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May 2020 – single & track reviews – MultiTraction Orchestra’s ‘Emerge Entangled’; Stuart Wilding’s ‘Spaces’ and ‘Horns’

Conceived during coronavirus lockdown, MultiTraction Orchestra is the latest brainchild of cross-disciplinary Sefiroth/Blue-Eyed Hawk guitarist Alex Roth (currently pursuing new avenues and familial roots in Kraków). It’s his way of fighting the entropy, fear and disassociation of the times: part-corralling/part-embracing a cluster of diverse yet sympathetic musicians, recruited via friendship and open-source callups on the web. ‘Emerge Entangled’ is the first result: twenty-seven players working from Alex’s initial two-and-a-half minute pass of treated, multi-layered minimalist guitarwork. If the video accompaniment (a graceful come-and-go conference call featuring most of the players) is anything to go by, Alex played the part of benign/mostly absent god for this recording. There are no solos, no aggressive chord comping. In the few shots in which they feature, his guitars and pedals sit by themselves in a system loop creating the drone with no further intervention. Instead, Alex acts as the invisible mind on faders, reshuffling the instrumental echoes and response which came back from his loop broadcast.

MultiTraction Orchestra: ‘Emerge Entangled’

It’s an eight-city affair; although the majority of musicians hail from Alex’s other base, London (including his percussionist brother and Sefiroth bandmate Simon, trombonists Kieran Stickle McLeod and Raphael Clarkson, Rosanna Ter-Berg on flute, Madwort reedsman Tom Ward on clarinet, drummer Jon Scott and effects-laden double bassist Dave Manington), the MultiTraction net spreads wide. Finnish cellist Teemu Mastovaara, from Turku, is probably the most northerly contributor; Mexico City saxophonist Asaph Sánchez the most southerly; and Texas-based glockenspieler and touch guitarist Cedric Theys the most westerly. (Muscovian tuba player Paul Tkachenko and Lebanon-based iPad manipulator Stephanie Merchak can battle out as to who’s holding it down for the east).

Instrumentally, although there’s a definite slanting towards deep strings, brass and rolling-cloud drones, there’s plenty of variety: from the vintage Baroque flute of Gdańsk’s Maja Miró to the Juno 6 colourings of London soundtracker Jon Opstad and the homemade Coptic lute of Exeter-based Ian Summers. Alex’s other brother, saxophonist Nick, features in the Dublin contingent alongside the accordion work of Kenneth Whelan and cello from Mary Barnecutt. Most of the remaining string players are dotted around England (with double bassist Huw V. Williams and James Banner in St Albans and Leeds respectively, and violinist Alex Harker in Huddersfield). There’s a knot of contributory electronica coming out of Birmingham from Andrew Woodhead and John Callaghan (with virtual synthesist Emile Bojesen chipping in from Winchester), and some final London contributions from jazz pianist/singer Joy Ellis and sometime Anna Calvi collaborator Mally Harpaz bringing in harmonium, timpani and xylophone.

Alex’s past and present work includes jazz, experimental noise, soulfully mournful Sephardic folk music and dance theatre; and while his guitar basework for ‘Emerge Entangled’ seems to recall the harmonic stillness and rippling, near-static anticipatory qualities of 1970s German experimental music such as Cluster (as well as Terry Riley or Fripp and Eno), plenty of these other ingredients swim into the final mix. I suspect that the entanglement Alex intends to evoke is quantum rather than snarl-up: a mutuality unhindered by distance. From its blind beginnings (no-one hearing any other musicians apart from Alex) what’s emerged from the experiment is something which sounds pre-composed; or, at the very least, spun from mutual sympathy.

There are definite sections. An overture in which increasingly wild and concerned trombone leads over building, hovering strings and accordion (gradually joined by burgeoning harmonium, filtered-in glockenspiel and percussion, dusk-flickers of bass clarinet, cello and synth) sounds like New Orleans funeral music hijacked by Godspeed! You Black Emperor; the first seepage of flood water through the wall. With a change in beat and emphasis, and the push of drums, the second section breaks free into something more ragged and complicated – a muted metal-fatigue trombone part protesting over synth drone and subterranean tuba growl, which in turn morphs into a double bass line. Various other parts make fleeting appearances (a transverse flute trill, Alex’s guitar loops bumped up against jazz drumkit rolls; a repeating, rising, scalar/microtonal passage on lute, like a Holy Land lament). Throughout, there’s a sense of apprehension, with something ominous lurking outside in the sky and the air and elements; the more melodic or prominent instruments an array of voices trying to make sense of it, their dialects, personalities, arguments and experiences different, but their querulous humanity following a common flow.

Via touches of piano, theme alternations come faster and faster. A third section foregrounds the tuba, moving in and out in deep largo passages while assorted electronics build up a bed of electrostutter underneath. During the latter, watch out in the video for benign eccentronica-cabaret jester John Callaghan, quietly drinking a mugful of tea as his laptop pulses and trembles out a gentle staccato blur. It’s not the most dramatic of contributions, but it feels like a significant one: the mundaneity and transcendent patience which must be accepted as part of lockdown life, an acknowledgement of “this too will pass”. For the fourth section, a tuba line passes seamlessly into a bass clarinet undulation with touches of silver flute; accelerations and rallentandos up and down. Initially some spacier free-jazz flotsam makes its presence felt – electronics and cosmic synth zaps, saxophonic key rattles, buzzes and puffs, fly-ins of cello and double bass. The later part, though, is more of a classical meditation: beatless and with most instruments at rest, predominantly given over to the dark romance of Teemu Mastovaara’s lengthy cello solo (apprehensive, heavy on the vibrato and harmonic string noise, part chamber meditation and part camel call). The finale takes the underlying tensions, squeezes them in one hand and disperses them. An open duet between Jo Ellis’ piano icicles and Asaph Sánchez’s classic tenor ballad saxophone, it becomes a trio with Jo’s glorious, wordless vocal part: hanging in the air somewhere between grief and peace. A moving, thrilling picture of the simultaneously confined and stretched worldspace we’re currently living in, and a small triumph of collaboration against the lockdown odds.

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Although ‘Emerge Entangled’ has a number of masterfully responsive drummers and percussionists in place already, it’s a shame that Cheltenham/Xposed Club improv mainstay Stuart Wilding isn’t one of them. His Ghost Mind quartet (three players plus a wide world picture woven in through field recording) have proved themselves to be one of the most interesting listen-and-incorporate bands of recent years. However, he’s continued to be busy with his own lockdown music. ‘Spaces’ and “Horns” are personal solo-duets – possibly single-take, in-situ recordings. Both created in the usual Xposed Club home of Francis Close Hall Chapel, they’re direct and in-the-moment enough that you can hear the click of the stop button. Stuart’s apparently playing piano mostly with one hand while rustling, tapping and upsetting percussion with the other. By the sound of it the main percussion element is probably his lap harp or a zither, being attacked for string noise and resonance.

Assuming that that’s the case, ‘Spaces’ pits grating, dragging stringflutter racket against the broken-up, mostly rhythmic midrange exploration of an unfailingly cheerful piano. Sometimes a struck or skidded note on the percussion prompts a direct echo on the piano. As the former becomes more of a frantic, swarming whirligig of tortured instrumentation (as so frequently with Stuart, recalling the frenetic and cheeky allsorts swirl of Jamie Muir with Derek Bailey and King Crimson), picking out these moments of congruence becomes ever more of a game: while in the latter half, the piano cuts free on whimsical, delighted little leaps of its own. About half the length of ‘Spaces’, ‘Horns’ begins with the percussion apparently chain-sawing the piano in half while the latter embarks on a rollicking one-handed attempt at a hunting tune. The piano wins out. I’m not sure what became of the fox.

MultiTraction Orchestra: ‘Emerge Entangled’
self-released, no catalogue number or barcode
Download/streaming track
Released: 1st May 2020
Get it from: download from Bandcamp, Apple Music or Amazon; stream from Soundcloud, YouTube, Deezer, Google Play, Spotify and Apple Music.
MultiTraction Orchestra/Alex Roth online:

Stuart Wilding: ‘Spaces’ & ‘Horns’
self-released, no catalogue number or barcode
Download/streaming tracks
Released: 5th May 2020
Get it from: Bandcamp – ‘Spaces‘ and ‘Horns‘
Stuart Wilding online:

Tags: accordion music, Alex Harker, Alex Roth, Andrew Woodhead, Asaph Sánchez, Austin (Texas - USA), bass clarinet music, Batroun (Lebanon), Birmingham (England), Cedric Theys, cello music, Cheltenham (England), Dave Manington, double bass music, Dublin (Ireland), Emile Bojesen, Exeter (England), flute music, Gdańsk (Poland), guitar music, harmonium music, Huddersfield (England), Huw V Williams, Ian Summers, James Banner, John Callaghan, Jon Opstad, Jon Scott, Joy Ellis, Kenneth Whelan, Kieran Stickle McLeod, Kraków (Poland), Leeds (England), London (England), lute music, Maja Miró, Mally Harpaz, Mary Barnecutt, Mexico City (Mexico), Moscow (Russia), MultiTraction Orchestra, music for electronics, Nick Roth, Paul Tkachenko, percussion music, piano music, Raphael Clarkson, Rosanna Ter-Berg, saxophone music, Simon Roth, Stephanie Merchak, Stuart Wilding, Teemu Mastovaara, Tom Ward, touch guitar music, trombone music, tuba music, Turku (Finland), violin music, Winchester (England), xylophone music

September 2018 – upcoming rock gigs – Rumour Cubes, Agathe Max and Dream Logic in London (14th September); Major Parkinson’s European autumn tour (various dates, 26th September to 6th October)

9 Sep

Like progressive rock before it, post-rock ended up disappointingly short of genuinely inspiring exponents. The blueprint was all very well: retaining rock’s technology and what remained of its countercultural drive while dissolving its rigid methods, its predictable narratives and textures and its conservative exclusions In practise, few could reach (or be bothered to reach) the heights of the movement’s most inspired figures and their new paths: such as Tortoise’s integration of jazz, dub and electronica; Slint’s taut, grinding refusals; Godspeed’s sprawling/brooding scapes of punk-cinema-versus-conservatoire-grandeur; Talk Talk’s mendicant, increasingly hermetic passage from synth-pop to a dissolution of blues, prog and folk into distressed noise and silence; Moonshake’s abrasive post-everything groove and careening samples; Disco Inferno’s angst-ridden music concrete and social challenge. Most post-rockers, then and now, have stuck with a glowering reduction, a boiling-out of rock posturing leaving a glum muted residue of passive riffs and patterns… actually, more of an opt-out than a boil-out; in which say, the impact of Talk Talk’s ‘Spirit Of Eden’ is much-cited but rarely remembered in terms of how it can inform and colour the music, much less for the intimations it can throw up.

Though they’re not overturners – at least, not in the tradition of the bands I’ve cited above – third-generation London post-rockers Rumour Cubes are a welcome exception to the procession of drab refuseniks that make up the bulk of the post-rock movement. It’s probably partly because they’re proud and self-confessed “counter-revolution(aries)”, founded from the start around violin, guitar and electronics and obtaining their rock instrumentation later rather than using and rebelling against it from the start. Their origins, too, stick in post-rock’s teeth. Violinist Hannah Morgan lied about her knowledge of the genre in order to bluff her way into the starting lineup, while guitarist/main composer Adam Stark and drummer Omar Rahwangi were already impatient with its dour restrictions. In an interview with Chaos Theory, Adam’s stated that “as a band we are painfully aware of how boring post-rock can be… what we are trying to do is take what we find amazing about those bands that have influenced us and that are part of our community, and do something new with it.”

What Rumour Cubes have done is in as much in the in the lines of good prog rock as good post-rock – opening the gates to a variety of ingredients and described as a “luminous re-imagining of very many constituent parts” by ‘Louder than War’. As with underrated Aussie unit Apricot Rail, the toned-down interweave of guitars and the Krautrock groove bass often aim for a slow-building pastoral ecstasy while the band seeks a sweet spot that’s more country and roots than graphs and laboratory. The dancing interplay, in particular, between Hannah and viola player Terry Murphy ducks lemony-minimal string textures in favour of something that’s more country hoedown or folk fiddle. Rumour Cubes often hit their own delightful merge-point between the rustic and the highly technological, performing on bowed banjo and (the ubiquitous) post-rock glockenspiel in addition to the guitars, strings, keyboards and percussion, adding brass and harps where they can, and regularly bringing in instruments like the gestural technology of mi.mu gloves, new uses for joystick controllers, software-synchronised video displays and a battery of custom effects pedals to create new textures. Their gigs are, in consequence, joyous and open-ended experiences: collaborations, on and offstage with poets and filmmakers result in the music never stagnating.

Following two years of silence, and four without new music, Rumour Cubes return to live work via a gig at the Underdog Gallery near London Bridge, in order to premiere a batch of new music (including upcoming single ¡No Pasarán!, which will be out in a few week’s time). Meanwhile, here are some previous bits of Cubery to whet the appetite.

A couple of other acts are joining the show – firstly, amplified French acoustic violinist Agathe Max, who fled classical music around twenty years ago in favour of improvised sonic textural music and electrically-enhanced string-drones. Currently playing with Kuro and Mésange, she’s appearing alone on this occasion in order to offer a set of solo violin works. Secondly, Dream Logic: the recent solo project from Adam Fulford (previously known as the guitarist for Bristolian post-rockers This Is My Normal State) It’s pealing, cool-busting stuff which sees Adam all but drowning his own plagent piano lines, guitars and basses in eager tides of yearning orchestral strings and feverish noise clutter, bringing him comparisons to Nils Frahm and to A Winged Victory for the Sullen. This is Dream Logic’s third show (following previous support slots for Orchestra of the Age of Enlightment’s rulebreaking alter-ego the Night Shift and for rebranded ambient post duo VLMV (previously ALMA) and live arrangements usually involve a string quartet: let’s hope he comes up with the goods on this occasion, too.

Echoes And Dust presents:
Rumour Cubes + Agathe Max + Dream Logic
The Underdog Gallery, Arch 6, Crucifix Lane, Southwark, London, SE1 3JW, England
Friday 14th September 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here

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A little later in the month, jumpy and unpredictable Norwegian art-rockers Major Parkinson are dipping into England as part of an autumn European tour presenting their new ‘Blackbox’ album (and which also includes Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands). A jaggedly muscular alternative pop proposition, Major Parkinson’s music recalls a host of eclectic forebears such as The Monochrome Set and Faith No More: most notably, they’ve become a hit with the sometimes partisan (and often hard-to-impress) Cardiacs fanbase, who appreciate unrestrained complex melodicism and truckloads of energy, and have been up and yelping about this band for a while now.

I can’t really top this for an intro…

“Major Parkinson write tunes. But with influences from across the rock and classical genres (from The Beatles to Cardiacs) and a warped vision of the musical world, their tunes are like no other. You may hear a snippet of an East European folk song, a nursery rhyme, a stage musical, even a rock anthem, all played out on a range of instruments that a symphony orchestra couldn’t muster – synths, strings, old typewriters, brass and reputedly a decommissioned jet fighter engine. The musical scores behind their songs are both monumental and breathtaking – explosive synth and guitar sections that pound at your heart and then instantly make it melt with beautiful choral harmonies, and then drawn in you will dance and sing along as if centre-stage in a West End show.

“With songs too that cover subjects as diverse as Pavlovian hounds to ducks in the pond, the sheer scale and absurdity of the Norwegian band’s extraordinary musical world can only be truly appreciated by seeing their seven-piece stage performances live.”

All of the upcoming shows appear to be solo flights for the Major, other than London, Berlin and St Gallen. No news yet on the Berlin guest, but in London support comes (bizarrely, but delightfully) from Sterbus, the quirky Anglophile Italian art-popper similarly beloved of Cardiacs fans and who’s sitting on what promises to be one of 2018’s sunniest and most enjoyable rock albums: he’ll be playing with a band including longterm woodwind-and-vocal sidekick Dominique D’Avanzo, Pocket Gods’ keyboard wizard Noel Storey and Cardiacs drummer Bob Leith. In St Gallen, the gig’s being opened by bouzouki-toting Dutch psych-exotica rockers Komodo, whose music also draws on raga, hip hop, desert blues, rumba and ’60s harmony pop and surf rock.

Full dates:

The Hare & Hounds, 106 High Street, Kings Heath, Birmingham, B14 7JZ, England, Wednesday 26th September 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
Exchange, 72-73 Old Market Street, Bristol, BS2 0EJ, England, Thursday 27th September 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
The Water Rats, 328 Grays Inn Road, Kings Cross, London, WC1X 8BZ, England, Friday 28th September 2018 7.30pm (with Sterbus) – information here and here
Soup Kitchen, 31-33 Spear Street, Northern Quarter, Manchester, M1 1DF, England, Saturday 29th September 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
Hafenklang, Große Elbstrasse 84, 22767 Hamburg, Germany, Monday 1st October 2018, 8.00pm – information here and here
Cassiopeia, Revaler Str. 99, 10245 Berlin, Germany, Tuesday 2nd October 2018, 7.30pm (with support t.b.c) – information here, here and here
Backstage München, Reitknechtstr. 6, 80639 München, Germany, Wednesday 3rd October 2018, 7.30pm – information here, here and here
Grabenhalle, Unterer Graben 17, 9000 St.Gallen, Switzerland, Thursday 4th October 2018, 7.30pm (with Komodo) – information here, here and here
Orange Peel, Kaiserstraße 39, 60329 Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Friday 5th October 2018, 8.00pm – information here and here
ProgPower Europe 2018 @ Jongerencentrum Sjiwa, Hoogstraat 1a, 5991 XC Baarlo, Netherlands, Saturday 6th October 2018, 8.00pm – information here, here and here

Tags: Agathe Max, Baarlo (Netherlands), Berlin (Germany), Birmingham (England), Bob Leith, Dream Logic, Frankfurt (Germany), Hamburg (Germany), Komodo, London (England), Major Parkinson, Manchester (England), München (Germany), Noel Storey, Rumour Cubes, Sterbus, string quartet, violin music

September 2018 – more Woodburner world/acoustica/pop sessions at Dalston Eastern Curve Gardens – Rum Buffalo Trio, Joe Corbin and Lorkin O’Reilly (4th September); M w S, Boe Huntress and Equal Echo (11th September); The Age Of Luna, Marine and Desert Rain (18th September); Choro Alvorada, Max Baillie and Li Alba (25th September)

27 Aug

More outdoor summer Woodburner gigs at Dalston Eastern Curve Garden, as the season moves into its final month: holding autumn at bay while it can.

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The 4th September show features festival legends Rum Buffalo, bluesman Joe Corbin, and touring NYC artist Lorkin O’Reilly.

“Rum Buffalo fornicate with forgotten songs. They mingle in many genres but feed off the rich antique roots of swing and moody blues infiltrated with hip hop beats and filthy synth lines. It’s a surreal, vaudevillian show with outrageous costumes, twisted vocal harmonies, powerful beats and outrageous horn sounds. On the night expect a stripped-off trio show, revealing the core of their beastly natures.

“Joe Corbin is a blues and soul musician from South London. An accomplished guitarist, powerful singer, and true performer, watching Joe play is bound to blow you away.

“Since arriving in Hudson, NY from his native Scotland, Lorkin O’Reilly has been making a name for himself on the New York folk scene with his delicate guitar technique and deft lyricism. This year has seen him share stages with the likes of Charlie Parr, Nadia Reid, Willy Mason, Mick Flannery and Ciaran Lavery. His debut album ‘Heaven Depends’ was released on 24th August on Team Love Records.”

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The 11th September gig features R&B/soul collective M w S, North London songstress Boe Huntress, and new electronic collaboration Equal Echo.

“M w S is a London-based duo formed in Italy in 2013. Their musical influences are artists from soul, R&B and nu-soul (such as Erykah Badu and Lauryn Hill) mixed with contemporary neo-jazz artists like Tom Misch and Masego and electro-influenced artists like Vallis Alps and Louis Matters. Their first EP ‘Swim’ is a mix of pop, contemporary R&B and nu-soul with lyrics that sometimes recall their home country; their latest release, Island, produced by Grammy-award winning London producer Aamir Yaqub (Rihanna, Ne-yo) is a soulful chilled track full of tropical and summery vibes. M w S are currently working on their next EP, due out in 2019.

“Boe Huntress grew up in Kent, playing and writing music from an early age. Her first job was writing songs for an online magazine, reviewing video games in song-form: a crash course in the art of songwriting, recording and producing, as well as in receiving immediate response to her work online. Studying Literature at university, Boe was inspired by both myth and feminism: beginning to play live, she was soon chosen by the IC Music Network as one of twelve up-and-coming artists to tour across Europe.

“Boe’s debut EP, ‘A Female Power’, is an earthy, epic debut reminiscent of both Kate Bush and Bjork. The EP is inspired by four female mythological figures (“we’ve been deprived of certain ways of seeing woman – this EP is an exploration of the darker, more unexplored aspects…”) and Boe’s taken it one step further by creating an immersive audio-visual show alongside the record. The EP is brought to life onstage by Aletta Dina on drums and Melanie Powell on synths and electronics, while Boe fronts the band with her raw, ethereal vocal and electric guitar.

“Equal Echo is a new collaboration from Londoners Hector Plimmer (DJ and producer/creator of last year’s acclaimed ‘Sunshine’ album of broken beat, trip hop, instrumental soul and field recordings) and Alexa Harley (fellow producer, songwriter and collaborating singer for Hybrid Minds, Tom Misch and Mt. Wolf). The pair initially started working together with a one-off collaboration in mind: however, once they started, it soon became clear this would be more than just a feature project. For the last year-and-a-half Harley and Hector have been meeting two days a week, almost every week, creating music that shares an equal input of musical ideas from one another.

The amalgamation of styles and musical backgrounds blend together to make a sound unlike either Harley or Hector produce alone, whilst still retaining the best attributes from both. Not only are they musical partners, they are also best friends. Over the last two years the dynamic live show has been previewed at Archspace and Ghost Notes, with their premier festival appearances at Brainchild and Glastonbury Festivals.”

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The last show, on 18th September, features London-based hip hop/R&B trio The Age Of Luna, sensual pop mythologists Marine and atmospheric Finnish world-folkers Desert Rain.

“The Age of Luna – “average joes with powerful minds” – number Butch Arkas, his schoolmate Kyote Noir and singer/saxophonist Daniella Wizard. Each brings their own influences and sensibilities to the table, and the end results reflect not just the four different musical personalities but the blend of tradition and technology that saw them get together in the first place. Despite their relative youth, the band has played over a hundred shows with festival plays at the likes of Glastonbury, Wireless, Secret Garden party and Live At Leeds. Their debut, self-titled album was released earlier this year to great acclaim and the band are busy working on new music due for release later this year.

“London-based Marine – formed in 2014 by Cara Sebastian (vocals and guitar), Beth Dariti (bass) and Kaja Magsam (drums), and described by ‘The Line Of Best Fit’ as “the musical equivalent of a creamy post-coital blush” – have just released their debut album ‘Fable Electric’, via The Vinyl Factory (following the beguiling singles Mount Olympus and Sirens).

“Produced by Rob Ellis (Anna Calvi, PJ Harvey, Cold Specks), ‘Fable Electric’ is an album that brims with exploratory wonder and bridges the gaps between spectral pop, dreamy grunge and ambient folk. Both wild and elegant, it is framed by intuitive beats, bass hypnosis that playfully counters melody, and a deep love of contrast. The vocal lines braid together over hooky guitar lines in a complex plait of old and new, understated and operatic, light and dark. The songs of Marine crystallized from mythology and fables, mingling with personal words and emotions to form tales of the ordinary and extraordinary. Their songs reference the underworld, seal demons, mighty Kraken, werewolves, witches and Gods, and even question the very nature of storytelling itself.

“Jyväskylä quintet Desert Rain are songwriter Ville Lähdepolku on guitar and vocals, Alex Lee on drums, Farshad Sanati on santour and vocals, Petri Pentikäinen on tabla and darbouka, and Ville Määttä on bass, keyboards, voice and a cluster of international wind instruments including Armenian duduk. They play hypnotic world-folk music that tends towards the mystic. From Finland to Dalston Eastern Curve Garden, just for you.”

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The last show, on 25th September, features choro band Choro Alvorada, international violin virtuoso Max Baillie, and the Latin-inspired songwriter Li Alba.

“Choro Alvorada is a London-based group who play Brazilian choro music of all styles, including lesser-known works and original compositions. Choro emerged in Rio de Janeiro in the late nineteenth century as a mixture of European harmony with African rhythm and improvisation, in a similar way to jazz and ragtime. The name comes from the Portuguese verb “chorar”, which means “to cry”, and indeed choro music certainly has its fair share of tear-inducing laments. But choro is mostly known for its lively, playful and syncopated melodies in the traditional setting of a “roda”; that is, with musicians playing informally around the table (drinking plenty of beer – provided by the loving fans, of course!).

“Choro Alvorada have the traditional instrumentation of the ‘regional’ choro ensemble: clarinet (played by Andrew Woolf), flute (played by Rachel Hayter), 7-string guitar (played by Luiz Morais), cavaquinho (played by Jeremy Shaverin) and pandeiro (played by Alua Nascimento). They play a wide variety of styles of choro, exploring influences from all over Brazil (and London). They play with the irresistable swing of samba from the south and baião from the north-east, and even in the style of frevo, a carnival dance from the north-east! Many of the choros they play are their own compositions, so you may find a Cockney twist to them. They famously continued to play through a thunderstorm at the Curve Garden in Summer 2017, bringing a portion of the audience onto the stage with them in the style of the traditional roda.

“Maverick violinist and violist Max Baillie is truly one-in-a-million. Born to the sound of his twin sisters practising scales and argeggios, raised by his concert-cellist father and violin-teacher mother, before travelling the world and gaining a first-class degree from Cambridge University in… Politics. Apart from that short sabbatical, Max’s whole life has been music. Yet when you watch and listen, there is a spontaneity in his playing that makes you realise that in spite of all the history, education, and practise, a Max Baillie has to be born rather than made. Max-in-a-million is an international artist, having performed in Switzerland, Italy, South Africa, France, Australia and many other corners in the last twelve months, both as a concert soloist and with other projects including ZRI, who fuse sounds of Brahms with gypsy and Hungarian folk. Witness.

“Singer. Linguist. Lover of Latin, jazz and folk traditions. Voice of velvet and force of nature. Li Alba grew up in London, listening to traditional Spanish and Greek music whilst training as a classical singer. Graduating from Guildhall juniors in music and RADA in acting, she fell away from opera and into wild Easter European theatre arts, as a professional member of the Gardzienice Theatre Company. Partaking in independent arts projects around the world she has worked through music and staged mediums with global practitioners including Katie Mitchell, Mark Ravenhill, James Brennan and Julian Maynard Smith.

“Li has contributed to London’s night life scene by supporting in the launches of two venues, Kansas Smitty’s and Juju’s Bar & Stage, and is now embarking on her solo career with a plethora of musicians with global flavours and feels. She is accompanied by guitarist Telmo Souza who has played for Rhythms Of The City and Ines Loubet (amongst many others), and who leads the astonishing Afro-samba ensemble Caravela.”

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All events are at Dalston Eastern Curve Garden, 13 Dalston Lane, Dalston, London, E8 3DF, England on Tuesday evenings. Dates below:

Rum Buffalo Trio + Joe Corbin + Lorkin O’Reilly – Tuesday 4th September 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
M w S + Boe Huntress + Equal Echo – Tuesday 11th September 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
The Age of Luna + Marine + Desert Rain – Dalston Curve Garden – Tuesday 18th September 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here
Choro Alvorada + Max Baillie + Li Alba – Dalston Curve Garden – Tuesday 25th September 2018, 7.00pm – information here and here

Tags: Alexa Harley, Alua Nascimento, Andrew Woolf, Boe Huntress, Choro Alvorada, Desert Rain, Equal Echo, Finland, Hector Plimmer, Jeremy Shaverin, Joe Corbin, Li Alba, London (England), Lorkin O'Reilly, Luiz Morais, M w S, Marine, Max Baillie, Rachel Hayter, Rum Buffalo Trio, Telmo Souza, The Age Of Luna, viola music, violin music, Woodburner (event/promoter)

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Categories 2018, acoustic music, acoustic pop, Afrobeat, choro, club music, cross-cultural music, crossover, dance music, dance pop, DIY music, downtempo, dream pop, electro-acoustic music, festivals, folk music, folk-jazz, folk-pop, hip hop, instrumental music, jazz, Latin dance, Malian music, neo-soul, pop, previews, R&B, rapping, rock, roots music, singer-songwriter, soul, trip hop, world & indigenous music, worldbeat

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

26 Nov

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

November 2017 – upcoming London classical gigs – baroque-xplorations with Peter Sheppard Skærved’s ‘The Voice of the Violin’ (21st) and Anette Bjørnenak/Krishna Nagaraja/Masumi Yamamoto’s Norwegian ‘Folk-Barokk’ (25th)

13 Nov

Quick news on a couple of perspective-expanding baroque music events later in the month…

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Wilton’s Music Hall presents:
Peter Sheppard Skærved: ‘The Voice of the Violin’
Wilton’s Music Hall, 1 Graces Alley, Whitechapel, London, E1 8JB, England
Tuesday 21st November 2017, 7.00pm – information here and here

“Peter Sheppard Skærved, leader of the Kreutzer Quartet, explores the beginnings of the virtuoso violin, playing a series of extraordinary instruments from the 17th century in this intimate solo performance featuring Benjamin Hebbert and including two special world premieres. There’ll be a talk before the concert (at 7.00pm).

“The programme consists of music for solo violin by Giuseppe Torelli, Biagio Marini, Pietro Locatelli, Nicola Matteis, Carlo Ambrogio Lonati, Giovanni Bassano, Carl Heinrich Biber, Thomas Baltzar, Johann Paul von Westhoff, Le Sieur de Machy, Johann Heinrich Schmelzer, Giuseppe Tartini, Georg Philipp Telemann and Johan Sebastian Bach; and will include music from the Klagenfurt Manuscript. There will also be world premieres of new works by composer Edward Cowie (‘Gad’) and David Matthews (‘Capriccio-Fantasia’).”

Here’s Peter playing some Telemann and a newer piece by David Gorton:

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Schott Music presents:
‘Folk-Barokk!’ From Norway: Anette Bjørnenak/Krishna Nagaraja/Masumi Yamamoto
Schott Recital Room @ Schott Music, 48 Great Marlborough Street, Soho, London, W1F 7BB, England
Saturday 25th November 2017, 7.00pm – information

“Anette Bjørnenak (recorders), Krishna Nagaraja (viola/Norwegian hardingfele fiddle) and Masumi Yamamoto (harpsichord) explore folk music of Norway from an eighteenth-century music book, and also look at the way folk music influenced composers of the Baroque era.

“Works by Telemann, Morel, Jacob Mestmacher, C.P.E. Bach and Francesco Barsanti.”

Tags: Anette Bjørnenak, Benjamin Hebbert, Biagio Marini, C.P.E. Bach, Carl Heinrich Biber, Carlo Ambrogio Lonati, David Matthews, Edward Cowie, Francesco Barsanti, Georg Philipp Telemann, Giovanni Bassano, Giuseppe Tartini, Giuseppe Torelli, hardingfele (Hardanger fiddle) music, harpsichord music, Johann Heinrich Schmelzer, Johann Paul von Westhoff, Johann Sebastian Bach, Kreutzer Quartet, Krishna Nagaraja, Le Sieur de Machy, London (England), Masumi Yamamoto, Nicola Matteis, Peter Sheppard Skærved, Pietro Locatelli, Thomas Baltzar, viol music, violin music, Wilton's Music Hall (venue) - Whitechapel - London

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Categories 2017, 21st century classical music, acoustic music, Baroque music, chamber music, classical (Western art music), instrumental music, interactive performances, previews

March 2017 – upcoming gigs – close-quarters Sefiroth Trio concert of Sephardic music at the Green Note (16th)

12 Mar

At pretty short notice, there’s a chance to see a version of guitarist Alex Roth‘s spellbinding Sephiroth project in Camden Town this coming Thursday (while Alex takes a little live-refresher break from recording his debut solo album).

Mosaic Nights presents:
Sefiroth Trio
Basement Bar @ The Green Note, 106 Parkway, Camden Town, London, NW1 7AN, England
Thursday 16th March 2017, 8.30pm – information here and here

Sephiroth Trio, 2016

From Alex: “Sefiroth is the group I co-founded with my brother Nick to explore traditional Sephardic (Judeo-Spanish) repertoire. After releasing an EP in 2012 and staging a multimedia theatre show in 2013, we put the project on hold for a while, but I’m really excited to be getting members of the band together to play these achingly beautiful songs again. This intimate trio performance at one of London’s cosiest venues will feature new arrangements of traditional melodies which have been haunting me for years now. Given the intimacy of the venue, booking is highly recommended!”

The trio performing are the same trio who performed at the Play For Progress fundraiser mentioned here last December – Alex on guitar, plus Shirley Smart on cello and Alice Zawadzki on voice and violin. (Shirley is also the woman behind the Mosaic Nights organisation presenting the concert – they put on a variety of monthly folk/jazz/classical fusion events. I’ll need to look out for more of those.)

Here’s more information which I’ve scrounged up on the project:

“Sung in Ladino, these ancient songs weave timeless stories of love, loss and yearning for home, evoking the lands in which the Sephardic diaspora settled: Iberia, the Mediterranean and the Middle East. The group’s arrangements are as porous and wide-ranging as the history of the Sephardim, combining acoustic and electric instruments, improvisation and trance-inducing rhythms. Following the release of its debut EP… Sefiroth’s multimedia theatre show ‘Arvoles Lloran por Lluvia’ (brought) its experimental arrangements to life through dance, digital projection and production design. It was hailed as “absolutely incredible” (Musicians Benevolent Fund), “striking and innovative” (‘Plays to See‘) and “flawless… an incredibly fascinating collaboration between music, dance and digital media”…”

You might not get the dance and visuals this time, but you’ll get the music up close and personal. Alex isn’t kidding about the intimate venue. Green Note is tiny, and its basement bar more so. At time of posting there were only twenty-one tickets left. Move fast. To encourage you, here are snippets from the EP and the multimedia show, plus the full version of the latter if you want to see and hear more. (And if you miss out on a Sephiroth ticket, there’s always the rather rowdier She’Koyokh Baltic kletzmer gig over in Kings Cross the following night…)

Tags: Alex Roth, Alice Zawadzki, cello music, London (England), Mozaic Nights (event), Sefiroth, Shirley Smart, trio music, violin music

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Categories 2017, acoustic music, chamber music, cross-cultural music, Jewish music, previews, Sephardic music, Spanish folk music, vocal music

March 2017 – upcoming London classical/classical-experimental gigs, (7th, 16th, 17th) – Kammer Klang (with Klara Lewis/Nik Colk Void, Christopher Redgate, Phaedra Ensemble performing Leo Chadburn and John Uren); Tomos Xerri & Claire Wickes’ rush-hour duets (with a new Liam Mattison piece); Elisabeth Turmo & Elena Toponogova’s Norwegian/Russian celebration

1 Mar

As well as composers ranging from Grieg to Takemitsu, these three upcoming London gigs take in trolls, moths, David Bowie, extended fiddles and oboes, and just a tiny hint of saw abuse. Let’s have a look and listen.

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Kammer Klang presents:
Klara Lewis + Phaedra Ensemble (performing Leo Chadburn) + Christopher Redgate + John Uren + Holodisc DJs
Café Oto, 18-22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London, E8 3DL, England
Tuesday 7th March 2017, 7.30pm – information here and here

From the Kammerers (supplemented by a few text raids from here and there)…

“In our second show of 2017 we are joined by Klara Lewis, the critically acclaimed sound sculptress who has performed in clubs and art galleries around the world. Lewis builds her work from heavily manipulated samples and field recordings, creating a unique combination of the organic and the digital. Klara’s second album ‘Too’ was released in 2016 on Editions Mego to great acclaim. She will be performing with Nik Colk Void, an experimental electronic recording artist who is one part of Factory Floor (an alliance with Gabriel Gurnsey) and one-third of Carter Tutti Void (with former Throbbing Gristle members Cosey Fanny Tutti and Chris Carter). Coming from an English art school background, and an education that was decidedly non-musical in nature, Nik’s work is as conceptual as it is visceral – exploring the out-regions of pushing and manipulating sound (via modular synthesis, extended guitar techniques and vocal processing), and collaborating with contemporary visual artists such as Haroon Mirza and Philippe Parreno.

“We are also joined by Phaedra Ensemble, whose performances explore the spaces between classical, experimental and contemporary music. Phaedra brings together some of London’s most exciting musicians to curate programmes with new collaborations, reinterpretations of well-known modern works and forgotten classics. Its members have a strong intuition for genre-crossing and interdisciplinary work, often in collaboration with artists from other disciplines. This month Phaedra will perform ‘The Indistinguishables’, a 2014 string-quartet-and-electronics work by Leo Chadburn. Leo is a composer and performer of experimental and electronic music, gallery music and (as Simon Bookish) avant-pop. ‘The Indistinguishables’ works through a cycle of seventy names of UK moth species, each accompanied by a chord or phrase, like a fleeting soundtrack to these evocative words. The recordings are triggered by the quartet, so the pacing of the pauses and resonances is under their control, part of their ensemble dynamic.

“Phaedra will also be performing this month’s “Fresh Klang” work, which is from British composer John Uren. ‘A few weeks after David Bowie’s death in January 2016, Dr Mark Taubert, a palliative care doctor based in Cardiff, wrote an open letter to Bowie, posthumously thanking him for the soundtrack he had provided to his life, his dedication to his art, and the inspiration he was, and continues to be, for others also facing end-of-life illnesses. Retweeted by Bowie’s son, Duncan Jones, Mark’s letter has gone on to have a huge impact, and has been recited at several Letters Live events by Jarvis Cocker and Benedict Cumberbatch. John collaborated with Mark for this composition, combining a recording of Mark reading his own beautiful letter with fragile strings and electronic timbres; acting as a cushion for Mark’s words to drift across.

“The distinguished oboeist Christopher Redgate will perform his own work ‘Multiphonia’. Since his time as a student at the Royal Academy of Music, he has specialised in the performance of contemporary oboe music. Now the Evelyn Barbirolli Research Fellow at the Royal Academy of Music and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music, Christopher (in collaboration with Howarth of London) has redesigned the instrument. He performs exclusively on his creation, the Howarth-Redgate 21st Century Oboe, which offers extended capability for twenty-first-century music including microtones, multiphonics, extended range and electronics.

“There will also be DJ sets from the people behind British experimental music label Holodisc.”

Programme:

Fresh Klang: John Uren – Her Own Dying Moments (performed by Phaedra Ensemble)
Leo Chadburn – The Indistinguishables (performed by Phaedra Ensemble)
Christopher Redgate – Multiphonia (for solo oboe)
Klara Lewis + Nik Colk Void – improvised set

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South and slightly west, here are a couple of interesting-looking duo shows at the 1901 Club in Waterloo – picked out from the rest of the venue’s busy schedule by dint of having interesting instrumentation, interesting juxtapositions, or the promise of new pieces being premiered.

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Hattori Foundation presents:
Hattori Foundation Rush-Hour Recital: Tomos Xerri & Claire Wickes
1901 Club, 7 Exton Street, Waterloo, London, SE1 8UE, England
Thursday 16th March 2017, 6.00pm – information

Outstanding contemporary harpist and Riot Ensemble member Tomos Xerri performs regular duet concerts with English National Opera’s principal flautist Claire Wickes (who also plays as guest principal with most of the big London orchestras, as well as the São Paulo Symphony). Here’s one of those shows – one of the Hattori Foundation’s showcase concerts, nicely timed for the Waterloo homeward-bounders.

While Claire and Tomos will be playing a set of established pieces by Takemitsu, Debussy, Piazzolla and American tonal hero Lowell Liebermann (as well as a sonata by the distinguished twentieth-century British polymath William Alwyn), they are both strong enthusiasts for contemporary music, and are premiering a new composition by Trinity Laban alumnus Liam Mattison (a recent partipant in the LSO’s Panufnik Composers Scheme).

Look out, too, for any mention of Tomas’ upcoming musical-saw-and-electronics project… which at the moment seems to be more of a tingling promise than anything concrete. If any more evidence shows up, I’ll blog it myself.

Programme:

Astor Piazzolla – Bordel 1900 (from Histoire du Tango)
Lowell Liebermann – Sonata for Flute & Harp
Claude Debussy – La Chevelure (from Trois Chansons de Bilitis), Nuit D’Étoiles
Tōru Takemitsu – Toward the Sea III
Liam Mattison – new commission
William Alwyn – Naiades (Fantasy-Sonata)

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1901 Club presents:
Elisabeth Turmo & Elena Toponogova: “Two Journeys”
1901 Club, 7 Exton Street, Waterloo, London, SE1 8UE, England
Friday 17th March 2017, 6.30pm – information

This is a musical celebration of two cultures, Norwegian and Russian, performed by Norwegian violinist Elisabeth Turmo and Siberian pianist Elena Toponogova. Both are recent or imminent Masters graduates from the Royal College of Music, with growing international reputations. Elizabeth has performed as a soloist with the Arctic Philharmonic, the Oslo Chamber Orchestra, the Toppen International Festival Orchestra and the Barratt Due Symphony Orchestra; while Elena has performed as a chamber musician and soloist across the United Kingdom, Russia and Germany.

Already tagged as “conveying the stormful temperament of a northern Norwegian” in her concert performances, Elisabeth is also an up-and-coming exponent of the hardingfele, or “Hardanger fiddle” – the thin-wooded Norwegian violin with additional sympathetic strings which is traditionally used for folk dances and church processionals, and which bridges the gap between Norway’s ecclesiastical life and its supernatural mythology (by way of “troll-tunings” and Robert Johnson-esque myths about music lessons from the Devil).

Several hardingfele pieces will be performed as part of the concert set. I doubt that these will include a solo arrangement of Michael Grolid’s recent ‘Ouverture’ (as played here two years ago by Elizabeth and Barratt Due’s Symphony Orchestra) but I’ve included it in lieu of her having posted up any other recordings with the instrument.

Programme:

Ole Bull – A Mountain Vision
Selected pieces for hardingfele
Bjarne Brustad – Fairy-tail for violin (solo)
Edvard Grieg – Solveig’s Song (from the ‘Peer Gynt’ suite)
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky – Melody for violin and piano Op.42 No.3
Nikolai Medtner – Sonata Reminiscenza Op.38 (from ‘Forgotten Melodies’
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky – (arr. Mikhail Pletnev ) – Intermezzo (from ‘The Nutcracker Suite’)
Igor Frolov (from George Gershwin) – Concert Fantasy on Themes from ‘Porgy and Bess’

Tags: Astor Piazzolla, Bjarne Brustad, Café Oto (promoter/venue), Christopher Redgate, Claire Wickes, Claude Debussy, David Bowie, duo music, Edvard Grieg, Elena Toponogova, Elisabeth Turmo, George Gershwin, hardingfele (Hardanger fiddle) music, harp music, Igor Frolov, John Uren, Kammer Klang (event), Klara Lewis, Leo Chadburn (Simon Bookish), Liam Mattison, London (England), Lowell Liebermann, Mikhail Pletnev, music for electronics, music for string quartet, Nik Colk Void, Nikolai Medtner, oboe music, Ole Bull, Phaedra Ensemble, piano music, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Riot Ensemble, Tomos Xerri, Toru Takemitsu, unusual instruments, violin music, William Alwyn

November/December 2016 – upcoming gigs – a plague of Charles Haywards – with Samuel Hällkvist and Charlie Stacey in London; with Phosphene at Xposed Club in Cheltenham; at Daylight Music in London for Laura Cannell’s ‘Memory Mapping’ (with Mythos of Violins, Hoofus and Jennifer Lucy Allan); in Dublin with The Jimmy Cake and Percolator)

7 Nov

“Man with drumkit and nerve available. Works well on his own, but can work with anyone from virtuoso level to raw newbie. Will also travel, though being in the right place is essential.”

Charles Hayward – drummer, songwriter, improviser; patron saint of South London spontaneity. Creator, humble communitarian and sharer. Kit-and-tapes driver for avant-rockers This Heat and Camberwell Now! during the ‘70s and ‘80s; more recently, the curator-enabler of experimental multi-media events such as Accidents & Emergencies. Internationally reknowned but publically anonymous go-to bloke for musical support and thrilling upset. A musician who goes out and does.

Here are four separate upcoming instances of Charles Hayward in the act of doing: all taking place this month or next month. As good a hook as any to hang a ‘Misfit City’ post off.

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London EFG Jazz Festival presents:
Hallkvist/Taylor/Goller/Hayward + Charlie Stacey
IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, Waterloo, London, SE1 7LG, England
Saturday 12th November 2016, 8.00pm – information here and here

“The Swedish musician Samuel Hällkvist was given the ‘Jazz in Sweden’ award in 2010. It caused some controversy at the time because Samuel is a guitarist who doesn’t fit comfortably into the template of Scandinavian jazz. Nordic brooding is not his style at all. Instead Samuel brings unsurpassed wizardry to the use of effects pedals, which he deploys with great discretion and aplomb. He has toured extensively in Scandinavia, other parts of Europe and Japan, as well as touring the UK in 2012, where he performed with Yazz Ahmed, Denys Baptiste and Gary Crosby.

“Samuel is joined on this occasion by a carefully selected cast, featuring Ruth Goller (the bass guitarist of Acoustic Ladyland), the wonderful Charles Hayward on drums (This Heat etc.) and free improviser Noel Taylor on bass clarinet. The ensemble is a combustible blend of elements which promises high-energy rhythmic patterns awash with thunderous beats of drum and bass, and surmounted with the languorous, rich tones of bass clarinet.

“Charlie Stacey first popped into the jazz scene when he was featured on UK television as a child prodigy. In 2012, still a teenager, he reached the semi-finals of the Montreux Jazz Piano Competition. Since then he has performed at festivals around the world. Stacey’s tastes range from Keith Jarrett to Sun Ra and Albert Ayler – stir these ingredients together into a swirl of mood and pianistic virtuosity: that’s the unique sound of Charlie Stacey.”

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The Xposed Club presents:
Charles Hayward + Phosphene
The Xposed Club @ Francis Close Hall, University of Gloucestershire, Swindon Road, Cheltenham, GL50 4AZ, England
Friday 18th November 2016, 8.00pm – information here and here

“Charles Hayward‘s ‘(begin anywhere)’ is a new project centred around songs performed at the piano, a sequence of betrayal, paranoia, subterfuge, opening out into resistance, hope and humanity, interweaved with sound events, drums, spoken word, performance. Stark, minimal arrangements; an unexpected departure.

“Phosphene is the name Glasgow-based artist John Cavanagh has worked under for his solo music-making since 2000. In that time, there have been three full-length Phosphene albums, featuring collaborations with Lol Coxhill, Bridget St. John, Raymond McDonald, John McKeown (1990s/Yummy Fur), Isobel Campbell, Bill Wells and others. John is also a a member of the duo Electroscope, along with Gayle Brogan (Pefkin) and the more recently formed Sonically Depicting, with Ceylan Hay & friends. He is also known as a radio presenter & contributor, voice-over artist, author of a book on the Pink Floyd album ‘The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn’, producer of records/occasional record label operator and organiser of music nights at Glasgow’s Sharmanka Kinetic Gallery.”

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Arctic Circle presents:
Daylight Music 240: Laura Cannell presents “Memory Mapping”: Charles Hayward + Mythos Of Violins + Hoofus + Jennifer Lucy Allan
Union Chapel, 19b Compton Terrace, Islington, London, N1 2UN, England
Saturday 26th November 2016, 12.00pm – free event (suggested donation: £5.00) – information

“The Arctic Circle At Ten celebrations continue courtesy of experimental fiddle and recorder player Laura Cannell, bringing together musicians whose work is both spontaneous and deeply inspired by their surroundings. Using real and imagined memory, ideas are mapped internally and externally and turned into atmospheric, moving and unexpected performances.

“Charles Hayward gives a solo performance of his piano piece (begin anywhere)…” – see the Xposed Club bit for more on that. Also note that Charles and Laura play together in the Oscilanz trio (with Ralph Cumbers of Bass Clef/Some Truths), creating new music by exploding, recombining and reinterpreting the music of twelfth-century composer and polymath Hildegard Von Bingen, in a web of drums, trombone, violin, recorders, singing and electronics. (There’s a clip of them below, for context.)

“Mythos Of Violins is the experimental violin work of Laura Cannell and Angharad Davies, creating new works inspired by location and memory and “puzzling over the unsconcious or conscious effect of place on the creative development of an artist.” ‘The Scotsman’ reviewed their performance at Glasgow University Chapel earlier in April this year as “hypnotic… they made judicious use of the venue as they circled the pew-bound audience, unfurling a tapestry of intense scratches and squeals – as if the cloisters had been infested by an attack of rabid rats – fused with discordant prettiness and yearning hints of Celtic folk.” Laura and Angharad will be performing a special piece inspired by the Union Chapel. Laura will also be performing a solo set of her own.

https://youtu.be/uqRm0SUJpKs

Jennifer Lucy Allan – former online editor of ‘The Wire’ (and still running their Resonance FM radio show), as well as being the co-runner of experimental record label Arc Light Editions – will be weaving rural and industrial soundscapes through this very special event (possibly including evidence of her ongoing research project on fog horns).” Also to have played was Hoofus, a.k.a. Andre Bosman, an electronic musician based in coastal Suffolk. Focused on live performance, emergence and improvisation, Hoofus uses drifting oscillators, overlapping frequency modulation, ragged percussion and a sense of tactile interaction between performer and machines to create music of wayward eerie wonder. Drawing on ideas of edgelands and peripheries and the intersecting of wilderness with urban/industrial spaces, Hoofus explores the uncanny beauty of the intangible, the occult and the arcane seeping through into the post-industrial 21st century world of reason and corporate compliance. Unfortunately he won’t be performing them here this time around – maybe next time?

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The Jimmy Cake present:
Charles Hayward + The Jimmy Cake + Percolator
Bello Bar, Portobello Harbour, Saint Kevin’s, Dublin 6, Ireland
Saturday 10th December 2016, 8.00pm – information

For this December show, Charles heads up an evening of “loud instrumental space-prog-post-apocalypse rock”. There’s no word on what he’s specifically doing, but I’m guessing it’s a return to the furious drums, the disruptive tapes and the man-in-the-moment vocals of his main improvisation style.

Event organisers The Jimmy Cake are sixteen-year instrumental veterans of Irish instrumental rock. Over five albums under the leadership of keyboard-playing main-brain Paul G. Smyth they’ve employed banjos, clarinets, strings and brass – mixing Chicagoan post-rock, European space rock and Canterbury prog with the happysad fiddle-and-whistle uplift of Irish music sessions – or lurked behind gonging walls of noise and synth. Fast friends with Charles already (he guested at their previous annual show, prompting his invite back for this one), they’ve also backed Damo Suzuki – a set of influences and associations which should make their intentions, impulses and credibility clear.

When they’re clicked into “simple” mode, Waterfordian trio Percolator bounce and sing-song like an appealing, easily-approved indie-pop mix of The Stooges, Television, and Pavement influences, with additional craic courtesy of the chatty vocal rapport between drummer Eleanor and fuzz-sliding, odd-angles guitarist Ian. When they pull out the remaining stops on their organism and get more complicated, they transform into something much more remarkable – one of the few bands who can appropriate that lazy “sounds like My Bloody Valentine” tag – or have it foisted on them – and not disgrace it. The wilder tracks on their last EP, ‘Little Demon’ are whirlwinds of biplane-crash guitar drones, road-hammering motorik drums and bass surges. They sound like so much more than a rock trio – virtual unknowns already able to capture the wheeling cosmic dizziness of a full-on King Crimson soundscape or the pre-apocalyptic glower of a Gnod blur-mood as well as the microtonal shear of Kevin Shields.

Tags: Acoustic Ladyland, Angharad Davies, Arctic Circle (promoter), Charles Hayward, Charlie Stacey, Cheltenham (England), Damo Suzuki, Daylight Music (event), drumkit music, Dublin, Hoofus, Jennifer Lucy Allan, Laura Cannell, London (England), Mythos Of Violins, Noel Taylor, Percolator, Phosphene (John Cavanagh), piano music, Ruth Goller, Samuel Hällkvist, The Jimmy Cake, The Xposed Club (event/promoters), violin music

November 2016 – upcoming London classical/post-classical gigs – ensemble work, throat-singing and dance with Ayan-ool Sam, 12 Ensemble and Camilla Isola at Kammer Klang (1st); a baroque-to-now SOLO performance by violinist Daniel Pioro (25th)

29 Oct

At opposite ends of the month, here are the latest examples of two regular and recurring London gigs with their roots in classical music but navigating (especially in the case of Kammer Klang) its rewarding outer margins and potential associations.

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Kammer Klang presents:
Ayan-ool Sam + 12 Ensemble + Camilla Isola + Carrier Records DJ set
Café Oto, 18-22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London, E8 3DL, England
Tuesday 1st November 2016, 8.00pm – information here, here and here

Headliner Ayan-ool Sam is an acclaimed xöömeizhi, or master of xöömei throat singing (the traditional droning polyphonic music of the Tuva republic in southern Siberia: solo vocalisations developed to mimic and revere both animate and inanimate sounds from nature, in line with the region’s ancient animism). He’s a former student of “xöömeizhi’s xöömeizhi” Kongar-ool, half of Alash Ensemble (with Bady-Dorzhu Ondar), and a frequent throat-singing competition winner whose garlands range from being voted this year’s People’s Xöömeizhi of the Republic of Tuva to gaining the nickname of “Golden Throat” from banjo ace and prolific world music collaborator Béla Fleck. He’ll be performing traditional xöömei as counterpart and capstone to the rest of the evening’s repertoire and explorations.

Having spent the earlier part of the year in Iceland for a HEIMA artistic residency (as well as providing the musical backbone for Max Richter’s ‘Vivaldi Recomposed’ project in Paris), orchestral duodecet 12 Ensemble are back in their London hometown for this show. Considered to be London’s foremost un-conducted string orchestra, they’ve recorded and are currently readying a debut album for next year, featuring works by William Walton, Johns Woolrich and Tavener, and the young British composer Kate Whitley (you can see the group performing her piece, ‘Autumn Songs’, below). Previously, 12 Ensemble were Ensemble in Residence for two years at the Forge in Camden, collaborating with several international artists including the tenor Nicky Spence, the pianist Mei Yi Foo and the violist Simon Rowland-Jones. On this occasion, they’ll be performing works by Alex Hills and Ruth Crawford Seeger.

Alex Hills is a London-based contemporary composer with a growing reputation for his “interesting and considerable gifts” (Tempo). His recent album of chamber compositions ‘The Music Of Making Strange‘ showcases his interest in diverse elements including spectralism, experimental chamber and punk rock. A performance of one of its pieces, ‘Knight’s Move’, is below.

The Hills piece receiving its world premiere tonight is ‘OutsideIn’, which takes inspiration from E. A. Abbott’s classic 1884 novel ‘Flatland‘ (a geometric and philosophical satire). ‘Flatland’ is a recurring source of ideas for Alex – another such piece, a choral work named after the book, can be downloaded for free here. Discussing his interest in “‘flat’ musical worlds”, Alex explains “in a two-dimensional world, a highly complex ‘inside’ would be quite invisible from the ‘outside’, yet to a hypothetical three-dimensional being staring down from above, that same inside would appear completely different.”

Regarding ‘OutsideIn’, Alex continues by describing the piece as “an attempt to think about the relationship between a soloist and an ensemble (a concerto?) in spatial terms. Rather than an ensemble acting as an accompanist to a virtuosic soloist, or a discursive, dialogue-like relationship between them, I place the soloist inside or outside the ensemble’s sound (or the ensemble in or out of the soloist’s)… ‘In’ and ‘out’ also imply boundaries and a centre, which on the one hand are made physically by the ensemble in a horizontal way, with the soloist in the centre and the other two most prominent instruments (first violin and double bass) at the edges, and also by how the musical lines move in register (vertical musical space), initially continually drawn inwards towards a centre of gravity, then at the end of the piece escaping away from that centre outwards.” Alex gives credit for further inspiration to the “virtuosity, imagination and creative freedom” of 12 Ensemble violinist and longtime Hills collaborator Aisha Orazbayev, who’ll be the featured soloist for the premiere.

A valued contemporary and fellow traveller to American modernists such as Charles Ives and Henry Cowell, Ruth Crawford Seeger was a self-taught composer pioneering a specifically American brand of dissonant, meta-mystical music. Among the elements feeding into this were Ruth’s early fascination with the atonal, innovative and highly personal mysticisms of Alexander Scriabin and her own friendship with the poet Carl Sandburg (who was the almost exclusive source of the texts she set to music, although she also carried out a self-translated, twelve-tone setting of the Bhagvad Gita). Her own pugnacious, assertive modernism was further tempered by her studies with musicologist and theorist Charles Seeger, whose concept of “dissonant counterpoint” became a major element in her work and whose cultural Marxism she came to share (leading her into an increasingly missionary devotion to curating American folk music, at the expense of her own composing) and whom she married in 1931 (at a stroke, becoming the stepmother of future folk music hero Pete Seeger).

Ruth’s late return to focussing on her own compositions (after years of selflessly serving and propogating the folk songs of others) was cut short by her death from cancer at the age of fifty-two, although not before she’d delivered a final Suite for wind quintet which incorporated everything she’d learned across her musical life; from post-tonal pluralism, American serialism and Russian-inspired mysticism to her later immersion in folk. Obscured by the reputations of her male contemporaries for many years, Ruth’s work and reputation (particularly that of her 1930s work) has been being revived. 12 Ensemble will be performing her 1931 ‘Andante for string quartet’: a key Crawford Seeger piece whose carefully structured technical dissonances do not deny its growing tragic melody line. Ruth herself valued the latter to the extent that she rearranged the piece for orchestra seven years later, in the hope that the larger arrangement and a skilled conductor would bring out the embedded line to greater effect. Here’s a taste of the original quartet version:

The Fresh Klang act for November is dancer, choreographer and performance artist Camilla Isola, a Trinity Laban graduate in her early twenties at the start of what promises to be an interesting career. She’ll be premiering a brand new solo work which, like the Alex Hills piece, draws on ideas and inspirations from ‘Flatland’, exploring dimensional states and the physical dilemma of the body. One of her previous pieces is shown below:

DJs from Carrier Records (the seven-year-old New York improv, experimental and contemporary classical label who released the Alex Hill album mentioned above) will see out the remaining gaps in the evening.

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SOLO presents:
SOLO 02: Daniel Pioro
Crypt of @ St Andrew Holborn, 5 St Andrew St, Holborn, London, EC4A 3AB, England
Friday 25 November 2016, 7.00pm – information

The intimate concert recital series SOLO – showcasing unusual works for solo instruments from early music through to new commissions – returns with a showcase in the vaulted crypt of St Andrew Holborn from acclaimed violinist Daniel Pioro.

Daniel Pioro, 2016 (photo © Claire Shovelton)

As player, commissioner, leader and active champion of new music, Daniel’s experience is broad and assertive. He’s a member of innovative chamber ensemble CHROMA, current leader of the Fibonacci Sequence, and the former leader of the London Contemporary Orchestra (with whom he’s played, amongst other pieces, the ‘Triple Concerto’ by Radiohead polymath Jonny Greenwood and Schnittke’s notorious ‘Concerto Grosso No. 1’). He’s worked as a soloist or ensemble player with the Orchestra of St Johns Smith Square (Mozart’s ‘Sinfonia Concertante’, John Woolrich’s ‘Capriccio’), the BBC Philharmonic (Colin Matthews’ ‘Violin Concerto’, Thomas Adès’s ‘Concentric Paths’) and the London Sinfonietta. Daniel has also forged close musical working and performance relationships with a variety of contemporary dancers and with author Michael Morpurgo.

For this concert, Daniel will celebrate and share his eclectic tastes via a set list including “everything from the intricacies of Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber’s ‘Passacaglia for Solo Violin’ to the mind-bending repetitions of ‘Knee Play No. 2′ from Philip Glass’ extraordinary opera ‘Einstein on the Beach’.” Also on the set list is ‘Elsewhere’ by Edmund Finnis (a violin-and-reverb piece which Daniel debuted at St Johns Smith Square in June this year), works by American composers La Monte Young and Pulitzer Prize-winning Caroline Shaw (of ACME and Roomful Of Teeth) and the world première of a new piece by SOLO curator Alex Groves. There’ll also be another as-yet-unspecified baroque violin piece: this time by eighteenth-century composer-performer Nicola Matteis, an emigre virtuoso once reknowned throughout Georgian London, subsequently forgotten as a composer until the late twentieth century. (This performance will restore some of his music to its old haunts.)

No doubt there’ll be a more detailed set list emerging shortly, when tickets go on sale.

Tags: 12 Ensemble, Aisha Orazbayev, Alex Groves, Alex Hills, Ayan-ool Sam, Camilla Isola, Caroline Shaw, chamber ensemble, CHROMA, Daniel Pioro, Edmund Finnis, Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber, Kammer Klang (event), La Monte Young, London (England), Nicola Matteis, Philip Glass, Ruth Crawford Seeger, The Fibonacci Sequence (chamber ensemble), violin music

October 2016 – upcoming London gigs – two-part experimental concert from Laura Steenberge, Michael Winter and friends at IKLECTIK and Hundred Years Gallery (7th & 9th)

5 Oct

Two Los Angeles composer-experimentalists – Laura Steenberge and Michael Winter – flit between two London art-music venues at the end of this week, joining forces for a two-part concert.

Mira Benjamin presents:
‘Open… and perhaps not yet fully formed’ (with Laura Steenberge and Michael Winter)

Part I – IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, Waterloo, London, SE1 7LG, England, Friday 7th October 2016, 7.30pm – information here and here
Part II – Hundred Years Gallery, 13 Pearson Street, Hoxton, London, E2 8JD, England, Sunday 9th October 2016, 3:30pm – information here and here

The two visiting musicians make an interesting and complementary pair. Laura’s linguistic training backs up her musicality and instills a curiosity about the roots of communication, with her ‘Chant Etudes’ series attempting to recreate or recapture a “deep past, when the idea of a musical instrument was not yet fully formed.” Making and playing rudimentary part-salvaged instruments (which combine standard recorder or trumpet mouthpieces with flexible metal or plastic piping), Laura blows and sings into them while also whirling them, combining simple and complex harmonies from instrument and voice while participating in a sound which she partially controls and partially doesn’t. It conflates ideas of natural wind sound, air-hung instruments which play without human intercession (such as Aeolian harps) and human attempts at music making which suggest both the pre- and post-industrial. There’s a mystical element too, as Laura deliberately searches out “the secret vibrations hidden among the controlled tones.”

As for Michael, he’s more computationally-minded: setting out his algorhythmic pieces via scores involving minimal standard notation, or minimal graphical cues, or succinct but meticulous lines of text, and drawing structural elements from other disciplines (science, architecture, mathematics, different art fields). Both concerts will feature a performance of Michael’s ‘for Sol LeWitt’ – a text score piece for solo glissando and four sustained tones, which on these occasion will be performed with at least one amplified/processed violin. (Perform it yourself, right now, using any available sound source, from the instructions here – otherwise, cop a listen to the slow-evolving version below).

Four London-based players are joining in on both occasions, fanning the event out out into a loose potential sextet. Two of these are avant-garde violinists – prepared-instrument/improv doyenne Angharad Davies; microtonal specialist Mira Benjamin. The remaining two are objects-and-electronics player John Lely and fellow object botherer/roving conceptualist/sometime pianist Tim Parkinson.

I’m being more than a little glib and flippant in my descriptions here. Just think of them as being like the tabs in a pop-up book, something which you pull out to unfold the details what these assorted players really do – a cascade of directions and deconstructions springing off from the music and situations they engage with. Many of the ensemble are also active encouragers or curators of New Music – Mira through the vigorous commissioning and nurturing of new compositions, as well as serving as the impresario for these two ‘Open…’ shows; others through running various performance nights in LA or London (Michael’s experimental institution the wulf.; the ‘Music We’d Like to Hear‘ series which John and Tim run with Marcus Trunk).

In addition, two ‘Music We’d Like to Hear’ semi-regulars – double bass player/onetime Oxford Improviser Dominic Lash and cellist/Apartment House founder Anton Lukoszevieze – will join in for the second concert. (Anton will be playing John Leles’ self-descriptively-titled ‘The Harmonics of Real Strings’).

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Beyond the pieces I’ve mentioned before, the programmes vary between the concerts, although the general brief is “simple processes and open forms.” One inclusion will be another Michael Winter piece (the rhythmic three-line drone-counterpoint process ‘tergiversate’). Another will be a second John Leles composition, ‘All About the Piano’, in which the initial piano lines are recorded onto a series of dictaphones as they’re played, and are then replayed later on in lo-fi over the top of later lines. (This enables the piece’s history to repeat – the first time as grace, the second time as what sounds like a distant, distracting coterie of ice cream vans.)

Tim Parkinson will be contributing two brand-new pieces – ‘No. 4’ and ‘No. 5’ – about which he’s not provided any information. Having recently composed an almost actionless opera with a combined orchestra-pit-cum-stage-set of trash and rubble, without any music (bar stolen snippets of Handel and Rossini as performance bookends), and which mostly consists of the performers wading through the wreckage, he’s arguably the most playful of the composers contributing to ‘Open’. Expect anything; and then expect to see that anything dismantled.

Outside of music sourced by the ensemble members themselves, ‘Open…’ will see a performance of one of the Circular Music piano pieces by Swiss composer Jürg Frey (a member of the Wandelweiser Group, who pursue a John Cage-inspired integration of silence and humble reticence into composition). ‘Circular Music part 6’ is part of a series in which Frey seems to have been skirting around the avant-garde composer’s fear of (or suspicion of) virtuoso cliché or cultural determinism – aiming instead to naturally compose something which is both starkly simple and, at the same time, significant.

In an interview with Sheffield record label Another Timbre, Frey expanded on this by talking about how he was “looking to find a confidence in chords, dyads and single notes… I hope that accordingly they will resonate with confidence. This applies to every material, whether stones or a piano, but with the piano it seems to be more challenging because of the clarity of the material and how the instrument itself suggests it should be used.” (Full interview text here, while one of the other Circular Music pieces is linked below.)

The last piece confirmed for the concert (although there should be others) is ‘Another’, by Christian Wolff: conceptual composer, final survivor of the Cage-led New York School of experimental classical, a muso-political provocateur in step with Cornelius Cardew, and an avowed influence on both Tim Parkinson and John Leles. ‘Another’ isn’t a piece I can actually find in Woolf’s catalogue. It may well be a version of his floating, fragmentary but surprisingly lovely nine-minute electric guitar piece ‘Another Possibility’, which is and was a response to a 1966 piece which Woolf’s friend Morton Feldman had composed for him to perform on electric guitar (despite Woolf’s own unfamiliarity with the instrument).

Woolf would later recall the process of making ‘The Possibility Of A New Work For Electric Guitar’ as “we immediately set to work, (Feldman) at the piano, playing a chord: “can you do that?” I could. “How about this?” With some contortions (the guitar was laid flat so I could better see what I was doing – I’m not a guitar player, and this way I could finger and pluck with either hand), yes.”This?” Not quite. “Now” (with changed voicing, or a new chord)? Yes. And so on, until he had made the piece. Tempo was slow and dynamics soft, the structure dictated by the amount of time we were able to concentrate on the work. The sound, the chords or single notes, were reverberations set off by his (characteristic) piano playing, feeling for a resonance, then confidently transferred to the guitar within that instrument’s capacities (sometimes adding one of its particular features, the ability to make small slides with a vibrato bar).” Woolf only performed Feldman’s composition three times before both guitar and the manuscript were stolen from his car the following year – but he’d subsequently use the memory of the lost piece for inspiration.

Incidentally, three years after Woolf composed ‘Another Possibility’ (and some forty years after the theft), a recording of the stolen Feldman score was recovered, and it was subsequently transcribed and put back into the repertoire. The full story is here, and you can compare the two related pieces below – ‘Another Possibility’ via an interesting effect-sprinkled performance (Andy Summers-gone-avant-garde) by Swiss omin-guitarist Gilbert Impérial, and the original Feldman ‘…Possibility…’ in a straight, reverent reading by Japanese classical/electric crossover player Gaku Yamada.

* * * * * * * *

Here’s a quick rundown of ‘Open…’ again.

Performers:

Laura Steenberge (objects and voice)
Michael Winter (guitalele, objects, electronics)
Mira Benjamin (violin)
Angharad Davies (violin)
John Lely (objects, electronics)
Tim Parkinson (piano, objects)
Dominic Lash (double bass – Part 2 only)
Anton Lukoszevieze (cello – Part 2 only)

Programme:

Part 1 includes:
Laura Steenberge – The Chant Etudes
Michael Winter – for Sol LeWitt
John Lely – All About the Piano
Jürg Frey – Circular Music No. 6
Tim Parkinson – No.4 (2016) & No.5 (2016)

Part 2 includes:
Laura Steenberge – The Chant Etudes
Michael Winter – tergiversate
John Lely – The Harmonics of Real Strings
Michael Winter – for Sol LeWitt
Christian Wolff – Another

Tags: Angharad Davies, Another Timbre (record label), Anton Lukoszevieze, cello music, Christian Wolff, Cornelius Cardew, Dominic Lash, double bass music, electric guitar music, Gaku Yamada, Gilbert Impérial, IKLECTIK Art Lab (promoters), Jürg Frey, John Lely, Laura Steenberge, London (England), Michael Winter, Mira Benjamin, Morton Feldman, piano music, played objects, Tim Parkinson, violin music

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Categories 2016, 21st century classical music, acoustic music, ceremonial music, chamber music, classical (Western art music), cross-cultural music, deep listening, DIY music, electro-acoustic music, experimental music, improvisation, instrumental music, minimalism, performance art, previews, process music

August 2016 – upcoming gigs – London goes prog-happy at the Lexington – The Gift + We Are Kin + Tiger Moth Tales’ Macmillan fundraiser (7th); the David Cross Band with David Jackson and Richard Palmer-James (9th)

5 Aug

I think I’ve previously described the Boston Music Room – one of my own local venues – as London’s current home of prog. If so, the Lexington, down in the hinterlands between Kings Cross and Angel, is making a good showing as a second home. Two imminent shows reinforce that reputation, making next week a good one for London’s prog village.

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Resonance, in association with Prog Magazine and Orange Amplification present
The Gift + We Are Kin + Tiger Moth Tales
The Lexington, 96-98 Pentonville Road, Islington, London, N1 9JB, England
Sunday 7th August 2016, 6.30pm – information here and here

The name that’s missing from the promoters’ line-up above is Bad Elephant Music: London’s ever-industrious cottage label for various types of prog, and home for two of the acts on the bill. In some respects, this is a shuffled and re-run of a similar gig back in February, in which The Gift’s mix of symph/prog/folk grandeur plus flashy AOR (and We Are Kin’s exploration of art rock shapes and northern English socialism) lined up with a pair of one-man bands in the shape of steampunk balladeer Tom Slatter and troubadour rocker jh. Now The Gift are back, and so are We Are Kin, with only the choice of one-man-band changed. Here’s the official blurb from the Elephant:

“The Gift, fresh from their triumphant performance at An Evening Of Bad Elephant Music, will be headlining the event, bringing their own particular brand of symphonic progressive rock on stage. The band is currently working on the followup to 2014’s ‘Land of Shadows’, and may well be previewing a song or two here.

“Making the journey down to ‘that London’ all the way from Manchester, We Are Kin will be playing a selection of songs from their new album, ‘The Waiting Room’, as well as from their acclaimed debut, ‘Pandora’. Their twin vocal lineup wowed the audience at Abel Ganz’s Christmas party last year, and is sure to be a highlight of this event.

“Tiger Moth Tales is the brainchild of Pete Jones, who will be performing solo for this event. His live shows have been widely acclaimed for their virtuosity, emotion and huge sense of fun. Pete’s two album releases ‘Cocoon’ and ‘Storytellers Part One’ will both be represented in his performance, and he may well throw in one or two cover versions of the prog classics!”

Just one final note – the gig’s a fundraiser for Macmillan Cancer Trust, emphasising a community that’s broader than just the prog one.

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The David Cross Band (with special guest David Jackson) + Richard Palmer-James
The Lexington, 96-98 Pentonville Road, Islington, London, N1 9JB, England
Tuesday 9th August 2016, 7:30 pm – information here and here

Despite nearly five decades in music, David Cross is still best known for his contributions to three albums at the start of his career. During a two-year early-‘70s stint with King Crimson (incorporating ‘Starless And Bible Black’, ‘Larks’ Tongues In Aspic’ and ‘Red’) David added “delicacy, and wood” to what some consider to be the band’s finest incarnation – part proto-punk-Mahavishu Orchestra, part stately electric-classical chamber group, and part droning/clattering/blaring building site. In its relatively brief and always restless lifespan, this particular Crimson lineup lay athwart the path of progressive rock, heavy metal and European improvisation like a splinter-ridden sleeper across the tracks: innovative, stern and ornery.

David’s amplified violin was a key part of the band’s powerful Euronoise, bringing in evocative melodies and moods which varied between Roma scurries, fall-of-Rome dramatics, foggy drones and angry squeals. As was the case with many of the departures from Crimson, David’s was passionate, painful and galling: progressively swamped by the band’s incremental climb towards avant-rock brutality, he was eventually forced out by its bruising, bristling volume and the implacable battering of its rhythm section. It took a few decades for him to salvage a more cordial relationship with Crimson leader Robert Fripp: nonetheless, the reconciliation has led to a return to the large extended Crimson family including guest spots and latterday Soundscape duets as well as recent “electric chamber music” with Crim-connected composer Andrew Keeling.)

Immediately after Crimson, though, David had to follow a different winding path of his own. From mid-‘70s work with trans-Manche psych/prog/fusioneers Clearlight (and experiments with big-band improv whilst leading the sadly undocumented Ascend) he went on to a long learning process during which, by his own admission, he failed at jazz. On the other hand, he successfully honed an affinity with alternative improvisation and with other forms. Theatre, in particular, proved to be a natural home, with David working up on stage and behind the scenes as well as in the pit band or composer’s slot. Theatricality also bled through into his other musical work. A trio he formed with keyboard player Sheila Maloney and saxophonist Pete McPhail took to the arts centres to perform musical interpretations of Samuel Beckett plays, while from the turn of the 1980s David was carrying out interdisciplinary performances with dancers, painters and the like (something he’s continued up until the present day).

After a decade away, a return to fusion and avant-rock in the late 1980s saw David becoming a keystone of Geoff Serle’s Radius band; an interesting, if airlessly pastoral, British answer to Material’s electro-funk. He was also a quarter of one-shot project Low Flying Aircraft, in which he joined forces with Crimson-orbit jazz pianist Keith Tippett, drummer Dan Maurer and budding teenaged guitar whiz Jim Juhn in a leaf-storm of nervy electroacoustic frenzy and scattered early sampler sputters. (For my money, it’s probably his most interesting post-Crimson bandwork to date.). He’s stayed busy ever since – this year, for instance, saw the release of violin-and-electronica duo album with Sean Quinn of Tiny Magnetic Pets, plus a live album from Japanese dates in which he guested with Crimson spinoff trio Stick Men.

All of this suggests the work of a musician whose reputation should be broader and better respected. It’s probably only the taint of grand prog – and of the “wrong kind” of fusion – which keeps him from it. In experimental rock (or, more accurately, in the media commentary which covers it, particularly on the British side) there still seem to be very clear, if dubious and snobbish, rules about who’s allowed credibility, and why. It’s not easy to escape from those fencings; and without this side of his history, David might have had his due.

For better or for worse, David’s most enduring project has been his own David Cross Band. Anchored since the mid-’90s by cohorts and co-composers Mick Paul (bass) and Paul Clark (guitars), it displays his electric violin – by turns stately, romantic, gnarled or locustlike – coursing fluently over a grandiose, detailed bed of prog pomp, deep metal, and flaring jazz-rock gestures. This year, however, the band’s taken an intriguing and strategic left-turn. With their latest album ‘Sign Of The Crow’ barely out of the gate, they’ve unexpectedly replaced keyboard player Alex Hall with veteran avant-prog sax hero David Jackson, once of Van Der Graaf Generator.

David Jackson in full 1970s effect (photographer unknown)

Musically adventurous and visually iconic, Jackson spent his Van Der Graaf years festooned with multiple instruments, blowing double-horn brass sections through brain-buggering electronics and being described as “a Third Reich bus conductor”. Since then, he’s spent much of his time working on the gesture-to-MIDI Soundbeam electronic project (bringing out the musicality of disabled children) while sometimes venturing out for gigs on the strength of his experimental rock reputation. Since crossing paths with David Cross at one such gig in Verona years ago, Jackson has been one of his frequent improvisation partners, making him an overdue natural fit for something like this. Regarding their chemistry, here’s a lengthy fly-on-the-wall video of the two of them playing (alongside Yumi Hara and Tony Lowe) at a release show for the Cross/Fripp ‘Starless Starlight’ album of Crimson-inspired Soundscape duets. Covering the show from rehearsal to performance, it hints at some of what the Cross/Jackson duo might be bringing to bear on the band shows; something which might well be transformational, pulling the band up and out of its shiny prog-metal box and perhaps delivering David Cross some of the broader respect he deserves.

The new Cross Band lineup, completed by Space Cowboys singer Jinian Wilde and by poly-disciplinary drummer Craig Blundell (who displays a heartening taste for post-dubstep playing when people let him off the prog leash), made their live debut in Wolverhampton last month. While no videos have emerged from this, there have been enthusiastic reports; and as King Crimson tours as a grand septet with a long-denied, fervently-delivered battery of archived ’70s classics, the Cross band are studding their own set with live deliveries of 21st Century Schizoid Man and Starless.

The London gig’s also intriguing in that it features a rare-as-rocking-horse-shit British solo slot from Richard Palmer-James. Originally the embattled first guitarist and wordsmith for Supertramp (a long time before they hit big at the American breakfast bar), Richard was the long-distance lyricist for King Crimson during David’s tenure and has subsequently carried out the same favour for twenty years of various Cross bands. Based in Bavaria for forty-odd years, he’s spent most of it embedded in production and writing work for German pop: since the turn of the century, however, he’s revived his original love for playing blues and country guitar. Most likely it will be this side of him that we’ll see at the Lexington on Tuesday. Still, who knows what the sense of occasion might bring out?

Tags: Alex Hall, Bad Elephant Music (record label), Craig Blundell, Dan Maurer, David Cross, David Jackson, electric violin music, fund-raising, Geoff Serle, Jim Juhn, Jinian Wilde, Keith Tippett, King Crimson, London (England), Low Flying Aircraft, Mick Paul, Paul Clark, Pete McPhail, Radius, Richard Palmer-James, Samuel Beckett, Sean Quinn, Sheila Maloney, Sheila Maurice-Grey, Soundbeam, Supertramp, The Gift, Tiger Moth Tales, Tiny Magnetic Pets, Tony Lowe, Van der Graaf Generator, violin music, We Are Kin, Yumi Hara (Yumi Hara Cawkwell)

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Categories 2016, art rock, classical fusion, experimental/avant-garde rock, improvisation, instrumental music, jazz fusion, jazz rock, pop, post-progressive rock, previews, progressive metal, progressive pop, progressive rock, rock, singer-songwriter, theatre music

June 2016 – upcoming London gigs – Nordic musical stories, bass guitar filigrees, brass-laced soundscapes and howling animal men – ‘The Devil’s Purse’ stories at the Forge (22nd); Rothko and Ghost Mind at IKLECTIK (23rd); Ánde Somby at Café Oto (24th)

19 Jun

Three more engaging shows around the London fringes. Two have press releases which speak for themselves, while I wrote some babble for the other one (since it’s the first time I’ve covered one of the bands in a long time, while the other band turns out to be a trio who could use some more words spent on them)…

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Crick Crack Club Presents
Fairytales for Grown-ups – The Devil’s Purse
The Forge, 3-7 Delancey Street, Camden Town, London, NW1 7NL, England
Wednesday 22nd June 2016, 7:30 pm – information

“Beguiling, tricksy, highly-strung, and suspiciously helpful – the Little People are waiting in the shadows, beneath your feet, under the tables, and even in the cracks in the walls. They’re waiting to prove just how hard it is to tell that they are there… On hot summer nights their world is a breath away and on long winter evenings they have far too much time on their hands.

“Dominic Kelly, Bridget Marsden and Leif Ottosson fuse storytelling performance and Nordic music in a wild journey into the cinema of the imagination. A lost traveller finds himself guided through the mountain mists; a farmer marries an apparently perfect wife; a drunk gambles with a purse that is forever full, and an anxious mother watches her child turn to skin and bone… Come spend some time in the company of Themselves, the Gentry Below, the Good Folk, the sylphs, the sprites, the fairies, and a labyrinth of stories.

“Dominic is a performance storyteller whose dynamic style has captivated audiences across the UK, Sweden, and around the world. He has performed in many prominent venues and festivals including The Barbican and the National Theatre in London, The Times Literature Festival, and on tour internationally from India to the Arctic Circle. Bridget and Leif form a duo whose interpretations of Nordic folk music take place in a filmic borderland of tunes and soundscapes. Leif challenges conventional ways of using the accordion and has distinguished himself on the Swedish folk scene as an instrumentalist, composer and arranger. Bridget studied folk music at Stockholm’s Kungliga Musikhögskolan: her band Stormsteg won Best Newcomer at the Swedish Folk & World Music Awards 2012.”

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IKLECTIK presents:
Rothko + Ghost Mind
IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, Waterloo, London, SE1 7LG, England
Thursday 23rd June 2016, 8.00pm – information

At IKLECTIK, a concert of two fascinating experimental acts creating powerfully visual and immersive music.

Aiming to explore the full sonic possibilities of his instrument (and inspired by the towering ‘Seagram Murals’ in the Tate Gallery), bass guitarist Mark Beazley founded Rothko in London during 1997. The initial lineup was a triple-bass trio with Crawford Blair and Jon Meade (of on-off London math-rockers Geiger Counter), which for three years clanged, droned, whirred and rumbled around its own constantly expanding iron-grey niche.

Creating great frowning arches of dark notes, torrential thrums of noise or transcendent etched outlines in the lower ranges, Rothko insisted on being judged as pure music, batting away any enclosing accusations of being post-punk, post-Gothic, post-rock, or anything similar. Somehow they managed to achieve this aim, defying all expectations by becoming universal and making inroads into the awareness, the perception and the affections of a wide and diverse audience. They found favour amongst the kind of sternly political art-music devotees who’d immerse themselves in ‘The Wire’, amongst the brain-knitting psychedelic leanings of London math-rock enthusiasts, and amongst the surprised followers of various indie bands who’d taken a shine to them and taken the opportunity to stick them onto a live bill. After three albums (and various EPs and collaborations) they bowed out in 2001 after a successful support slot with Porcupine Tree, playing to an audience of progressive rock fans.

While the original Rothko is arguably the best-known version, Mark maintained the Rothko name and core concept for another nine years across a solo presentation, a bass duo, an wide-screen ambient septet (which swallowed up consenting fellow travellers Delicate AWOL) and a more rhythmic quartet. While the various versions of the band were always underpinned by Mark’s resonant four-string underlay – a slatey burr or baritonic voice speaking out of the deep – the bass-guitar-only rule was relaxed to allow other instruments into the space such as flute, voice, electric guitar, piano and viola (while the synths and drums of the last and longest-lived lineup even occasionally hinted at a post-Can rumble). After Rothko, Mark took his skills and explorations solo, and formed new bass-friendly projects: Low Bias (with Pere Ubu’s syntheur Gagarin), Signals (with Phil Julian and textural guitarist Chris Gowers), Tetherdown (with Anne Garner and James Murray), and Rome Pays Off (in which he reunited with Crawford Blair)

Reactivated in 2015, a revived Rothko saw Mark re-teamed with ex-Delicate AWOL bassist and later solo recordist Michael D. Donnelly (his main partner in the post-2000 lineups). Together, they revisited their previous duo work while expanding it with additional lessons learned (in technique, in sonic attitude, in being an interpreter of feeling) during the five year break. A new EP, ‘Severed Tense’ arrived in September last year; a new album ‘Discover The Lost’ is now available on pre-order.

(recent Rothko track Truths And Signs)

This particular gig at IKLECTIK, however, showcases a newer Rothko lineup of Mark plus Johny Brown (the latter better known as the frontman of long-running post-punk poetry rockers Band Of Holy Joy, with whom Mark played during the Rothko layoff). Eschewing both past and recent work, they’ll be performing a set of all-new material from a work in progress – a new album called ‘A Young Fist Wrapped Around A Cinder For A Wager’, which they’re planning to record shortly.

While I might be behind the most recent developments, listening to the recent Beazley/Donnelly material has reminded me about what drew me to Rothko in the first place – their ability to grab such fascinating visual evocations out of the kind of low frequencies which you’d think would restrict them. From dirty crumbling bass notes they sketch a grumbling, majestic London ambience of half-forgotten post-industrial structure: the kind you find while turning down sidestreets running under grimy, half-forgotten Victorian railway viaducts or hosting the grand shells of factories. At least, that’s what they seem to do from where I’m listening. Mark apparently draws significant inspiration from sojourns in quiet rural locations far from the pressure and grime of great cities. It’s generally true that what any one listener draws out of Rothko tends to be only a few facets of the band’s mysterious kaleidoscope.

With roots in the Cheltenham Improvisers Orchestra, Ghost Mind is an experimental soundscape collaboration currently consisting of trumpet player Pete Robson, percussionist Stuart Wilding, and Jon Andriessen on heavily-treated guitar, combined with a background of found sounds gathered from around the planet. They present themselves as “a four-person trio” (the fourth member being the titular ghost). Live, they’re a magical concoction, with Stuart’s percussion exploits recalling the startling, fleeting and unforgettable work that Jamie Muir brought to various Derek Bailey bands and King Crimson in the 1970s, Pete’s trumpet journeying from jazz-mute musings and trombone impressions to free-improv mouthpiece splutters, and Jon’s heavily-processed guitar creating dense architectural fabrics and noise blocks but sometimes rising up with plangent, momentary clean licks.

Working together, Ghost Mind create aural experiences which suggest both the world traveller and the documentary edit suite. Their instrumental illustrations and interspersed field recordings link temples to shopping precincts or treetops hung with birdsong, or link toyshops to ping-pong matches; while further human-driven sounds flicker briefly through the mileu via interjections of harmonica and glockenspiel, water-warbling bird whistles, drum notes to shoe-scrapes and miscellaneous tickings. The fact that it all sounds musical throughout – as compelling to children and casual attendees as to dedicated deep listeners – is another of their creative triumphs.

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Tigmus presents:
Ánde Somby: The Animals Inside The Man And The Man Outside The Animals
Cafe Oto, 18-22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London, E8 3DL, England
Friday 24th June 2016, 7.00pm – information

“The Sámi people are a transnational minority living in Sápmi, an area of land stretching across the borders of northern Scandinavia, Finland, and throughout the Kola Peninsula of north-western Russia. Yoik (also spelt joik or jojk) is the Sámi’s ancient and characteristic vocal art, with yoiks traditionally used to invoke a person, animal, place, or experience. You don’t yoik about something, you just ‘yoik it’.

“Ánde Somby yoiks animals including salmon, grouse, bear, crow and mosquito, but his signature yoik is that of the wolf. The wolf yoik is a traditional yoik that Somby has developed with dramatic elements in an expressive performance. Somby has been an active musician since 1976 and has performed for royalty, heads of state and even at the funeral of Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren! His many animal yoiks are inspired by the idea of transformation in the pre-Christian Sámi religion, when the noaidi (shaman) used yoiks to transform into an animal and back into a human. Somby is also a professor of law at the University of Tromsø and is engaged in Sámi social and political issues.

“In January 2016 Somby released the album “Yoiking With The Winged Ones”, recorded outdoors in Lofoten by the renowned British sound artist artist and field recorder, Chris Watson. The recordings took place in Kvalnes, mid June 2014, in a moment while the Arctic winds were having a little rest.”

Tags: Anne Garner, Ánde Somby, Band Of Holy Joy, bass guitar music, Ben Page, Bridget & Leif, Bridget Marsden, Café Oto (promoter/venue), Cheltenham (England), Cheltenham Improviser’s Orchestra, Chris Gowers, Crawford Blair, Crick Crack Club (event/promoter), Delicate AWOL, Dominic Kelly, duo music, Gagarin (Graham Dowdall), Geiger Counter, Ghost Mind, IKLECTIK Art Lab (promoters), James Murray, Johnny Brown, Jon Andriessen, Leif Ottosson, London (England), Low Bias, Mark Beazley, Michael D. Donnelly, percussion music, Pere Ubu, Pete Robson, Phil Julian, Rocketnumbernine, Rome Pays Off, Rothko, Signals, Sirbma (Samiland - Norway), Stockholm (Sweden), Stormsteg, Stuart Wilding, Tetherdown, textural guitar music, Tom Page, trio music, trumpet music, violin music

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Categories 2016, experimental music, field recordings, folk music, math rock, post-rock, previews, Sámi folk music, storytelling, Swedish folk music, vocal music, yoik

June 2016 – upcoming London gigs – rarescale (Carla Rees & Michael Oliva) perform Pauline Oliveros, Ligeti Maderna, Thea Musgrave and others at IKLECTIK (19th); Douglas Finch’s ‘Inner Landscapes’ concert at the Forge (20th); Douglas Finch & Bobby Chen at the Reform Club (29th)

17 Jun

Three contemporary classical concerts coming up in London between now and the end of the month, including a number of premiere performances of new pieces.

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IKLECTIK presents :
rarescale (Carla Rees & Michael Oliva)
IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, Waterloo, London, SE1 7LG, England
Sunday 19th June 2016, 8.00pm – information

Programme:

Piers Tattersall – Analogue
Michael Oliva – Bereft Adrift
Pauline Oliveros- Bye Bye Butterfly
György Ligeti – Artikulation
Bruno Maderna – Music su due dimensioni
Dan Di Maggio – Same Old Monsters
Thea Musgrave – Narcissus

Performers:
Carla Rees (flute & bass flute)
Michael Oliva (electronics)

rarescale is a flexible-instrumentation contemporary chamber music ensemble which exists to promote the alto flute and its repertoire. Its artistic director, Carla Rees, is a UK-based low flutes specialist – player, arranger and the director of music publishing company Tetractys. She plays Kingma System flutes and works frequently in collaboration with composers to develop new repertoire and techniques: she’s also released five records with rarescale‘s in-house record company.

rarescale‘s composer-in-residence, Michael Oliva, also performs regularly with the ensemble in the UK, Europe and the United States. Originally trained as a biochemist, Michael is now a composer with a fondness for writing operas and music for electronics and woodwind. In addition he runs madestrange opera, a company dedicated to producing new forms of the genre for modern audiences, including Michael’s own multimedia operas ‘Black & Blue’, ‘Midsummer’ and ‘The Girl Who Liked To Be Thrown Around’. Michael also teaches composition with electronics at the Royal College of Music, where he is Area Leader for Electroacoustic Music, and runs the termly “From the Soundhouse” series of concerts of electronic music.

Here’s a video of an earlier rarescale performance.

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Douglas Finch – Inner Landscapes CD Launch
The Forge, 3-7 Delancey Street, Camden Town, London, NW1 7NL, England
Monday 20th June 2016, 7:00 pm – information

From the Forge’s press release:

Douglas Finch (photo by David Yeo)

“Douglas Finch, described as “a true virtuoso” (‘The Independent’), is best known for his innovative and imaginative approach to performance, and for helping to revive the lost art of classical improvisation in concert. As a pianist (winner of the silver medal at the Queen Elisabeth International Competition in Brussels in 1978) and improviser, Finch has already recorded extensively – most recently with the saxophonist Martin Speake, but also with The Continuum Ensemble for NMC and Avie.

“This event celebrates the first ever CD recording of Douglas Finch’s piano and chamber music. ‘Inner Landscapes: Douglas Finch – Piano and Chamber Music 1984-2013’ was recently released on the Prima Facie label. The music was selected from Finch’s catalogue of over forty works, which range from piano, chamber ensemble, orchestra and theatre music to the soundtracks for five feature-length films. The evening will include a performance of selected works from the recording, played by Lisa Nelsen (flute), Aleksander Szram (piano) and Mieko Kanno (violin). Each ticket includes a complimentary glass of wine and a copy of the CD.”

Douglas himself will also be performing, playing “a short piece which is not on the CD, as well as an improvisation to mark the occasion, based on themes that you suggest on the night.”

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June 2016

Reform Club Lunchtime Concerts presents:
Douglas Finch and Bobby Chen: Two Pianos (Four Hands)
Reform Club, 104 Pall Mall, Westminster, London, SW1Y 5EW, England
Wednesday 29th June 2016, 12pm – information

Later in the month, Douglas Finch will also be performing with fellow pianist and regular duet partner Bobby Chen at a lunchtime show at the Reform Club. In addition to a performance of Rachmaninov’s ‘Suite for Two Pianos, Op 5 no 1′, they’ll be premiering one of Douglas’ own compositions, provisionally titled ‘Hapsburg Burlesques – Fantasy Transcriptions on Der Rosenkavalier, Mahagony and Other Elegies’ and working around variations on Strauss, Beethoven and others.

This is almost certainly to be a formal club event with a dress code and restricted access to non-members, so be sure to email and enquire about tickets in advance using the link above. Meanwhile, here’s a sample of Douglas’ improvisations and “instant variations”.

Tags: Aleksander Szram, alto flute music, Bobby Chen, Bruno Maderna, Carla Rees, Dan Di Maggio, Douglas Finch, duo music, flute music, György Ligeti, IKLECTIK Art Lab (promoters), Lisa Nelsen, London (England), Ludwig van Beethoven, Michael Oliva, Mieko Kanno, music for electronics, Pauline Oliveros, piano music, Piers Tattersall, premieres, rarescale, Richard Strauss, Sergei Rachmaninov, The Forge (promoter/venue), Thea Musgrave, violin music

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Categories 2016, 20th century classical music, 21st century classical music, acoustic music, chamber music, classical (Western art music), electro-acoustic music, electronic, experimental music, improvisation, instrumental music, New Music, previews, Romantic music, sound collage

June 2016 – upcoming London gigs – Machinefabriek + Graham Dunning/Colin Webster at IKLECTIK (16th); a host of electro-noise-drone-loop-texturalists explore ‘Mechanical Dreams Along The River’ at New River Studios (17th); V A L V E, Haymanot Tesfa, Mark Braby, Ed Dowie and some Lonesome Cowboys From Hell at Scaledown (17th)

11 Jun

Boosting the signal for some experimental/eclectic gigs in London this coming week…

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Machinefabriek ( photo by Pieter Jan Minnebo)

IKLECTIK presents:
Machinefabriek + Graham Dunning & Colin Webster
IKLECTIK, Old Paradise Yard, 20 Carlisle Lane, Waterloo, London, SE1 7LG, England
Thursday 16th June 2016, 8.00pm – information

“Machinefabriek is the alias of Rutger Zuydervelt, whose music combines elements of ambient, noise, minimalism, drone, field recordings and electro-acoustic experiments. His pieces can be heard as sonic environments for the listener to dwell in. Finding tension in texture, tone and timing, the result can be very minimalistic at first glance, but reveals itself upon closer listening. The devil is in the details. Rutger has collaborated (on record and/or live) with numerous artists including Colin Webster, Jaap Blonk, Aaron Martin, Peter Broderick, Frans de Waard, Steve Roden, Michel Banabila, Dead Neanderthals and Gareth Davis, amongst many others.

“The duo of Graham Dunning & Colin Webster perform improvised music avoiding conventional playing of their respective instruments. Graham Dunning uses a single turntable with dubplates of field recordings, dentistry tools and other objects to create crackling textures, tones and disjointed noise. On saxophone, Colin Webster uses a range of techniques to bring a palette of percussive and textural sounds, drawn tones, and raw, searing blasts. The duo have recorded 3 albums, with their 4th out in May on Tombed Visions, and have also recorded a collaboration with tuba player Sam Underwood.”

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An evening of assorted collective noises:

D503 present:
‘Mechanical Dreams Along the River’: Echoes… Leytonstone + Norvoir + Precocious Mouse + Shabash + D503 + Noteherder & McCloud
New River Studios, Ground Floor Unit E, 199 Eade Road, Manor House, London, N4 1DN, England
Friday 17th June 2016, 7:30 pm – information here and here

“Echoes… Leytonstone is a solo project from James Shearman, interested in hypnagogia and inspired by musicians like Nadja, The Angelic Process and Birchville Cat Motel – ambient and ethereal dronegazing, minimal bellowing cave music.

“Norvoir is an ambient/drone project by Sam Saljooghi, using his guitar to slowly build and create vast atmospheric soundscapes from which you can immerse yourself in through his use of delay, reverb and looping.

“Precocious Mouse will be performing a new live iteration of the ‘seance’ project. Using a combination of generative, microsonics and found sound, the experimental/electronic/glitch piece explores themes of communication and alienation.

“A secret rendezvous of witches and sorcerers, characterized by orgiastic rites, dances and feasting and using violin, piano and noise, Shabash brings spirits of the deep forests and multidimensional realms, allowing different worlds to meet and journey together.

“D503 are Nicola Serra (beats, synthesizer, percussion) and Francesco Garau (guitars and manipulations), a North London-based duo aiming to explore drone, techno and industrial by using primitive and minimal sounds.

“Noteherder & McCloud undertake investigations. A thick grey soup of electronic noise and field recordings enlivened by some remarkable soprano sax playing from Chris Parfitt. We watch from dark corners where synthesisers struggle against illegal parameters.”

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Finding out everything that’s happening at a event at central London eclecti-night Scaledown always tends to be a last-minute matter, but here’s what was scheduled a working week before the latest show…

The Orchestra Pit presents:
Scaledown #119: V A L V E + Haymanot Tesfa + Frank E. & JK-ee (Lonesome Cowboys From Hell) + Mark Braby + Ed Dowie
The King & Queen, 1 Foley Street, Fitzrovia, London, W1W 6DL, England
Friday 17th June 2016, 7:30 pm – information here and here

“Coming up this month we have:

“V A L V E is a progressive/avant-garde sound project from Knifeworld’s Chloe Herington, featuring an ever-morphing line up of conspirators and collaborators and rather a lot of bassoons, saxophones and found sounds.

“The beloved singer and artist Haymanot Tesfa brings her lyre to enchant us with songs of Ethiopia, ancient and contemporary, fresh and traditional.

“Yee-haw…. last year we put out the call for some cowpunk, and this coming Friday we get the grits courtesy of Frank E. & Blind ‘Gentleman’ JK-ee, two of the low-down psycho-reprobates that are Lonesome Cowboys From Hell. They will be regaling Scaledown with tales of family strife and cross-country travellin’ life.

“Co-Scaledown host Mr Mark Braby will perform one short story, one or two wee rhymes, two songs and an improvisation which will last until Duane the intern informs him that he has to stop.

“Ed Dowie has been making music since the late 1990s, firstly as one third of Parlophone’s Brothers in Sound, then later a solo act under the name Redarthur. After a five-year hiatus which he spent living in University libraries & music technology labs making strange bleeps, he returned to the music industry to join The Paper Cinema, a puppetry/animation/theatre/music hybrid (that tours both internationally & in Hackney). Now performing and recording under his own name, he makes music which fuses experimental techniques with melodic aspirations.”

Tags: Brothers In Sound, Chloe Herington, Chris Parfitt, Colin Webster, D503, Echoes… Leytonstone, Ed Dowie, Ethiopia, Francesco Garau, Graham Dunning, Haymanot Tesfa, IKLECTIK Art Lab (promoters), James Shearman, London (England), Lonesome Cowboys From Hell, Machinefabriek, Mark Braby, Nicola Serra, Norvoir, Noteherder & McCloud, piano music, Precocious Mouse, Redarthur, Rotterdam (Netherlands), Sam Saljooghi, saxophone music, Shabash, textural guitar music, The Orchestra Pit/Scaledown (event), The Paper Cinema, V A L V E, violin music

March 2016 – upcoming gigs – two London shows for Saturday – folkestralism and soundscaping at Daylight Music with Benni Hemm Heem, The Second Hand Marching Band and Jilk; post-classical fusion moods with Jo Quail and Poppy Ackroyd in Bethnal Green

16 Mar

Two shows coming up at the weekend…

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Daylight Music presents:
Daylight Music 220: Benni Hemm Hemm + The Second Hand Marching Band + Jilk
Union Chapel, Compton Terrace, Islington, London, N1 2UN, England
Saturday 19th March 2016, 12.00pm – free/pay-what-you-like event (recommended donation – £5.00) – more information

“This is the first of many epic celebrations for Arctic Circle’s 10th Anniversary; Benni Hemm Hemm are even coming all the way from Iceland to join the party!

Benni Hemm Hemm is the band of Benedikt H. Hermannsson, who writes the band´s songs and produces their recordings. The band is an organism that is hard to explain. Its members are in total around three hundred: at shows, the size of the band is usually somewhere from three to forty, deploying guitar, choral vocals, glockenspiel and a broad potential range of chamber instrumentation depending on who’s available. Their songs are variously described by ‘Pitchfork’ as “wispy, ruminative strums with brass, strings, and fiercely emotive rhythms… lullabies that age well – and go out with a predictable, usually affecting bang.”

“Sprawling anywhere between fifteen and twenty-two people, and led by accordionist/tenor horn player Pete Liddle, Glaswegian untraditional folk band The Second Hand Marching Band aim to create something that can’t be created by just four or five people – a mixture of cacophony and beauty, dancing and stillness. They play their music on a variety of brass, woodwind, accordion, guitar and drums; draw on dance, indie pop, post-rock, chanson, Balkan and Scottish music, and love home recording and ensemble madness. They don’t often play south of the border, so this is a good chance for Londoners to catch them in action.

“Expect an afternoon of collaboration and joy, as Benni Hemm Hemm and The Second Hand Marching Band join forces to perform pieces from their recent joint album ‘Faults’. The seeds of the record came from when Benni and Pete first met in 2007, at one of the first SHMB performances. Pete, Ross, Rich and Fraser from SHMB subsequently started playing in Benni Hemm Hemm, and at the same time Pete and Benni recorded some songs together as a collaboration between the two projects. Eventually, nine songs were produced in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Fife, Cumbernauld and Reykjavik – a long project stretching over seven years, eight hundred miles, sixteen instruments and eight singers. The album is a totally self-funded, DIY, self-recorded, self-produced, self-assembled production. This is no mean feat for a normal band, but try it with seventeen people in two countries!

“In support, Bristolian folktronicists Jilk fuse a bewildering collage of home-found sounds with the ambient soundscapes of washy synths, insect-like clicks & cuts, and huge gorgeous waves of all encompassing experimental noise. Deploying violins, guitars, trombone, strings, flutes, multiple drums and vibraphone in addition to the samplers and electronics, they also describe themselves as “glitch-and-paste electronic ambience with balls” and “the sound of jelly babies in tin wellington boots at an Arctic rave”.”

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Jo Quail & Chaos Theory present:
Jo Quail + Poppy Ackroyd
St John on Bethnal Green, 200 Cambridge Heath Road, Bethnal Green, London, E2 9PA, England
Saturday 19th March 2016, 6.45pm – more information

“Composer and cellist Jo Quail writes and performs instrumental music. Her sound is courageous and demands the intense emotional investment of the listener, while remaining wholly accessible to fans of all backgrounds. The inspiration for Jo’s music is drawn from a wide spectrum of influences. Music itself is an obvious touchstone, the compositional aspects of Bach, Debussy, Arvo Pärt, Zoltán Kodály, John Tavener and Bartók sit beside her love of Whitesnake, Jane’s Addiction and Nine Inch Nails to name but a few. At this concert, she’ll be launching her new album ‘Five Incantations’, which she’ll perform in full along with a selection of her previous work.

Composer and performer Poppy Ackroyd , originally from London, is currently based in Brighton. Classically trained on violin and piano, she works by manipulating and multi-tracking sounds from just these two instruments so creating deeply affecting instrumental music. Her widely acclaimed debut album ‘Escapement’ was released in December 2012; a DVD called ‘Escapement Visualised’, featuring stunning bespoke visuals by Lumen for each track on the album, was released in September 2014. ‘Feathers’, her second album, was released in November 2014, and builds on the concept behind her debut – this time, the tracks also feature other keyboard and string instruments. Through the nature of the older instruments Poppy uses there is an intimacy to her work, while field recordings add to the cinematic and atmospheric quality of the music. Yet in a live context the sonic qualities of the performance space itself become another instrument to be manipulated and woven into the performance.”

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More March gig previews on the way…

Tags: Arctic Circle (promoter), Benni Hemm Hemm, Brighton (England), Bristol (England), cello music, Chaos Theory (event/promoter), Daylight Music (event), Glasgow (Scotland), Jilk, Jo Quail, listening to women, London (England), piano music, Poppy Aykroyd, Reykjavík (Iceland), The Second Hand Marching Band, violin music

February 2016 – upcoming classical gigs in the south and east of England – Britten Sinfonia tour Debussy, Donatoni, Takemitsu, Jolivet and a Daníel Bjarnason premiere; Busch Piano Trio play Brahms, Schubert and Loevendie

12 Feb

Some more classical music performances in England this month.

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The Britten Sinfonia return for the second of this year’s (and the third overall) ‘At Lunch’ concert series of mid-day performances across the east of England, this time managing to stretch as far as the south coast.

Britten Sinfonia presents ‘At Lunch Three’

St Andrew’s Hall @ The Halls, St Andrews Plan, Norwich, Norfolk, NR3 1AU, England, Friday 19th February 2016, 1.00pm – more information
West Road Concert Hall, 11 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DP, England, Tuesday 23rd February 2016, 1.00pm – more information
Wigmore Hall, 36 Wigmore Street, Marylebone, London, W1U 2BP, England, Wednesday 24th February 2016, 1.00pm – more information
Turner Sims Concert Hall, University of Southampton, University Road, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, England, Thursday 25th February 2016, 8.00pm – more information

Daníel Bjarnason (photo by Samantha West)

Programme:

Claude Debussy – Syrinx
Franco Donatoni – Small II
Daníel Bjarnason – new work (world premiere tour)
Franco Donatoni – Marches
Claude Debussy – Sonata for flute, viola and harp (L137)

amended setlist for Southampton adds:

André Jolivet – Petite Suite
Toru Takemitsu – And Then I Knew ‘Twas Wind

Performers:

Emer McDonough (flute)
Clare Finnimore (viola)
Lucy Wakeford (harp)

“The combination of flute, viola and harp may not be the most familiar trio ensemble, but it is one that certainly lends itself to the rich exploration of colour and harmonies that is typical of Debussy’s output. A deeply expressive curiosity in soundscapes and association with visual art also features in the compositions of Icelandic composer Daníel Bjarnason, whose new work features alongside that of Debussy in this programme.”

The London and Cambridge gigs include an “in conversation” event (a pre-concert discussion on Daníel Bjarnason’s new work) before the concert at 12.15pm in London, or after the concert at 2.15pm in Cambridge. Tickets are free but must be booked in advance in London, and are only available to concert ticket holders in Cambridge.

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Back in Norwich, there’s a promising trio concert…

(Norfolk & Norwich Chamber Music Festival presents:
The Busch Trio
John Innes Centre, Norwich Research Park, Colney Lane, Norwich, NR4 7UH, England
Saturday 20th February 2016, 7.30pm – more information

“Named after the legendary violinist Adolf Busch and inspired by trio member Mathieu van Bellen’s possession of Busch’s 1783 J.B. Guadagnini violin, the London-based Busch Trio – previously The Busch Ensemble – are emerging as one of the leading young piano trios among the new generation, receiving enthusiastic responses from audiences and critics across the UK and Europe. Recognised for their achievements and the “incredible verve” of their playing, they were winners of the 2012 Royal Overseas League Competition and went on to win several prizes including 2nd prize and the recording prize at the 2012 Salieri-Zinetti International Chamber Music Competition and the 3rd prize at the 2013 Pinerolo International Chamber Music Competition in Italy as well as the 2nd prize at the International Schumann Chamber Music Award in Frankfurt.

Since its formation in 2012 highlights of the Trio’s performances in the UK have included the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Sage Gateshead and a critically acclaimed appearance at Wigmore Hall. They have also given concerts in the Netherlands, France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Denmark. The trio enjoys the support of the Tunnell Trust, the Kirckman Concert Society, the Park Lane Group and the Cavatina Chamber Music Trust, as well as being awarded the MMSF Philharmonia Orchestra Ensemble Award. Most recently they have completed the prestigious ChamberStudio Mentorship Programme, which has offered them teaching from some of the world’s leading musicians. They are currently receiving guidance from members of the Artemis Quartet at the Queen Elizabeth Music Chapel in Brussels.”

This concert includes a pre-concert discussion with the trio members at 6.30pm. In addition to two familiar Romantic-era classics, the programme includes a performance of ‘Ackermusik’ by jazz/Eastern-cultures-inspired Dutch composer Theo Loevendie (which Loevendie notes is “written in a mosaic form of five repetitive elements” and which possibly, though not explicitly, pays tribute to the low, breathy vibrato clarinet stylings of late British trad-jazzer Acker Bilk).

Programme:

Theo Loevendie – Ackermusik
Johannes Brahms – Piano Trio No. 2 in C major Op. 87
Franz Schubert – Piano Trio No 2 in E flat D929

Performers:

Omri Epstein – piano
Mathieu van Bellen – violin
Ori Epstein – cello

Here’s a recent recording of the Busch Trio performing the third (Poc adagio) movement of Dvorak’s Piano Trio in F minor, op.65, as well as a previous performance of ‘Ackermusic’ by the Van Baerle Trio.

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More gig news shortly, including William D. Drake in Italy and Louis Barrabas on the rampage across Scotland and northern England.

Tags: André Jolivet, Anne Denholm, Britten Sinfonia, Busch Piano Trio, Cambridge (England), cello music, chamber ensemble, Clare Finnimore, classical harp music, Claude Debussy, Daníel Bjarnason, Eloise Gynn, Emer McDonough, flute music, Franco Donatoni, Franz Schubert, Johannes Brahms, Knut Vaage, Lucy Wakeford, Mathieu van Bellen, Norwich (England), Omri Epstein, Ori Epstein, piano music, premieres, Southampton (England), Theo Loevendie, Toru Takemitsu, trio music, viola music, violin music

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Categories 2016, 20th century classical music, 21st century classical music, classical (Western art music), Classical music, instrumental music, previews, Romantic 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…

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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

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

16 Oct

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * * * * *

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

Daylight Music 204

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * * * * *

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

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

Here’s the tour blurb…

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

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

* * * * * * * *

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

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

June 2015 – upcoming London gigs – The Orchestra Pit’s “Scaledown #110” on Friday

24 Jun

If you’re in central London, there’ll be assorted noises in Fitzrovia this Friday evening… and so, over to the Orchestra Pit’s blurb-roll…

Gagarin + Hamilton Yarns + Gold Vox + Lisa Jayne + Bobby Barry + Bad Moth @ The Orchestra Pit‘s “ Scaledown #110” (The King & Queen, 1 Foley Street, London, W1W 6DL, UK, Friday 26th June 2015, 7.00pm – free)

Mrs June Sunshine rises and climbs majestically up the wooden staircase, gliding along the corridor until Mrs June Sunshine rests and shines her golden spotlight in the scaledown room. She shines upon each scaledown invited artist in no particular order:

Gagarin – also known for his work with Ludus, Nico, John Cale and Pere Ubu, but best loved around these parts for being one half of both Roshi (featuring Pars Radio and Low Bias), and the whole of Gagarin; Graham ‘Dids’ Dowdall is a masterful musician, whose latest album ‘AOTICP’ continues to mine and define “that sonic interface when nature comes back into the city”.

Hamilton Yarns come from Brighton and they create beautifully hand-crafted musical packages on their own hark! recordings imprint. They are Hamilton Yarns, and we are delighted to welcome them back after a five year absence.

Gold Vox are an elegant exciting recorder duo. Close undulating harmonies, mediaeval, modern, trilling and thrilling. Be blown into another dimension.

Lisa Jayne is a poet, artist, life model and one half of Map 71 (the words/drums + noise combo).

Mr Bobby Barry shall be performing compositions from his book of prose ‘Music In Text‘.

Bad Moth – be prepared to be tickled and highly amused by this eccentric accordion/violin duo who make a most welcome return to scaledown heights.

It’s free – just turn up.

Tags: accordion music, Bad Moth, Bobby Barry, Gagarin, Gold Vox, Graham 'Dids' Dowdall, Hamilton Yarns, Lisa Jayne, listening to women, live concerts, Matt Scott, Pere Ubu, recorder music, Stanley Bad, The Orchestra Pit/Scaledown (event), The Pipettes, violin music

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

17 Jun

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

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

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

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

Programme:

Zita Bružaite – Novelette

Bronius Kutavičius – Three Metamorphoses

Jāzeps Vītols – Romance

Erkki-Sven Tüür – Piano Sonata

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

Anatolijus Šenderovas – Cantus in memoriam Jascha Heifetz

Arvo Pärt – Spiegel im Spiegel

Keith Burstein – PianoWorks

Ariel Anenburg – Images

Performers:

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

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

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

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

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

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Misfit City

May 2020 – single & track reviews – MultiTraction Orchestra’s ‘Emerge Entangled’; Stuart Wilding’s ‘Spaces’ and ‘Horns’

September 2018 – upcoming rock gigs – Rumour Cubes, Agathe Max and Dream Logic in London (14th September); Major Parkinson’s European autumn tour (various dates, 26th September to 6th October)

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

November 2017 – upcoming London classical gigs – baroque-xplorations with Peter Sheppard Skærved’s ‘The Voice of the Violin’ (21st) and Anette Bjørnenak/Krishna Nagaraja/Masumi Yamamoto’s Norwegian ‘Folk-Barokk’ (25th)

March 2017 – upcoming gigs – close-quarters Sefiroth Trio concert of Sephardic music at the Green Note (16th)

November 2016 – upcoming London classical/post-classical gigs – ensemble work, throat-singing and dance with Ayan-ool Sam, 12 Ensemble and Camilla Isola at Kammer Klang (1st); a baroque-to-now SOLO performance by violinist Daniel Pioro (25th)

October 2016 – upcoming London gigs – two-part experimental concert from Laura Steenberge, Michael Winter and friends at IKLECTIK and Hundred Years Gallery (7th & 9th)

August 2016 – upcoming gigs – London goes prog-happy at the Lexington – The Gift + We Are Kin + Tiger Moth Tales’ Macmillan fundraiser (7th); the David Cross Band with David Jackson and Richard Palmer-James (9th)

June 2016 – upcoming London gigs – Nordic musical stories, bass guitar filigrees, brass-laced soundscapes and howling animal men – ‘The Devil’s Purse’ stories at the Forge (22nd); Rothko and Ghost Mind at IKLECTIK (23rd); Ánde Somby at Café Oto (24th)

June 2016 – upcoming London gigs – rarescale (Carla Rees & Michael Oliva) perform Pauline Oliveros, Ligeti Maderna, Thea Musgrave and others at IKLECTIK (19th); Douglas Finch’s ‘Inner Landscapes’ concert at the Forge (20th); Douglas Finch & Bobby Chen at the Reform Club (29th)

March 2016 – upcoming gigs – two London shows for Saturday – folkestralism and soundscaping at Daylight Music with Benni Hemm Heem, The Second Hand Marching Band and Jilk; post-classical fusion moods with Jo Quail and Poppy Ackroyd in Bethnal Green

February 2016 – upcoming classical gigs in the south and east of England – Britten Sinfonia tour Debussy, Donatoni, Takemitsu, Jolivet and a Daníel Bjarnason premiere; Busch Piano Trio play Brahms, Schubert and Loevendie

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

June 2015 – upcoming London gigs – The Orchestra Pit’s “Scaledown #110” on Friday

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

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