Kihlstedt, Caroline Shaw, Charming Hostess, Christopher Tordini, Eliza Bagg, Ethan Iverson, George Crumb, John Cage, John Hollenbeck, Julianna Barwick, Kelly Moran, listening to women, Margaret Leng Tan, Martha Cluver, ModernMedieval, New York City (USA), Patrick Zimmerli, piano music, quartet music, quintet music, Rabbit Rabbit, Roomful Of Teeth, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Suzanne Farrin, The Ecstatic Music Festival (event), Toby Twining, toy piano music, women of heart and mind

March/April/May 2018 – upcoming classical gigs in London and Oxford – three evenings of chamber music by female composers courtesy of the Scordatura collective (25th March, 20th April, 19th May), including a Polly Virr guest slot in May… plus the London New Wind Festival’s ‘New Music by Women Composers’ concert (23rd March)

10 Mar

From March to May, women’s music collective Scordatura continue their mission to present, perform and illuminate work by female composers, via a series of monthly concerts in London or Oxford.

The March date in London is “an evening of wind chamber music from some of Europe’s most exciting female composers.” Living composers will be represented by Judith Weir’s ‘Mountain Airs’ (a free adaptation of two traditional Scottish melodies, which dates back to 1988); but there’ll also be wind quintets by a pair of bold and prolific twentieth-century French composers (Claude Arrieu and Hedwige Chrétien) as well as by English serialist grande-dame Elisabeth Lutyens.

In addition, there’ll be a performance of ‘Trio For Winds’ by the late Prague-based Scottish composer Geraldine Mucha, whose work was obscured for much of her lifetime (partly due to Cold War politics and partly due to so much of her energy and social value having being subsumed into other work as chatelaine and foundation head for her talented father-in-law, the Czech Art Nouveau painter Alphonse Mucha).

In April, three Scordatura members – cellist and artistic director Rachel Watson, clarinettist Poppy Beddoe, and pianist Cecily Lock – will be playing a set of chamber trios in Oxford. Two are by living composers – ‘Arenas d’un Tiempo’ by Cuban-Afro-American Tania León and ‘Canta, Canta!’ by Thea Musgrave.

The remainder are historical – ‘Passacaglia on an Old English Tune’ (by the slim-catalogued but accomplished post-Impressionist Rebecca Clarke); ‘Sonata for Clarinet and Cello’ (by the smart, witty and superbly spirited Phyllis Tate); ‘Andante for Clarinet and Piano’ (by the elegant twentieth-century neoclassicist Alice Mary Smith); and ‘Three Pieces for Cello and Piano’ (by Nadia Boulanger, whose exemplary work as a teacher of other composers from Philip Glass and Elliott Carter to Aaron Copland tends to overshadow her own compositional reputation).

Scordatura return to London (and the Old Church) in May for an evening of cello ensemble music. This will include pieces composed and performed by a guest – Manchester cellist Polly Virr (another latter-day tech-savvy polydisciplinary, who works with Rachel Watson in flashmob ensemble The Street Orchestra of London and whose work outside of the immediate classical sphere covers the string loop pedal duo Täpp as well as work with indie-folk band Ideal Forgery plus various Manchester singer-songwriters).

Landscape- and travel-inspired, Polly’s pieces include standard playing and cello-body percussion plus occasional extended technique and voice, in a similar manner to other post-classical/pop-friendly solo cellists like Laura Moody, Philip Sheppard, Zosia Jagodzinska and Serena Jost. She also draws additional inspiration from post-classical electronic dance artists such as Phaeleh. I’ve pasted in a couple of her Soundcloud shots below.

The other items on the programme include the Cello Quartet by Grażyna Bacewicz (a violin soloist and onetime Boulanger student who became one of the first internationally-recognised Polish female composers) and ‘Chant’ by the humble, undersung Scottish composer and multi-instrumentalist Marie Dare (for whom I’ve found a lone biography here) As with the other two concerts, there are a couple of pieces by living women, both of them cello quartets – the slow windings of Tina Davidson’s ‘Dark Child Sings’, and Gabriela Lena Frank’s ‘Las Sombras de los Apus’ (an early piece rising from dark tones to swarming explosions and dance rhythms, balancing – as with most of her music – the European and Latina aspects of her own multicultural heritage).

Dates as follows:

‘The Grand Tour: European Music for Wind Quintet’ – The Old Church, Stoke Newington Church Street, Stoke Newington, London, N16 9ES, England, Sunday 25th March 2018, 7.30pm – information here, here and here
‘Scordatura at St Michael’s’ – St Michael & All Angels Church, 33 Lonsdale Road, Summertown, Oxford, Oxfordshire, OX2 7ES, England, Friday 20th April 2018, 7.30pm – information here and here
‘Celli! Music for Cello Ensemble’ – The Old Church, Stoke Newington Church Street, Stoke Newington, London, N16 9ES, England, Saturday 19th May 2018, 7.30pm – information here, here and here

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UPDATE, 16th March 2018 – …and, if you can’t wait that long, I’ve just found out that the people behind the London New Wind Festival are staging a London evening of new music by women composers, as part of International Woman’s Month; a couple of evenings before the first of the Scordatura concerts.

A loose on/off quintet of Simon Desorgher (flutes), Catherine Pluygers (oboes), Ian Mitchell (clarinets), Alan Tomlinson (trombone), and Robert Coleridge (piano) will be playing the following pieces:

Yuko Ohara – Rising Eels (for oboe & trombone)
Margaret Lucy Wilkins – “366” (for solo trombone)
Dorothee Eberhardt – Campion (for bass clarinet & piano) (UK premiere)
Violeta Dinescu – Lichtwellen (for solo B-flat clarinet) (UK premiere)
Michiko Shimanuki – First Snow (for solo piano) (world premiere)
Catherine Pluygers – Japan (for ensemble)
Janet Graham – From Dawn to Dusk (for flute, oboe and piano)
Erika Fox – Remembering the Tango (for flute and piano)
Ming Wang – Die Verwandelten (for solo bass flute)
Enid Luff – The Coming of the Rain (for solo oboe).

London New Wind Festival presents:
‘New Music by Women Composers’
Schott Music Ltd, 48 Great Marlborough Street, Soho, London, WIF 7BB, England
Friday 23rd March 2018, 7.30pm – information here, here and here

This music’s currently so obscure that this is the only soundclip I could find for it…

Tags: Alan Tomlinson, Alice Mary Smith, Catherine Pluygers, Cecily Lock, Claude Arrieu, Dorothee Eberhardt, Elisabeth Lutyens, Enid Luff, ensemble music, Erika Fox, Gabriela Lena Frank, Geraldine Mucha, Grażyna_Bacewicz, Hedwige Chrétien, Ian Mitchell, Janet Graham, Judith Weir, listening to women, Margaret Lucy Wilkins, Marie Dare, Michiko Shimanuki, Ming Wang, music for cello, Nadia Boulanger, Phyllis Tate, Polly Virr, Poppy Beddoe, quartet music, quintet music, Rachel Watson, Rebecca Clarke, Robert Coleridge, Schott Music (venue) - Soho - London, Scordatura Women's Music Collective, Simon Desorgher, St Michael & All Angels Church (venue) - Oxford, Tania León, The Old Church (venue) - Stoke Newington - London, Thea Musgrave, Tina Davidson, trio music, Violeta Dinescu, women of heart and mind, Yuko Ohara

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Categories 2018, 20th century classical music, 21st century classical music, acoustic music, chamber music, classical (Western art music), DIY music, electro-acoustic music, instrumental music, New Music, previews, singer-songwriter

April 2017 – even more jazz & jazz-ish gigs – Theo Travis in Rochester (23rd April); Spaceheads and Howie Reeve in London (21st April); Carl Hudson’s Moon Unit in London (27th April)

10 Apr

A quick addition to the previous jazz update featuring Theo Travis – as well as his imminent Essex date with Double Talk, he’ll be playing a free Sunday lunchtime show with his regular quartet Marc Parnell (drums), Alex Keen (bass) and Mike Gorman (piano). They’ll be “playing tracks from Theo’s solo catalogue including from albums such as ‘Live at Ronnies’, ‘Secret Island’ ‘Heart of the Sun’ and ‘Earth to Ether’.” It’s a low key event, but a high quality one; the kind that strangers walk into expecting some plodding duffer and coming out massively enthused instead.

Theo Travis Quartet
The Eagle Tavern, 124 High Street, Rochester, Kent, ME1 1JT, England
Sunday 23rd April 2017, 1.00pm

Meanwhile, here are a few more London dates:

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Club Integral presents:
Spaceheads (with Rucksack Cinema) + Howie Reeve
IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, Waterloo, London, SE1 7LG, England
Friday 21st April 2017, 8.00pm – information

“Spaceheads are a duo. Andy Diagram’s hotwired trumpet produces live harmonised loops and breathy samples which he controls via a mobile phone attached to the top of his horn with a fish slice. The thick brass layers created are propelled by Richard Harrison’s drums, percussion and bent metal sheets. Over twenty-five years, Andy and Richard have achieved an intuition of what each is about to do next, which makes their semi-improvised gigs a joy to behold.

“Spaceheads formed in 1990 in Manchester and have toured the world and released eleven albums to date. Their latest album ‘Laughing Water’ was released in November 2016 and followed last years successful album ‘A Short Ride On The Arrow Of Time”. Both were released on their own label, Electric Brass Records.

“Rucksack Cinema a.k.a. Jaime Rory Lucy – has been supplying delirious, innovative live video imagery since 2007. His astonishing and almost preternatural ability to mix imagery with what is happening on stage as well as creating strange and wonderful atmospheres throughout a room has made him an intrinsic part of any Spaceheads gig.

“Howie Reeve plays solo bass and sings. He has released three albums, and a single (with Mike Watt of The Minutemen/fIREHOSE/The Stooges), and is about to release a new album titled ‘Not So Secret Garden’. Reeve previously found fame with experimental indie-pop band Tattie Toes and has been striding out on his own for several years, acoustic bass in hand, walking boot on footstool. His music is deeply introspective, considered and full of glorious dynamic range.”

(I’ve just had a listen to Howie’s stuff. Not the jazzy noodling or string squeak one might expect from an experimental-end gig: more of a richly harmonic multi-stopped bass guitar approach allied to nervy vocalising and alarming lyrics> He should be playing on one of Steve Lawson’s multi-bass nights. If you’re looking for an easy song-style tag to fix on Howie, though, the best thing to do is to tack away from jazz and head towards the eerie, distressingly beautiful DIY nightmare-folk of Lupin Crook, who’s been quiet for too long…)

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Splash Music Productions present:
Carl Hudson’s Moon Unit
Zigfrid von Underbelly, 11 Hoxton Square, Hoxton, London, N1 6NU, England
Thursday 27th April 2017, 7.00pm – information http://app.etickets.to/buy/?e=14818

“Splash Music Productions are proud to introduce the launch night of ‘Pixel Planet’ – the spectacular Album from Carl Hudson. Eclectic, futuristic, soulful, and danceable, Carl Hudson’s follow-up album to the critically acclaimed ‘Zoology For Martians’ doesn’t disappoint. ‘Pixel Planet’ oozes class from start to finish. His wizardry on the keyboard and his willingness to experiment with sound and melody, combine to create an aural extravagance that propels the listener to another world and compels their feet to dance.”

I’m not quite sure what’s going on here, since this “launch event” seems to be covering an album allegedly released over a year ago in February 2016… but if you like cosmic-tinged soul jazz in a Lonnie Liston Smith vein, or if you like warm music to Hubble to, this could be your thing. See below.

Tags: Alex Keen, Andy Diagram, bass guitar music, Carl Hudson, Carl Hudson's Moon Unit, duo music, Howie Reeve, London (England), Marc Parnell, Mike Gorman, quartet music, Richard Harrison, Rochester – England, Rucksack Cinema, Spaceheads, Tattie Toes, Theo Travis

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Categories 2017, acoustic music, experimental music, funk, improvisation, instrumental music, jazz, jazz fusion, jazz-funk, post-bop, singer-songwriter, soul-jazz

April 2017 – upcoming London jazz gigs – Emma-Jean Thackray + Pie Eye Collective + Sky Coloured (14th); Taeko Kunishima’s Iridescent Clouds (23rd); Jonny Gee Trio with Alex Garnett (24th)

7 Apr

Another London jazz and jazz-ish update for April. Minglings of jazz, pop, turntablism and glitchtronica in New Cross; Taeko Kunishima’s Anglo-Indo-Mediterranean-Japanese mixed-media ensemble taking flight in Lambeth; and Jonny Gee’s latest warm-toned jazz-and-curry evening in Archway.

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Rain Today presents:
Emma-Jean Thackray + Pie Eye Collective + Sky Coloured
The Amersham Arms, 388 New Cross Road, New Cross, London, SE14 6TY, England
Friday 14th April 2017, 7.00pm – information

Emma-Jean Thackray, 2016

“London live music series Rain Today returns with a dazzling bill of some of south London’s most original groove-based artists.

Emma-Jean Thackray is an award winning composer, arranger, producer and instrumentalist, and a recent Red Bull Music Academy alumni. She has been described by RBMA as “one of the UK’s most exciting new jazz artists” and Rhythm Section has said that her recent ‘Walrus’ EP is “one of the most exciting and unique jazz records of 2016”. ‘Walrus’ now sits in the collections of some of the world’s best selectors: Bradley Zero, Sean P, Mr Scruff, Theo Parrish, Jeff Chairman Mao and more…

“Often seen manipulating the unseen sounds within Emma-Jean Thackray’s Walrus quintet and the London SoundPainting Orchestra founded by Diego Ghymers, composer-producer Pie Eye Collective presents a brand new solo live show of abstract improvisation, electronic dimensions, hypnotic textures and entrancing rhythms (in anticipation of the soon-to-come Pie Eye Collective debut EP, due to be released late 2017).

“New south-east London nine-piece Sky Coloured return to the Amersham (where they launched their debut LP ‘Starting Time’) to present a set of ‘symphonic alt-pop’. Described by AmericanaUK as ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning scored by Miles Davis’, they are a collective of brilliant musicians playing songs of outstanding craft and originality.”

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IKLECTIK Art Lab presents:
Taeko Kunishima: ‘Iridescent Clouds’
IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, Waterloo, London, SE1 7LG, England
Sunday 23rd April 2017, 8:00 pm – information

“Previously a long-term resident in London, pianist Taeko Kunishima is now moving between the UK and Japan, performing in both countries. With a background in both classical and jazz, she has toured the UK (with support from Jazz Services), and has four albums on the 33 Jazz label.

“Her trademark lyricism is all over the most recent of these; ‘Iridescent Clouds’, on which she has newly composed eight beautiful pieces in a mellow, melodic vein with occasional atmospheric twists, as her music shifts elegantly from melody to improvisation and back again. Her core group again features the ethereal, Zen-like tones of the Japanese shakuhachi flute, warm double bass, the zinging rhythms of the three-stringed Tsugaru shamisen and percussion from tablas, cahon and gongs.

“The album also conveys the listener to surprising locations thanks to Jeremy Hawkins’s subtle use of field recordings made in both Japan and the UK, from the spring call of the uguisu bird (a type of Japanese bush warbler) to the rustling of oak leaves in autumn. For instance, the track Iridescent Seashell provides a stunning duet between piano and uguisu, with additional splashes of colour from khene and Cretan double pipes.

“Evan Parker has hailed the album’s “good clear concept… well interpreted by the musicians” and it was put forward by James Nadal of ‘ All About Jazz‘ as one of the best albums released in 2016. (“Acknowledged for her trademark lyricism, (she) reflects upon the wonders of nature on ‘Iridescent Clouds’, offering elegant improvised passages encased in a meditative concept.”)

For this concert, Taeko will be playing with the other contributors to the ‘Iridescent Clouds’ project: shakuhachi/flute player Clive Bell, double bass player Paul Moylan (She’Koyokh, Michael Garrick, Johns Dankworth and Etheridge), Indo-classical/reggae/electro-acoustic tabla player Camilo Tirado (Nitin Sawhney, James Holden, Lemn Sissay), and Hibiki Ichikawa (one of the world’s top-rank shamisen players and a prime representative of Japanese musical culture in London).

The video clip below was recorded at the Iridescent Clouds performance at Aberjazz 2016; the subsequent one’s been added from a previous project as an example of the films projected at some of Taeko’s concerts.

* * * * * * * *

Jonny Gee presents:
Jazz & Curry!: Alex Garnett + Jonny Gee Trio
The Sitara, 784 Holloway Road, Archway, London, N19 3JH, England
Monday 24th April 2017, 7.00pm – information

Lastly, here’s one of the low-profile, high-powered jazz gigs in north London led by Archway-based double bass whiz Jonny Gee. No frills, no gimmicks, no particularly grand concepts – just superbly-played music by several of the capital’s most skilled and flexible musicians, in one of the best of London’s Indian eateries (itself a longstanding jazz haunt).

If you’ve been following previous posts on Jonny you’ll know that he plays everything from baroque to bebop and then some, having worked with King Salsa, Antonio Forcione, Ravi Shankar and Cleo Laine as well as a host of orchestras and dance bands. You might also know that his drummer Andrea Trillo has played with both Herbie Hancock and Jerry Dammers (as well as with Don Weller, Dave O’Higgins, Jon Toussaint, Simon Purcell and Tim Richards). The trio’s pianist Dave Oliver plays with Mamas Gun, Sugar Kings and Marta Acosta as well as MD-ing for Lisa Stansfield.

On this particular occasion, Jonny’s also conjured up a guest slot from “Alex Garnett, one of our best & wittiest saxophonists, (who) joins my trio for the evening… before running off to Ronnie Scott’s at 10:30pm sharp, where he runs the house band.” This gig only seats thirty people, and tickets are running out fast…

Tags: Alex Garnett, Andrea Trillo, Camilo Tirado, Clive Bell, Dave Oliver, Emma-Jean Thackray, Hibiki Ichikawa, IKLECTIK Art Lab (promoters), Jeremy Hawkins, Jonny Gee, Mamas Gun, music for nonets, Paul Moylan, Pie Eye Collective, quartet music, quintet music, Rain Today (event/promoter), Sky Coloured, Taeko Kunishima, trio music

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Categories 2017, acoustic music, chamber jazz, chillout, crossover, dance music, downtempo, easy listening, electro-acoustic music, glitch music, IDM, improvisation, instrumental music, jazz, jazz fusion, jazz-funk, jazz-pop, pop, post-bop, previews, R&B, rhythm'n'blues, singer-songwriter, soul-jazz, turntablism

February to May 2017 – upcoming London jazz gigs – the LUME Lab season with Word of Moth, Julie Kjær, Craig Scott and Anton Hunter

31 Jan

News from London’s LUME jazz organization on their forthcoming season, featuring several of the performers who featured in last year’s LUMEFEST.

“LUME is back with something new for 2017: LUME Lab. Making a space for artists to create new work, four evenings of brand new composition and improvised music will be accompanied by the LUME Lab project blog, letting the audience in on the creative process.

“LUME Lab marks a change of direction for us: we’re moving away from being a platform for guest artists, rolling up our sleeves and getting involved in creating new music with the community of musicians who have gathered around LUME over the past three-and-a-half years.

“LUME Lab gigs will take place at IKLECTIK, the South London arts space that played host to our inaugural festival last summer and the LUMEkestra’s debut in November. The series opens in February with a new incarnation of our quartet Word Of Moth, then we settle down for the ride and get ready to enjoy new music from three of the most exciting artists on the UK scene right now. We invite you to join us. Tickets are available for individual gigs, and for slightly less you can purchase a season ticket for all four, or a ticket to use at two dates of your choice. Buy tickets now from our Luminous Bandcamp page.”

Word Of Moth
IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, Waterloo, London, SE1 7LG, England
Wednesday 8th February 2017, 8.00pm – information

“Word Of Moth’s ‘spontaneous group explorations and tightly-scored, big-booted riffs’ were praised by Daniel Spicer in ‘The Wire’ magazine after their appearance at LUME Festival. The collaborative quartet explores the intersection of freedom and structure, with LUME founders Dee Byrne (alto sax) and Cath Roberts (baritone sax) joined by Seth Bennett on bass and Johnny Hunter on drums.”

Julie Kjær
IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, Waterloo, London, SE1 7LG, England
Thursday 16th March 2017, 8.00pm – information

“Saxophonist Julie Kjær is firmly established on the European stage. Her acclaimed trio with Steve Noble and John Edwards released its debut recording ‘Dobbeltgænger’ on the Clean Feed label in 2016, and she tours with Norwegian drummer Paal Nilssen-Love‘s Large Unit as well as being involved in many other projects in the UK and beyond.”

Craig Scott
IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, Waterloo, London, SE1 7LG, England
Wednesday 19th April 2017, 8.00pm – information

“Craig Scott’s music is ‘part human, part machine and revelling the glory and error of both.’ His studio project Craig Scott’s Lobotomy transforms recordings of improvisations by Craig and others using homemade equipment, re-constructing them with digital audio software. He is a member of formidable Leeds quintet Shatner’s Bassoon.”

Anton Hunter
IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, Waterloo, London, SE1 7LG, England
Wednesday 24th May 2017, 8.00pm – information

“Improvisation is at the core of Anton Hunter’s work. His Article XI project incorporates the personalities of eleven improvising musicians into the compositional process, exploring the relationship between composer and large ensemble. He leads his own trio with Seth Bennett and Johnny Hunter, and co-founded the long-running Manchester free improvisation night The Noise Upstairs.”

Tags: Anton Hunter, Craig Scott, guitar music, IKLECTIK Art Lab (promoters), Julie Kjær, Leeds (England), London (England), LUME (event), LUME Lab (event), Manchester (England), quartet music, saxophone music, Shatner's Bassoon, The Noise Upstairs (event), Word of Moth

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Categories 2017, acoustic music, DIY music, electro-acoustic music, experimental music, free jazz, improvisation, instrumental music, jazz, jazz fusion, jazz punk, New Music, post-bop, previews, punk jazz, skronk

November 2016 – upcoming London jazz gigs (28th) – Alexander Hawkins-Elaine Mitchener Quartet, Michael Janisch and The James Beckwith Trio at the Cockpit; Ping Machine Quartet at the Sitara

26 Nov

Two London jazz-hops for Monday…

* * * * * * * *

Cockpit Productions present:
Jazz In The Round: Alexander Hawkins/Elaine Mitchener Quartet + Michael Janisch + The James Beckwith Trio
The Cockpit Theatre, Gateforth Street, Lisson Grove, London, NW8 8EH, England
Monday 28th November 2016, 7.00pm – information

According to their own description, the Alexander Hawkins/Elaine Mitchener Quartet work with “repertoire (which)“fuses Mitchener’s unique way with both melody and abstraction, with Hawkins’ idiosyncratic compositional and pianistic world; as well as spotlighting re-imaginings of a small number of non-original songs which reveal the influence of precursors such as Jeanne Lee and Linda Sharrock.” The project’s still young enough not to have spawned either recordings or video clips, so you’ll have to imagine it from the existing pedigree of its players and movers.

Pianist and composer Alexander Hawkins (a onetime renegade lawyer and youthful church organist who evolved into a jazz keyboard explorer of rare brilliance) has already made marks as a noted collaborator with Louis Moholo, Shabaka Hutchings and plenty of others, plus previous leader/co-leader work with Convergence Quartet, Hammond organ funk-improv trio Decoy and his own de-/free-constructive Trio and Ensemble. He’s been hailed as an exceptional talent within his generation.

Vocalist Elaine Mitchener, though she’s been following a decidedly more outre path, is also exceptional: twisting and fusing (or placing in parallel) vocal approaches from jazz, gospel, sound poetry, free improvisations and contemporary classical, and where possible blending it with performance aspects of movement theatre. A collaborator with the likes of Phil Minton and Evan Parker (music), Deborah Warner (theatre) and Christian Marclay (both and neither), she’s as happy with pre-linguistic gabble and the esoteric libretti of David Toop operas as she is with a standard. At least as likely to be found performing in a gallery space as in a jazz club, she’s one of Britain’s most daring singers; balanced conceptually (though not necessarily tonally) between Lauren Newton, Abbey Lincoln, Dagmar Krause and the latterday Scott Walker (as well as the aforementioned avant-jazz vocal trailblazers Lee and Sharrock), but carving out a highly individual expressive space of her own. Below is just one example of what she does.

The quartet is completed by double bass player Neil Charles (from Alexander’s existing Trio) and by drummer Steve Davis, who appear to be considerably more than sidemen: “structurally, the group function as complete equals, veering radically from the traditional norm of ‘singer plus rhythm section’, instead treating this as only one possible dynamic amongst many.”

Reknowned émigré-American bass player Michael Janisch (once of TransAtlantic Collective, more recently a member of City of Poets, leader of Paradigm Shift and prime mover of both Whirlwind Recordings and the Whirlwind Festival) is playing a solo set as the middle act. Outside of master classes, this is an unusual scenario for Michael: he’s generally to be found at the hearts of ensembles, pushing them on with inspired work whether on double bass or electric bass guitar. There’s no details on which of these he’s using this time (it might be both).

As opener, pianist James Beckwith brings the trio of himself, rising jazz-pop drummer Harry Pope and bass guitarist Joe Downard (a protégé of the great Herbie Flowers, now one of London’s busiest cross-disciplinary bass players in jazz, blues, country, soul and hip hop). Together they present a London spin on “New York contemporary jazz harmonies, the piano trio lineage, Middle Eastern and Asian folk, to mould strong rhythmic tunes delivered with driving energy”, working from fragmented syncopation to tight funky knots.

* * * * * * * *

Some time ago, I was bemoaning the loss of Archway scratch-deli Forks & Corks (an up-and-coming London jazz venue) to buildings works and gentrification. While I’ve been grumbling, Archway local (and cheerily formidable double bass hero) Jonny Gee, who had some responsibility for the music there) has picked himself up undaunted, and moved proceedings a minute or so’s walk south to the Sitara restaurant. There he’s continued to build plans for an Archway jazz scene with an unfolding series of surprising blink-and-you’ll-miss-them meal-plus-music gigs, of which this is the latest.

Jonny Gee presents:
Ping Machine Quartet
The Sitara, 784 Holloway Road, Archway, London, N19 3JH, England
Monday 28th November 2016, 6.00pm – information

There’s not too much information on this one besides from the words “improv, bebop, jazz” tossed onto the poster like hasty clip-art, so (as with the Hawkins/Mitchener Quartet) you’ll just have to go by the reputations of the people in the band. Nothing to do with the similarly-named polystylistic French ensemble, they’re a more recent alliance of Jonny, Orphy Robinson and two other impressive London musicians.

Jonny’s sideman and MD work for King Salsa, Antonio Forcione, Ravi Shankar and Cleo Laine only scratches the surfaces of a thrillingly animated career on bass, which has stretched from jazz to Latin dance to baroque classical and back again in a ongoing arc of possibilities. Orphy, meanwhile, is a beloved veteran of the ‘90s British jazz boom. Once a Jazz Warrior, subsequently a Blue Note-signed vibraphonist, he’s now firmly fixed at jazz statesman status thanks to diverse work within education and curation as well as his host of ongoing projects as a player (including Nubian Vibes, Bruise, Codefive, Clear Frame and his Black Top duo with pianist Pat Thomas).

Regarding the remaining half of the quartet – drummer Andrea Trillo has played with both Herbie Hancock and Jerry Dammers, as well as with Dave O’Higgins, Jon Toussaint, Simon Purcell and Tim Richards. Long steeped in jazz and Latin music, Shanti Paul Jayasinha’s played trumpet for Brand New Heavies, Jason Yarde, Tim Garland and Buena Vista Social Club as well as leading his own ShantiJazzWorld ensemble. He also plays flugelhorn and, for this gig, might be toting the Slumpet (his custom valve/slide trumpet). In case he doesn’t, this is what it sounds like.

Tags: Alexander Hawkins, Andrea Trillo, Elaine Mitchener, Harry Pope, Joe Downard, Jonny Gee, Michael Janisch, Neil Charles, Orphy Robinson, Ping Machine Quartet, quartet music, Shanti Jayasinha, Steve Davis (jazz drummer), The Cockpit Theatre (venue) - Lisson Grove - London, The Sitara (venue) - Archway - London - England, trio music

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Categories acoustic music, bebop, cross-cultural music, free jazz, improvisation, instrumental music, jazz, Latin dance, post-bop, previews, South American music

November 2016 – upcoming London jazz gigs – FuMar at Map Studio Café (17th); Laura Jurd’s Dinosaur + Daniel Herskedal Trio meet the BBC Concert Orchestra at the RFH (19th)

15 Nov

Two more London jazz gigs, from two very different generations of musician, in two very different venues…

* * * * * * * *

FuMar
MAP Studio Café, 46 Grafton Road, Kentish Town, London, NW5 3DU, England
Thursday 17th November 2016, 8.00pm– information

“FuMar is a saxophone and piano duo based in Paris. Phil Furneaux and Krys Markowski have been friends for over forty years (meeting on their first day at Manchester University) and started playing together in 2010, using Skype and Ohmstudio for remote collaborations. After performing their first concerts in 2012, the duo released their debut album ‘Lanercost Sessions’ in 2015, followed by a tour of France. The FuMar repertoire is rooted in jazz (and, more recently, classical) but stays bluesy, funky and mellow with a constant dialogue between piano and sax. The band has the philosophy that “music is a transmission of emotion” and attempts to develop pieces that journey between melancholic and happy, comforting and unexpected, allowing the audience to experience a range of emotions during their concerts.

“FuMar’s second album, ‘The Lanercost Sessions 2’ (recorded, like its predecessor, in the fourteenth-century Priory at Lanercost in Cumbria) was released a few months ago, back in September. FuMar use this venue due to its acoustic qualities, which make the notes played “hang in the air.” Moving on from the first all-covers set of the first ‘Lanercost Sessions’, this album is a mixture of FuMar’s own compositions and some interpretations of emotive classical tunes – Satie’s ‘Gymnopédie No 1’, Gabriel Fauré’s ‘Après un rêve’ – and a couple of Latin-American Cuban classics (Antonio Jobim’s Bach Meets Bossa and Mongo Santamaría’s Afro Blue). It also features the duo’s own free adaptation of Beethoven’s final string quartet (Op. 131), based on a study and extrapolation of the first eight bars extended into floating chordal improvisations.”

* * * * * * * *

As I type this up, guitarist Alex Roth’s London gig at IKLECTIK (with his Future Currents avant-guitar trio) is taking place. His bandmate in Blue Eyed Hawk, trumpeter-composer Laura Jurd – herself in the middle of a tour with her electric quartet Dinosaur – plays a date at the end of the week. As with the Future Currents gig, it’s part of the ten-day EFG London Jazz Festival, but this particular gig – at the Royal Festival Hall – is on a much larger scale (certainly ensemble-wise)…

EFG London Jazz Festival presents:
BBC Concert Orchestra/Keith Lockhart + Laura Jurd + Daniel Herskedal Trio
Royal Festival Hall @ Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, Waterloo, London, SE1 8XX, England
Saturday 19th November 2016, 4.30pm – information here, here and here

“Formerly known as the Laura Jurd Quartet, a new band awakens from the jaws of extinction. They are Dinosaur and they join the BBC Concert Orchestra tonight to give you an evening of fiery sonic experimentation and abstraction.

Dinosaur, 2016
“Trumpeter, composer, bandleader and BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist Laura Jurd has a passion for “making things up” and today’s concert opens with her new “Work for orchestra & Dinosaur”, combining influences from both classical and jazz music.

“We also hear a new work by Norwegian Tuba player Daniel Herskedal who defies the conventions of his instrument. He pushes the boundaries both technically and sonically, creating spellbinding and mesmerising sounds. He’ll be performing with his trio (also featuring pianist Eyolf Dale and percussionist Gard Nilsen)

“Keith Lockhart conducts.”

Here’s footage of both acts, minus the orchestra…

Tags: Alex Roth, Blue-Eyed Hawk, Daniel Herskedal, Dinosaur, duo music, FuMar, Future Currents, Krys Markowski, Laura Jurd, London (England), MAP Studio Cafe (promoters), percussion music, Phil Furneaux, quartet music, saxophone music, trio music, trumpet music, tuba music

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Categories 2016, acoustic music, chamber jazz, classical fusion, cover versions, festivals, improvisation, instrumental music, jazz, orchestral jazz, orchestral music, previews

November 2016 – upcoming London classical gigs – Shadwell Opera’s Schoenberg and Turnage one-woman psychodramas (4th, 5th); more contrabass flute from Carla Rees at IKLECTIK (5th); Conway Hall’s London Festival of Bulgarian Culture chamber concerts (6th, 13th)

3 Nov

A quick sprint, and some quicker comments, through some imminent (and not-quite-so-imminent) classical performances about to take place in the Smoke. (One day I’ll get all of this stuff up well in advance. One day…)

* * * * * * * *

Shadwell Opera presents:
‘Erwartung/Twice Through The Heart’
Hackney Showroom, Hackney Downs Studios, Amhurst Terrace, Hackney, London, E8 2BT, England
Friday 4th & Saturday 5th November 2016, 7.30pm – information here

“A disused mine. You mime.

“The same sentence. The sound gets stuck.

“Life. Life.

“Shadwell Opera present a dazzling double-bill of one woman psychodramas: ‘Erwartung’ by Arnold Schoenberg and ‘Twice Through The Heart’ by Mark-Anthony Turnage. Separated in the writing by ninety years, these two monodramas (both to words by female librettists, Marie Pappenheim and Jackie Kay) break apart and reconstitute the mind of an isolated woman in extraordinary stream-of-consciousness narrations.

“Directed by Shadwell Opera’s artistic director Jack Furness and associate director Celine Lowenthal, and conducted by musical director Finnegan Downie Dear, this programme will feature the role debuts of the exciting operatic talents Madeleine Pierard and Kate Howden.”

Here’s a little more information, courtesy of the ‘Planet Hugill‘ classical music blog (which tipped me off to the fact that these were being performed).

“Schoenberg’s ‘Erwartung’ was written in 1909 with a libretto by Marie Pappenheim, but had to wait until 1924 to receive its first performance when Alexander Zemlinsky conducted it in Prague. Schoenberg said of the work ‘In ‘Erwartung’ the aim is to represent in slow motion everything that occurs during a single second of maximum spiritual excitement, stretching it out to half an hour.’

“Mark-Anthony Turnage’s ‘Twice Through The Heart’ was written between 1994 and 1996, and revised subsequently and received its first performance in 1997. The libretto, by Jackie Kay, is based on a 1992 poetry documentary which she had written for the BBC.”

* * * * * * * *

rarescale presents:
‘Contraventions – new music for contrabass flute’ with Carla Rees
IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, Waterloo, London, SE1 7LG, England
Saturday 5 November 2016 (workshop 4.00pm-7.00pm; concert 8.00pm) – information

“UK-based low flutes player Carla Rees tours a concert of new music for contrabass flute and electronics. The contrabass flute is a rare instrument, most usually found in flute choirs, but in this programme it takes on a new solo persona. It is both impressive in sound and size, and complimented by electronics this concert will be a sonic delight of rarely heard music. The concert will feature premiere performances of several new pieces, including music by Matthew Whiteside, Piers Tattersall, Benjamin Tassie and Michael Oliva.

“Carla is the artistic director of rarescale (an ensemble which exists to promote chamber music repertoire for low flutes), and director of low flutes publishing company Tetractys. She has been working closely with Michael and Matthew along with other composers who are writing new works for the tour.

“From 4.00pm to 7.00pm there will be a workshop for composers to explore writing for the contrabass flute. Composers are invited to bring sketches or new works to try out (scores can also be submitted to Carla in advance), and all their questions about the instrument will be answered during the afternoon. The entry fee for the workshop includes entry to the concert.”

* * * * * * * *

As part of the fourth London Festival of Bulgarian Culture, the organisers of the Ethical Society and Sunday Concerts at Conway Hall are putting on three chamber music concerts, which they’re calling “a musical journey along the Danube: through Bulgaria and beyond.” Each of these will feature at least one Bulgarian work (alongside other items from the classical repertoire which have at least a glancing connection with the country or the river) and be performed primarily by British-based Bulgarian musicians plus compatriots from abroad and sympathetic colleagues from Britain and elsewhere.

To be honest, if you took the players out of the equation, the Bulgarian connection would be tenuous. Leaving aside the fact that the universality of the Haydn, Schubert, Brahms and Mozart pieces chosen for the programme has almost rendered them a common world possession, the inclusion of works by the Hungarian Dohnányi, the Czechoslovakian Drdla and the intensely Czech Dvořák and Smetana means that the concerts fade into an amorphous Danubian appreciation of late classical and romantic string music, perhaps with some of its attention towards eastern Europe, but with its centre still fixed on Vienna or Prague rather than Sofia. Only two actual Bulgarian composers are having their works performed – lynchpin twentieth-century classicist/folk integrator Pancho Vladigerov (whose conscientious approach and assured pedagogy made him the mentor to most post-war Bulgarian composers) and contemporary British-Bulgarian composer Dobrinka Tabakova (whose 2002 trio ‘Insight’ is being played during the first concert). In other respects, representation of the home side is pretty slim. No Emanuil Manolov, no Alexandra Fol, no Georgi Atanasov or Albena Petrovic-Vratchanska.

Admittedly, these choices are partly down to the instrumentation and tone chosen for the concert – piano and string pieces from duo to quintet; accessible classical-melodicism; the warmer, more positive folk-culture-inspired end of small-state nationalism. Quibbles aside, it’s a good opportunity to hear the Vladigerov pieces (beloved Bulgarian staples which don’t tend to travel much outside the country) and the diverse pedigree of the players contributing to this collective and cooperative effort is encouraging and heartening, as well as impressive. Should be a good set of shows.

London Festival of Bulgarian Culture: Concert 1
Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, Bloomsbury, London, WC1R 4RL, London
Sunday 6th November 2016, 5:30 pm – information here and here

Programme:

Pre-concert talk by pianist and music commentator Michael Round (at 5.30pm in the Brockway Room)
Franz Joseph Haydn – Piano Trio in G Hob.XV:25 ‘Gypsy’
František Drdla – Souvenir & Serenade in A major
Dobrinka Tabakova – Insight (for string trio)
Fritz Kreisler – La Gitana & Schön Rosmarin (for violin and piano)
Franz Schubert – Quintet in A D667 ‘Trout’ (for string quartet and piano)

Performers:

Julita Fasseva, 2016

Evgeniy Chevkenov (violin – Professor at Richard Wagner Conservatoire, Vienna)
Devorina Gamalova (viola – Professor at Birmingham Conservatoire)
Alexander Somov (cello – Principal cellist at Strasbourg Philharmonic)
Simon Callaghan (piano – Artistic director of Conway Hall Sunday Concerts)
Julita Fasseva (double bass – member of Royal Flemish Philharmonic)

London Festival of Bulgarian Culture: Concert 2
Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, Bloomsbury, London, WC1R 4RL, London
Sunday 13th November 2016, 6:30 pm – information here and here

Programme:

Ernö Dohnányi – Serenade for string trio Op.10
Bedřich Smetana – Macbeth and the Witches (for solo piano)
Pancho Vladigerov – Bulgarian Rhapsody ‘Vardar’ Op.16
Johannes Brahms – Piano Quintet in F minor Op.34

Performers:

Ashley Wass, 2016 (photo © Patrick Allen)

Pavel Minev (violin- Soloist of Moscow State Philharmonic)
Ivo Stankov (violin – Artistic director of LFBC)
Alexander Zemtsov (viola – Professor at Guildhall School of Music)
Guy Johnston (cello – Winner of ‘BBC Musician of the year’ competition),
Ashley Wass (piano – Laureate at Leeds International Piano Competition)

London Festival of Bulgarian Culture: Concert 3
Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, Bloomsbury, London, WC1R 4RL, London
Sunday 20th November 2016, 6:30 pm – information here and here

Programme:

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Sonata for Violin and Piano in B flat K454
Pancho Vladigerov – Piano Trio Op.4
Antonín Dvořák – Piano Quintet in A Op.81

Performers:

Ludmil Angelov, 2016

Dimitar Burov (violin, Head of Strings at Harrow School, programme supervisor)
Yana Burov (violin, Leader of ‘Inspirity’ String Quartet)
Michael Gieler (viola, Principal at Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra),
Gerard Le Feuvre (cello, Director of Kings Chamber Orchestra)
Ludmil Angelov (piano, Laureate of International Chopin Piano Competition)

Tags: Alexander Somov, Alexander Zemtsov, Antonín Dvořàk, Arnold Schoenberg, Ashley Wass, Bedřich Smetana, Benjamin Tassie, Carla Rees, Celine Lowenthal, contrabass flute music, Conway Hall (promoter/venue), Devorina Gamalova, Dimitar Burov, Dobrinka Tabakova, duo music, Ernö Dohnányi, Evgeniy Chevkenov, Finnegan Downie Dear, František Drdla, Franz Joseph Haydn, Franz Schubert, Fritz Kreisler, Gerard Le Feuvre, Guy Johnston, Hackney Showroom (promoter/venue), IKLECTIK Art Lab (promoters), Ivo Stankov, Jack Furness, Jackie Kay, Johannes Brahms, Julita Fasseva, Kate Howden, Ludmil Angelov, Madeleine Pierard, Marie Pappenheim, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Matthew Whiteside, Michael Gieler, Michael Oliva, Michael Round, music from Bulgaria, Pancho Vladigerov, Pavel Minev, Piers Tattersall, premieres, quartet music, quintet music, rarescale, Shadwell Opera, Simon Callaghan, trio music, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Yana Burov

October 2016 – upcoming London gigs – Vlad Miller’s Notes From Underground at MAP Café (6th); Honeyfeet and Dila V & The Odd Beats at Magic Garden (8th)

4 Oct

A quick note on two London gigs this week, taking place at a couple of London’s more lively out-of-the-way venues in Kentish Town and Battersea, but rooted much further eastward. (No. Not Upminster.)

* * * * * * * *

Vlad Miller- Notes From Underground
MAP Studio Café, 46 Grafton Road, Kentish Town, London, NW5 3DU, England
Thursday 6th October 2016, 8.00pm – information

Jazz quartet Notes From Underground are led by pianist and composer Vlad Miller, London-based musical director of the Moscow Composers Orchestra (providing a meeting point for creative Russian jazz musicians for around two decades now) as well as a key part of London world music ensemble Ancestral Collective. Vlad’s compositions form the foundations of the band – strongly influenced by Russian musical tradition, and steeped in a parallel tradition of narrative. While wordless, each piece draws on fable, history or cryptic jokes to tell a story embellished by colourful collective improvisations. Subject matter has included the Cold War, Diaghelev and The Ballet Russe, the farce and gallows-humour fraughtness of the fraught relationship between artists and the Kremlin, the lives of insects and the travails of a cruise ship in peril in the White Sea.

The band also features Indian-inflected contrabass guitarist Leslee Booth (Branco Stoysin Trio), drummer Dave Rohoman (onetime drummer for Ian Dury in Kilburn & The High Roads, subsequently an explorer on the London improvising scene) and saxophonist-of-a-hundred bands Adrian Northover (currently working with Jazz-Thali, The Custodians, The London Improvisers Orchestra, Trip-Tik, The Remote Viewers, the Thelonious Monk-interpreting Hard Evidence trio and many more).

* * * * * * * *

Honeyfeet + Dila V & The Odd Beats + DJ Pony + DJ Joplin Parnell
The Magic Garden, 231 Battersea Park Road, Battersea, London, SW11 4LG, England
Saturday 8th October, 8.00pm – free event (before 8.00pm; door fee after that) – information

Down at the Magic Garden, ill-kept Mancunian folk/R&B secret Honeyfeet are playing a free gig (well, free if you arrive early enough). Mixing “ethio-trad, barrel-house pop, cowpunk and folk-hop” (I think that only one of those is a typo) and fronted by imposing power-coquette Ríoghnach Connolly, they’ve been storming their way around festivals for nearly ten years now, sharing and showcasing their mixture of jollity, oomph, raunch and macabreness with songs about “eating people, dancing on graves and infidelity… but it’s not all bad news.”

It takes quite a band not to be intimidated by the smouldering verve and dark wit of Honeyfeet when on the same bill, but Dila V & The Oddbeats will certainly carry off their support slot with a dynamic vigour of their own. Another band with an earthy and captivating frontwoman – Dila Vardar – they work Mediterranean and Eurasian folk from Turkey, Spain, Greece, Roma culture and the Baltic states (including vigorous dashes of rebetiko and bolero) through flangers and wah-wah. The result’s a sinous turbo-driven take on psychedelic folk, taking it away from its usual Anglo-Afro-Celtic circles and sending it roaring around several thousand years of cultural meeting points from the middle of the world.

DJ sets from Joplin Parnell and the mysterious Pony intersperse and round off the evening… and that’s all for now. Should be enough to satisfy.

Tags: Adrian Northover, almost acoustic, Ancestral Collective (world-jazz band), Dave Rohoman (David Newton-Rohoman), Dila V & The Odd Beats, DJ Joplin Parnell, DJ Pony, Honeyfeet, Leslee Booth, MAP Studio Cafe (promoters), Moscow Composers Orchestra, Notes From Underground (jazz band), quartet music, The Magic Garden (promoter/venue), Vlad Miller (Vladimir Miller)

July 2016 – upcoming London gigs – Ant Law, Cassie Kinoshi and Zoe Rahman play Jazz in the Round (25th); Countermeasure’s spectacular a capella (31st); a two-day run for Pasek & Paul’s ‘Edges’ song cycle (30th & 31st)

21 Jul

Popping up at the end of the month…

Cockpit Productions present:
Jazz In The Round: Ant Law Trio + Cassie Kinoshi’s Seed + Zoe Rahman
The Cockpit Theatre, Gateforth Street, Lisson Grove, London, NW8 8EH, England
Monday 25th July 2016, 7.00pm – information

I’ve just caught up with The Cockpit Theatre’s regular monthly jazz extravaganza (which is pretty good going on my part, since it’s only been happening for four-and-a-half years already…) This month, the 2016 summer season concludes with a triple bill of London jazz acts, plus the usual warm-up DJ set from Jazz FM’s Jez Nelson and Chris Philips (‘Somethin’ Else’, ‘The Blueprint’, ‘Chris’ Starpoint Radio’). As ever, the audience is positioned around the band in a thrust-stage setting, allowing a different sonic perspective and sense of involvement.

A member of Tim Garland’s all-star Lighthouse quartet, guitarist Ant Law uses bop jazz, folk-rock and Carnatic music as part of his musical palette (which also includes modern jazz, heavy metal and M-Base-inspired rhythmatism). A onetime Edinburgh University physics graduate and Berklee College alumni, he also works with Paul Riley and Trio HLK (with Richards Kass and Harold), with “proggish” fusion quartet Project DSB, plays as a regular sideman with Camille O’Sullivan and leads his own quintet. On this occasion, he’s performing with his trio – completed by drummer Asaf Sirkis and bass player Matt Ridley – delivering fluid rapid compositions in a constant state of teasing upheaval.

Led by alto saxophonist and Tomorrow’s Warrior Cassie Kinoshi, Seed are a ten-piece band combining jazz with inner-city London, West African and Caribbean influenced grooves. The stellar line-up of some of London’s most up-and-coming young jazz musicians also features Miguel Gorodi and Sheila Maurice-Grey (trumpets), Joe Bristow (trombone), Theon Cross (tuba), Chelsea Carmichael (tenor sax), Joe Armon-Jones (piano), Oscar Laurence (guitar), Rio Kai (bass) and Patrick Boyle (drums). An alumnus of all-female TW band Nérija, Cassie is a diverse, inquisitive composer whose own music takes inspirations from jazz and black cultural history but also delves into lighthearted chiptunes, classical chamber music inspired by subjects as diverse as Chaucer and Tetris, and sombre electronic soundscapes.

British/Bengali pianist and composer Zoe Rahman creates music formed by her mixed heritage, her initial training as a classical musician, and her very broad musical taste, with her love for contemporary jazz as the binding agent. On this occasion, she’ll be playing solo.

* * * * * * * *

Countermeasure: 14 Characters A Cappella
The Forge, 3-7 Delancey Street, Camden Town, London, NW1 7NL, England
Sunday 31st July 2016, 2.00pm – information

Fourteen-piece Canadian vocal troupe Countermeasure make a visit to London at the month’s end, as part of their European tour. I could mine the press release for details on the prizes they’ve won and the other groups they’ve collaborated with; but the truth is that, when talking about vocal groups, somehow that mass of information always seems to mean less. Maybe one’s just impatient to be seduced by the voices… so here they are, delivering a multilayered take on Cole Porter’s I Got You Under My Skin; working in tricks and tips from close-harmony, contemporary R&B, jazz vocalese and broken beats.

* * * * * * * *

Back at the Cockpit, there’s a production of Pasek & Paul’s ‘Edges’. …

CC Productions present:
‘Edges: A Song Cycle Following Coming-Of-Age Questions’
The Cockpit Theatre, Gateforth Street, Lisson Grove, London, NW8 8EH, England
Saturday 30th July 2016, 7.30pm
Sunday 31st July 2016, 5.00pm
– information

Part theatre musical and part song cycle, ‘Edges’ was originally written by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul while they were still students at the University of Michigan, many years before they were conquering Broadway with ‘Dogfight’, ‘James and the Giant Peach’ and ‘A Christmas Story’ and being hailed as the heirs to Rodgers and Hammerstein. The piece has been described as “a witty and honest look at the choices we make and what happens when we are on the edge of our lives. Covering such issues as love, commitment, identity and meaning, ‘Edges’ follows four adults escaping expectations and their complicated relationships.”

This production of the show features musical actors Adam Bailey, Peter Cumins, Laura Mansell and Catherine Mort. Here’s a clip featuring a montage of songs and moments from a previous production at the Capital Repertory Theatre in Albany, New York State.

Tags: Adam Bailey, Albany (New York State - USA), Ant Law, Asaf Sirkis, Benj Pasek & Justin Paul, Cassie Kinoshi, Cassie Kinoshi’s Seed, Chelsea Carmichael, Countermeasure, Joe Armon-Jones, Joe Bristow, Laura Mansell, London (England), Matt Ridley, Miguel Gorodi, Nérija, Oscar Laurence, Patrick Boyle, Peter Cumins, quartet music, quintet music, Rio Kai, Sarah Marchand, Sheila Maurice-Grey, tentet music, Theon Cross, Tomorrow's Warriors, trio music, Zoe Rahman

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Categories 2016, 21st century classical music, a capella, acoustic music, classical (Western art music), cross-cultural music, DJ sets, improvisation, instrumental music, jazz, performance art, post-bop, previews, show tunes, song cycles, theatre music, vocal music

July 2016 – upcoming London experimental gigs – Horse Improvised Music Club improvisations from small groups including Adam Bohman Text Quartet (5th); Hominid Sounds electronic night with Mark Dicker, Guncleaner, Johnny Broke and others (7th)

2 Jul

A couple of London experimental gigs for the coming week, briefly explored:

* * * * * * * *

The Horse Improvised Music Club presents:
Noel Taylor/Asaf Fleischmann/Ulf Mengersten + Adam Bohman Text Quartet + Antonio Cunzo/Joe Wright/David Stockard/Tony Hardie-Bick
IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, Waterloo, London, SE1 7LG, England
Tuesday 5th July 2016, 8.00 pm – information

Three small-group performances from the South Bank London improvisers’ hub; following, in part, their tradition of putting well-known improvisers together with lesser-known ones.

The opening act is a scratch quartet of rising Aberdonian jazz saxophonist Joe Wright and Carrickfergus-based percussionist David Stockard with pianist Antonio Cunzo and Chapman Stick player Tony Hardie-Bick. (While it always gives me a lift to see a Stick pop up anywhere in music, since I’ve always loved its clipped-but-singing polyphonic tones, Tony also seems to have the most interesting backstory within the quartet. From being Sham 69’s keyboard player during the late ‘80s, he’s moved from backing up other people’s punk polemics to spending most of his time as a software instrument developer, coaxing new levels of performance interaction out of touchscreens and wearable tech. As a performer, he’s been known to drag his protesting Stick flex-first across gallery floors, an art-punk flourish which I guess is a change from the cloud of warm jazzy reverence which usually surrounds the instrument.)

Veteran London acoustic-noise’n’objects performer Adam Bohman takes the middle slot with his Adam Bohman Text Quartet, completed by Adrian Northover, Sue Lynch and Hutch Demouilpied. While Adrian and Sue are usually saxophonists (working together in David Petts’ Remote Viewers and Hogcallin’) and Hutch is a trumpeter and sound designer, it looks as if everyone’s working with voice this time.

There’s not much information on this other than that it’s a text piece, but some guidelines might come from Adam’s work on “talking tapes” during the late ‘70s and early ‘80s – lo-fi audio collages which ranged from spontaneous dictaphone observations (Adam discovering and illustrating the ordinary and mundane anew, in slurred Dada-esque tones) to ludicrous cartoon vocal pieces. The ‘Music and Words’ collation of these odds-and-sodes was described as “a laugh-out-loud avant garde album” and later releases were even funnier, pushing into prank-and-sketch territories like a splicing of Bob Cobbing with a one-man Pete’n’Dud. Have a listen to When A Man (in which a trio of growling Adams parody both bozo masculinity and thunder-throat action-film trailers, like a squad of querulous Daleks bloated on bright orange corn snacks), or White Sauce Without For Those Who Don’t (Adam’s cutup account of a single Christmas, chopped across with assorted literary, musical and familial distractions).

It is, of course, thirty years on from all of this, so you might get something far more sombre. Since the Quartet are performing something called “the Robin’s Nest Revisited Vocal Quartet”, I wouldn’t bet on it..

The last act of the evening are a trio connected to large-scale improvising institutions in two European capitals. Longstanding improv clarinettist Noel Taylor (Splatter, London Improvisers Orchestra, plenty more) will be playing with Ulf Mengersten (a double bass mainstay of Berlin Improvisers Orchestra) and pianist Asaf Fleischmann.

* * * * * * * *

Hominid Sounds presents:
Mark Dicker + Guncleaner + Johnny Broke + tbc
New River Studios, Ground Floor Unit E, 199 Eade Road, Manor House, London, N4 1DN, England
Thursday 7th July 2016, 8:00 pm – information here and here

To celebrate the release of Mark Dicker‘s new tape ‘Frog Eggs’, London experimental label Hominid Sounds are putting on “a night of clangs and bangs.” There’s a gradually expanding bill for this, featuring various electronic noisemakers and beat-glowerers from the more unruly edge of London electronica. Mark himself (the man “responsible for the noise behind (the recently deceased) Palehorse“ is headlining, bringing “supersonic modular-synth slow jams” (for a little more on Mark and how he thinks, there’s a ‘Quietus’ interview here). So far, he’s being supported by “clanging, banging techno noise project” Guncleaner (featuring two members of secretive, elusive London heavy math-rockers Nitkowski) and by “improvised, analogue-synth acid techno” act Johnny Broke (initially a solo project by Shitwife‘s Wayne Adams, which now seems to have expanded and welcomed one half of north London noiseniks Death Pedals). More performers to be confirmed…

I’ve not got much information or workable noises for this concert. For starters, I only bounce around on the outside of this particular musical scene (like a stray static spit in the mix); It also seems clear that it’s a lineup of sound-artists in deliberate flux and change, demonstrating very different faces to their usual output; and even by noise music’s usual enclosed standards, information on this show seems to be insiders-only. So you’ll need to just attend and take a chance on what it might be like.

I did succeed, however, in pulling up a little recent Johnny Broke-ism and a Dicker track from early last year, so here they are:

Tags: Adam Bohman, Adam Bohman Text Quartet, Adrian Northover, Antonio Cunzo, Asaf Fleischmann, Berlin Improvisers Orchestra, Big Lad (Shitwife), David Stockard, Death Pedals, duo music, Guncleaner, Hominid Sounds (record label), Hutch Demouilpied, Joe Wright, John Potter, Johnny Broke, London Improvisers Orchestra, Mark Dicker, music for electronics, New River Studios (promoter/venue), Noel Taylor, Palehorse, percussion music, quartet music, saxophone music, Sue Lynch, Tony Hardie-Bick, trio music, Ulf Mengersten, Wayne Adams

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…

* * * * * * * *

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 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
“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.'”

* * * * * * * *

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

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 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:

Tags: Adam Fairhall, Andre Canniere, Andrew Lisle, Ant Traditions, Article XI, Birmingham (England), Blueblut, Cath Roberts, Chris Janka, Chris Mapp, Conor Chaplin, Craig Scott, Craig Scott's Lobotomy, Dave Birchall, David Austin Grey, Dee Byrne, duo music, Dylan Jones (trumpeter), Entropi, EZRA Collective, Hannah Marshall, Hot Beef Three, Ikestra, IKLECTIK Art Lab (promoters), Jeff Williams, Julie Kjær, Led Bib, Leeds (England), listening to women, London (England), LUME (event), Manchester (England), MAP Studio Cafe (promoters), Mark Holub, Matt Fisher, Mike Chillingworth, Mike Chillingworth Trio, Miles Davis, Musson/Kjær/Marshall, Olie Brice, Oliver Dover, Pamela Stickney, Patrick Boyle, quartet music, quintet music, Rachael Cohen, Rachel Musson, Rebecca Nash, Rio Kai, Seth Bennett, Shatner's Bassoon, theremin music, Tom Greenhalgh, Tommy Remon, Tomorrow', Tomorrow's Warriors, toy piano music, trio music, Tymek Joswiak, unusual instruments, Vienna (Austria), women of heart and mind, Word of Moth

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Categories 2016, acoustic music, bebop, electronic, electronica, experimental music, free jazz, improvisation, instrumental music, jazz, jazz fusion, jazz punk, jazz rock, modal jazz, post-bop, previews, space-jazz

June 2016 – upcoming gigs – new British classical premieres – Keith Burstein’s cello sonata in London (with added Dvořàk and Schubert); and chamber works by Luke Bedford, Zoë Martlew, Richard Baker, John Woolrich in Birmingham (plus Judith Weir and Howard Skempton revivals)

28 May

Here’s a preview of the debuts of some new current-classical British pieces, all surfacing in June.

In the middle of the month, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group will be presenting the most recent fruits of their crowdfunded Sound Investment scheme (aimed to encourage enthusiasts to “get closer to the creation of new music… and support some of the world’s leading living composers,” – if you’re interested in joining in, check out the investment page here). Previously – at the start of the month – outlier composer and onetime new-classical rebel Keith Burstein will present his new cello concerto in one of London’s excellent but out-of-the-way music churches (situated as it is up near the Hoover Building, on the city’s north-west escape route and one which, as it happens, points the way to Birmingham).

* * * * * * * *

Music at St Mary’s Perivale presents:
The Lipatti Piano Quartet + Corinne Morris/Keith Burstein/Viv McLean
St Mary’s Perivale, Perivale Lane, Perivale, London, UB6 8SS, England
Wednesday 1st June 2016, 7.30 pm – free event (with retiring collection) – more information

Programme:

Keith Burstein : ‘Wiosna’ (sonata for cello & piano) (world premiere)
Franz Schubert : Sonata in A minor D821 ‘Arpeggione’ (for cello & piano)
Franz Schubert – Adagio and Rondo Concertante D487 (for piano, violin, viola & cello)
Antonín Dvořàk – Piano Quartet in E flat Op. 87 (for piano, violin, viola & cello)

Performers:

The Lipatti Piano Quartet
Corinne Morris (cello)
Keith Burstein (piano)
Viv McLean (piano)

During his 1990s emergence as a composer, Keith Burstein warred publically, bitterly and theatrically with a stern post-serial/post-Boulez British classical music establishment over his own fervent, frequently-politicized championing of “the rehabilitation of melody to the heart of music, and of tonal harmony, which enables the expressive power of dissonance.“ At the time, he was sidelined and ostracised. Now, with a multitude of British composers happily handling melodic expressiveness in parallel with modernist complexities, those battles seem to belong to a harsher, more rigid era: one concerned more with conflicts of manners, of theory and of hierarchy than with actual musicality. Perhaps in consequence, the image of Burstein-the-heretic may gradually be giving way to that of Burstein-the-unfortunate-herald, but in the meantime Keith has continued to work his own continuing tonalist seam (regardless of scorn or praise) through oratorios and political/metaphysical opera, choral and chamber pieces, and song cycles.

Corinne Morris, 2013 (photographer unknown)

In recent years Keith has applied his limpid, deceptively intricate compositional approach to works and situations relating to his own Eastern European and Baltic Jewish heritage (an Ashkenazy-approved symphony premiered by the Kaunas City Symphony; a string trio inspired by a Lithuanian odyssey). His latest work, the cello sonata ‘Wiosna’ , is named for the Polish word for “spring” – which he finds “much more beautiful than our stark monosyllable” – and its three movements are named after the three months of that season, Marzac (March), Kwiecien (April) and Maj (May). ‘Wiosna’ was written for Corinne Morris (the ex-Opera National de Paris cellist turned acclaimed soloist, who’s currently following up her 2013 debut album ‘Macedonian Sessions’ with a new one with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, due in 2017). She’ll be performing the piece with Keith himself as piano accompanist.

Filling out the bill will be three familiar Romantic staples. Schubert’s ‘Arpeggione’ Sonata (originally written for a pairing of piano and the bowed, long-since fallen-from-favour arpeggione guitar) will be performed in its more usual cello-and-piano arrangement, with Corrine Morris accompanied this time by award-winning young pianist and frequent St Mary’s performer Viv McLean. The Lipatti Piano Quartet – Gamal Khamis (piano), Amy Tress (violin), Felicity Matthews (viola) and Auriol Evans (cello) – will be completing the evening, performing two further key Romantic chamber works: Schubert’s ‘Adagio and Rondo Concertante’ and Dvořàk’s ‘Piano Quartet in E flat’.

* * * * * * * *

CBSO presents:
Birmingham Contemporary Music Group: ‘Remembering the Future’
CBSO Centre, Berkley Street, Birmingham, B1 2LF, England
Sunday 12th June 2016, 7.30pm – more information

Programme:

Judith Weir: Blue-Green Hill
Luke Bedford: In Black Bright Ink (world premiere)
Richard Baker: new work (world premiere)
Howard Skempton: Field Notes
John Woolrich: Swan Song (world premiere)
Zoë Martlew: Broad St. Burlesque (world premiere)

For this one, I’ll just quote BCMG’s press release, as follows:

“Birmingham Contemporary Music Group has increasingly explored the contemporary chamber repertoire in recent seasons, and we extend that journey with no less than four new works from composers with strong BCMG connections. It was our Artist-in-Association John Woolrich who originally encouraged BCMG to commission smaller-scale pieces, and as a composer of such deft chamber works as In the Mirrors of Asleep, which we have performed many times, asking John to write one of these was an obvious choice (BCMG’s, not his!).

“Zoë Martlew is primarily known as a performer, playing cello with BCMG on a number of occasions. She is also a talented emerging composer, and this seems the ideal time for her first BCMG commission. Luke Bedford returned to the UK last year from a period in Berlin – an experience that has influenced his music in subtly interesting ways. Richard Baker’s output includes a string of miniature works, finely crafted and always a delight for the ear. His new commission will be a more extended chamber piece featuring oboist/fellow composer Melinda Maxwell.

“Completing the programme are Judith Weir’s ‘Blue-Green Hill’ (an elaboration of a folk-inspired miniature first written for BCMG’s tour of India in 2002), and a revival of Howard Skempton’s ‘Field Notes’ (a hit of our 2014/15 season).

“There will be a free pre-concert talk open to all ticket holders from 6.30-7pm with Stephen Newbould (Artistic Director of BCMG), Richard Baker, Zoë Martlew, Luke Bedford and John Woolrich.“

Tags: Amy Tress, Antonín Dvořàk, arpeggione, Auriol Evans, Birmingham (England), Birmingham Contemporary Music Group (BCMG), cello music, chamber music, Corinne Morris, ensemble music, Felicity Matthews, Franz Schubert, Gamal Khamis, Howard Skempton, John Woolrich, Judith Weir, Keith Burstein, London (England), Luke Bedford, Melinda Maxwell, Music at St Mary's Perivale (event), oboe music, orchestral music, piano music, quartet music, Richard Baker, Stephen Newbould, The Lipatti Piano Quartet, trio music, unusual instruments, Viv McLean, Zoë Martlew

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Categories 2016, 21st century classical music, acoustic music, classical (Western art music), Classical music, crowdfunding campaigns, instrumental music, New Music, orchestral music, previews, Romantic music

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…

* * * * * * * *

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.

* * * * * * * *

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:

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

“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.

Tags: Andy Woolf, Ant Traditions, Anton Hunter, Article XI, Birmingham (England), Blueblut, Bright Moments Trio, Cath Roberts, Chris Williams, Clube de Choro, Dave Fowler, Doedelzak, Francois Moreau, Gong, Graham Clark, Hannah Marshall, Hot Beef Three, IKLECTIK Art Lab (promoters), Jonathan Cohen, Julie Kjær, Leeds (England), Let Spin, Little Church, London (England), LUME (event), Madwort Saxophone Quartet, Manchester (England), Metamorphic, Musson/Kjær/Marshall, Porpoise Corpus, Quadraceratops, quartet music, Rachel Musson, Soma Quartet, Tom Ward, trio music

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Categories 2016, acoustic music, chamber jazz, crowdfunding campaigns, free jazz, jazz, jazz fusion, New Music, post-bop, previews, skronk, theatre music

February 2016 – upcoming classical gigs – the Hermes Experiment go audio-visual with Bennett, Whitley, Debussy, Lolavar, Scolding and Swayne (and Don McLean); Susanne Kessel’s ‘250 Piano Pieces for Beethoven’ project brings premieres by Garson, van Emmerik, Platz, Puntin, Reuter, Runze, Soto and Vaage

11 Feb

News on upcoming classical-and-related gigs in London and Bonn…

* * * * * * * *

The Hermes Experiment presents: Sonic Visions
The Forge, 3-7 Delancey Street, Camden Town, London, NW1 7NL, England
Tuesday 16th February 2016, 8:00 pm – more information

“Described as “barmy but brilliant” by ‘Classical Music Magazine’ (and winners of both Park Lane Group Young Artists 2015/16 and of Nonclassical’s Battle of the Bands 2014), The Hermes Experiment is an ensemble of four young professional musicians who are passionate about contemporary and experimental music, and thus inspired to create something innovative and unique. Capitalising on their deliberately idiosyncratic combination of instruments, the ensemble regularly commissions new works, as well as creating their own innovative arrangements and venturing into live free improvisation.

The ensemble has established itself on the London contemporary classical scene with regular performances across the city for organisations including Nonclassical, Kammerklang, Listenpony and Bastard Assignments. Other highlights have included being selected to perform at the 2014 UK Young Artists Festival in Leicester, and giving a concert at Aubazine Abbey in France as part of the L’Aura des Arts festival. The Hermes Experiment is also dedicated to the value of contemporary music in education and community contexts, having taken part in the Wigmore Hall Learning’s ‘Chamber Tots’ and ‘For Crying Out Loud’ 2014/15 schemes.

So far, The Hermes Experiment has commissioned new work from thirty-one composers at various stages of their careers (including Giles Swayne, Stevie Wishart and Misha Mullov-Abbado). The ensemble also strives to create a platform for cross-disciplinary collaboration and has recently created a ‘musical exhibition’ with photographer Thurstan Redding.

The Sonic Visions show will explore ways in which aural experiences have been influenced by visual stimuli. The programme is led by new commissions that respond to a visual element, as interpreted by composers Kate Whitley and Soosan Lolavar; plus a new piece devised in collaboration with Giles Swayne based on a graphic score, and the premiere of an animation by Izabela Barszcz based on Ed Scolding‘s ‘Black Sea’. The Hermes Experiment will also be interpreting three other new graphic scores, devised by Deborah Pritchard, Andy Ingamells and Eloise Gynn as part of a competition linked to the event. The programme will be completed by arrangements that explore three very varied composers/songwriters that have been inspired by the world of visual art: Claude Debussy, Richard Rodney Bennett and Don McLean. This concert is supported by the Britten-Pears Foundation and the Hinrichsen Foundation.

Programme:

Kate Whitley – My Hands (setting of a poem by Nadine Tunasi – world premiere)
Soosan Lolavar – Mah Didam (world premiere)
Ed Scolding – Black Sea (with new animation by Izabela Barszcz)
Claude Debussy – Mandoline and Fantoche
Richard Rodney Bennett – Slow Foxtrot (from ‘A History of Thé Dansant’)
Don McLean – Vincent (new arrangement by The Hermes Experiment)
New semi-improvised piece by Giles Swayne & The Hermes Experiment
New graphic scores by Deborah Pritchard, Andy Ingamells and Eloise Gynn

Performers:

Oliver Pashley – clarinet
Anne Denholm – harp
Marianne Schofield – double bass
Héloïse Werner – soprano/co-director

Supported by
Hanna Grzekiewicz – co-director/marketing/development

Kate Whitley and Soosan Lolavar have both provided blog entries discussing the genesis of their Sonic Visions pieces (based on a poem setting and on an exploration of the links between Iranian music and Renaissance Counterpoint, respectively). The graphic score for Deborah Pritchard’s piece (which is apparently called ‘Kandinsky Studies’) showed up on Twitter recently, so I’ve reproduced it below:

Deborah Pritchard: score for ‘Kandinsky Studies’, 2016

Also below are a couple of videos – one of the Hermes Experiment in the flow of free improvisation, the other of them performing William Cole’s ‘me faytz trobar’.

* * * * * * * *

News on an ongoing concert and commissioning series…

Bonner Kunstverein presents:
Susanne Kessel: ‘250 Piano Pieces for Beethoven’
Klavierhaus Klavins, Auguststrasse 26–28, 53229 Bonn, Germany
Thursday 25th February, 2016, 7.30pm – more information.

“In the year 2020, the world will celebrate the 250th birthday of Ludwig van Beethoven, who was born in Bonn. In partnership with German radio station WDR Köln, pianist and Bonn native Susanne Kessel has begun an international composition project, inviting composers from all over the world to write a short piano piece “for Beethoven” with a duration of four minutes or under.

Since the start of the project, Susanne has been performing all the pieces at a series of concerts in Bonn (with some pieces also being presented at Speicher am Kaufhauskanal in Hamburg). All pieces will subsequently be published in a “precious paper” sheet-music edition by Editions Musica Ferrum of London.”

As of February 5th of this year, Susanne has received fifty-seven of the planned two hundred and fifty pieces. The next of the concerts in the performance series takes place on February 25th, in the Bonn instrument store Klavierhaus Klavins, and will feature premieres of work by the following composers:

Ivo van Emmerik – Dutch composer and onetime student of, among others, John Cage, Brian Ferneyhough and Morton Feldman (regarding whom he’s sometimes been suggested as a successor) with a strong interest in multi-media musical staging, electronic music and computer applications.
Mike Garson – cross-disciplinary American jazz, rock and experimental pianist and arranger (best known for his mid-‘70s work with David Bowie).
Robert HP Platz – German composer and founder/conductor of Ensemble Köln, generally better known for large-scale projects which can include operatic works, children’s music, literature, poetry, audio tapes and visual arts.
Claudio Puntin – Swiss composer, clarinettist and loop musician best known for wild, beautiful and moody electronica and post-jazz as a member of ensembles including ambiq and Sepiasonic as well as work for film, television and theatre.
Markus Reuter – German cross-disciplinary composer, touch guitarist, teacher and instrument designer, known for his work with centrozoon, Stick Men and others (as well as for his recent full-scale orchestral piece ‘Todmorden 513’).
Klaus Runze – German “intermedia” artist, composer, educator and theorist (pursuing, amongst other things, structured improvisation, composition, sonic sculpture, and painting-while-performing)
Mateo Soto – award-winning Spanish composer and recent winner of YouTube CODE 2016 Series Call for Scores.
Knut Vaage – Norwegian composer and member of the ensembles JKL and Fat Battery, whose work explores the boundaries between composition and improvisations.

Five of the composers (van Emmerik, Platz, Puntin, Reuter and Vaage) will be attending and possibly speaking, as will German percussionist/composer/music professor Dennis Kuhn and Swiss composer-pianist Lars Werdenberg (founder of New Music platform Chaotic Moebius), both of whom have previously contributed pieces to the project.

News on the ongoing project can be followed here.

* * * * * * * *

News tomorrow on further classical music spanning southern and eastern England…

Tags: Andy Ingamells, Anne Denholm, Bonn (Germany), Britten Sinfonia, chamber ensemble, clarinet music, classical harp music, Claude Debussy, Claudio Puntin, Deborah Pritchard, Don McLean, double bass music, duo music, Ed Scolding, Eloise Gynn, flute music, Franz Schubert, Giles Swayne, graphic scores, Hanna Grzekiewicz, Héloïse Werner, Ivo van Emmerik, Izabela Barszcz (animator), Kate Whitley, Knut Vaage, London (England), Ludwig van Beethoven, Marianne Schofield, Markus Reuter, Mateo Soto, Mike Garson, multimedia, Norwich (England), Oliver Pashley, piano music, premieres, quartet music, Richard Rodney Bennett, Robert HP Platz, Soosan Lolavar, soprano (vocal) music, Southampton (England), Susanne Kessel, The Forge (promoter/venue), The Hermes Experiment, trio music, violin music

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Categories 2016, 20th century classical music, 21st century classical music, acoustic music, classical (Western art music), experimental music, improvisation, instrumental music, New Music, previews

September 1995 – live reviews – Kate St. John @ DreamHouse @ The Water Rats, Kings Cross, London, 5th September (“like finding a pearl in the Sunday teacups”)

8 Sep

Kate St. John is best known as reedsperson to the stars: whenever someone wants a solo oboe on a rock record, she’s usually the one who gets the call. In her time, she’s been a member of The Ravishing Beauties, of Dream Academy and of the collective Channel Light Vessel (which also boasted Bill Nelson and Roger Eno). Now there’s the solo project – an apparently gorgeous album called ‘Indescribable Night’ and a four-piece acoustic band in which her voice and reeds are joined by guitar, viola and fretless bass.

What with her past work and the sessions for the likes of Julian Cope, we’d expect her to launch into a crazy and beautiful atmosphere project. But what Kate seems to be into right now is a featherlight fusion of classical, lounge jazz and blues – ‘Green Park Blues’ being the most obviously successful example tonight. A love of the French chanson tradition shows itself as well, in the summery ‘Paris Skies’ and in Kate’s choice of cover version tonight (Francoise Hardy’s ‘Le Premiere Bonheur de Toujours’).

This comes as quite a surprise (positioned as it is in the midst of a DreamHouse evening of intense contemporary rock singer-songwriters with guitars, but Kate and co. are unfailingly tasteful: beautiful arrangements played impeccably to form a sort of mildly fusion-flavoured chamber music. One can’t help thinking, though, that it’s a pretty tame world for such musicians to be installing themselves in. It all just floats along gracefully on leisurely viola shapes and restrained guitar, with Kate’s wispily pretty voice bathing in nostalgic warmth. And then she places an oboe, a cor anglais or an alto sax in her mouth, and out comes this phenomenally beautiful sound which stops you dead in your tracks and sets hunger in your soul…

It’s like finding a pearl in the Sunday teacups: sheer beauty reduced by finely-crafted but over-genteel surroundings. Kate St. John’s musicality needs a more passionate setting than this, a possibility hinted at by the ethereal mediaeval vocalising of ‘There is Sweet Music’ with its heart-stoppingly lovely cor anglais. But until then, at least we have this fine quartet. Many of you may be intrigued by this tasteful breed of crossover music: if so, I’d advise you to seek out the album. I myself am left wondering what it would take for such a phenomenal thread of music to be allowed freedom from the cosiness of café memories and to fly liberated, soaring to the heights that each and every one of tonight’s reed solos hints at.

Kate St. John online:

Additional notes: (2020 update) Kate St. John spends most of her time supervising film music these days – if you want to listen to the album which this music came from, it’s available on Bandcamp.

Tags: Dreamhouse (event), Francoise Hardy, Kate St John, London (England), oboe music, quartet music, saxophone music, The Dream Academy, The Ravishing Beauties

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Categories 1995, acoustic music, chamber music, chamber pop, chanson, classical fusion, cross-cultural music, crossover, folk baroque, folk music, instrumental music, live/concert reviews, reviews, singer-songwriter

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Misfit City

May 2018 – upcoming London classical/experimental gigs – Hen Ogledd’s freak-folk roar plus performances of Conlon Nancarrow, Alice Jeffries and original work by Naomi Sato, Lore Lixenberg and Serge Vuille at Kammer Klang (1st May); Tre Voci & Kit Downes EP launch (15th May)

April 2017 – even more jazz & jazz-ish gigs – Theo Travis in Rochester (23rd April); Spaceheads and Howie Reeve in London (21st April); Carl Hudson’s Moon Unit in London (27th April)

April 2017 – upcoming London jazz gigs – Emma-Jean Thackray + Pie Eye Collective + Sky Coloured (14th); Taeko Kunishima’s Iridescent Clouds (23rd); Jonny Gee Trio with Alex Garnett (24th)

February to May 2017 – upcoming London jazz gigs – the LUME Lab season with Word of Moth, Julie Kjær, Craig Scott and Anton Hunter

November 2016 – upcoming London jazz gigs (28th) – Alexander Hawkins-Elaine Mitchener Quartet, Michael Janisch and The James Beckwith Trio at the Cockpit; Ping Machine Quartet at the Sitara

November 2016 – upcoming London jazz gigs – FuMar at Map Studio Café (17th); Laura Jurd’s Dinosaur + Daniel Herskedal Trio meet the BBC Concert Orchestra at the RFH (19th)

November 2016 – upcoming London classical gigs – Shadwell Opera’s Schoenberg and Turnage one-woman psychodramas (4th, 5th); more contrabass flute from Carla Rees at IKLECTIK (5th); Conway Hall’s London Festival of Bulgarian Culture chamber concerts (6th, 13th)

October 2016 – upcoming London gigs – Vlad Miller’s Notes From Underground at MAP Café (6th); Honeyfeet and Dila V & The Odd Beats at Magic Garden (8th)

July 2016 – upcoming London gigs – Ant Law, Cassie Kinoshi and Zoe Rahman play Jazz in the Round (25th); Countermeasure’s spectacular a capella (31st); a two-day run for Pasek & Paul’s ‘Edges’ song cycle (30th & 31st)

July 2016 – upcoming London experimental gigs – Horse Improvised Music Club improvisations from small groups including Adam Bohman Text Quartet (5th); Hominid Sounds electronic night with Mark Dicker, Guncleaner, Johnny Broke and others (7th)

June 2016 – upcoming gigs – new British classical premieres – Keith Burstein’s cello sonata in London (with added Dvořàk and Schubert); and chamber works by Luke Bedford, Zoë Martlew, Richard Baker, John Woolrich in Birmingham (plus Judith Weir and Howard Skempton revivals)

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).

September 1995 – live reviews – Kate St. John @ DreamHouse @ The Water Rats, Kings Cross, London, 5th September (“like finding a pearl in the Sunday teacups”)

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