2. otta - tonsättarcentrum123456789 (18:40) otta’s performance unfurled like a conversation with the piano, building on motifs and altering the layout of the preparations inside the piano to suit each individual exploration. Preparations that otta utilised include Athen Kardashian & Nina Mhach Durban’s ‘I never held emotion in the palm of my hand’ (a keyring holding locker keys, a plastic surfboard and dolphin and a small Lotto game, used as a rattle and to dangle over and between the strings), Alia Hamaoui’s peachskin velvet I & II (plastic name tags with pewter cast peach pips attached), Natalya Marconi Falconer’s Between Debris and Thing (an aluminium cast of a fennel husk), and one part of Pheobe riley Law’s shape placing (a unique morph of steel and rubber coating, laser cut into interesting flat shapes). Ellis Berwick’s Electreight (a bike bell sat on its own inverted base) is often returned to by otta as a flourish to mark beginnings and ends of different phrases. A large section of the performance involved bringing Joe Moss’ vibrating Loot Box up to one of the stereo microphones hanging above her head to create a consistent buzzing, whilst she continued to improvise on the piano below. The playful performance felt like an evolving improvised dialogue with the materials at hand, with otta adapting to the effects the preparations made to each refrain. 3. Gentle Stranger - just enough dirt (22:18)  Gentle Stranger’s performance differed from the other two in that there were three musicians or “six hands”  playing on the piano, with Alex McKenzie taking over the high end melodic section of the piano, Josh Barfoot  staying towards the lower end, controlling the majority of the percussive rhythm section of the piece, and Tom  Hardwick-Allan using extended piano techniques, singing and moving the preparations around the inside of the  piano whilst the other two played the keys. Hardwick-Allan began the performance on a tiny red toy piano  (prepared with Olivia Albanell’s Fat Wasp and Ellis Berwick’s Piammer) a metre or so stage left of the grand. The  two pianos were connected by a group phone call that echoed and fed back inside the body of the piano, with  Barfoot and McKenzie’s phones sat inside Hayett Belarbi-McCarthy’s Dear Obsolescence (antique silk) & Verity  Coward’s Wodge (a fake wodge of £20 notes) respectively. The phones were the first of many objects the trio  secretly brought to Cafe OTO that broke the rules for Preparations initially laid out by Joseph Bradley Hill. The  objects included a megaphone, a metronome, a cassette tape and mini-amplifier, an electronic mouse deterrer  and, technically, Hardwick-Allan’s shoes which fell off as Barfoot and McKenzie carried him from one side of the  piano to the other, dropping him onto the piano keys in the process. The performance moves through roughly  eight stages using these objects and the 23 already inside, with each section a different take on the prepared  piano’s possibilities. The performance reaches its end with a wail by Hardwick-Allan into the resonant body of  the piano (the sustain held down by a weight placed their earlier), followed by a ‘wedding song’ sung through a  megaphone from underneath the piano. Hardwick-Allan’s first touch of a key on the grand piano then became  the performance’s last. Three live performances from the third iteration of Late Works’ prepared piano event, Preparations, that took place at a sold out Cafe OTO on 23rd June 2025. For the event, 23 artists were asked to create a sculpture / ‘preparation’ each for the grand piano (shown on album cover above). Three pianists/groups  then had to construct individual live performances with the adaptable unit of preparations. Featuring artist and multi-instrumentalist Stanley Welch, singer and producer otta and experimental ‘post-clown’ trio Gentle Stranger, the playful live album shifts from a vaudevillian theatricality (Welch) to a motif-driven dialogue (otta) to dynamic, rule-bending episodes (Gentle Stranger), together demonstrating the diverse musical range of the  prepared piano. For this third iteration of Preparations, the pianists performed on the grand piano with preparations made by artists/musicians Olivia Albanell, Fan Bangyu, Hayett Belarbi-Mccarthy, Ellis Berwick, Zoe de Caluwé, Patrick Cole, Verity Coward, Mandeep Dillon, Natalya Marconini Falconer, Alia Hamaoui, Ellen Poppy Hill, Joseph Bradley Hill, Athen Kardashian & Nina Mhach Durban, Pheobe riley Law, Vita Lerche, Joe Moss, Eleni Papazoglou, Alexandra Phillips, Gillies Adamson Semple, Thirza Smith & Dominic Watson. The concept (by Joseph Bradley Hill) looks to the piano as an exhibition space, inviting the pianists to activate the sculptures as musical instruments/noise objects. The artists were given two main instructions: the preparation must sit comfortably on an open palm and not damage the piano in any way. Other constraints were organised with Cafe OTO based on their piano, which included using non-perishable materials. The pianists were given one hour each with the piano to work out how they would prepare it for the performance, and were encouraged to use as many of the sculptures as possible. The open nature of the event allows the audience to approach the piano in between sets and explore the effects every sculpture had on the piano for themselves. You can find out more about the rules at www.lateworks.co.uk/preparations 1 - Stanley Welch - Mothers, Dogs and Clowns (27:34) Stanley Welch’s set opened and closed with a tribute to David Bowie, or more specifically Bowie’s nose, the subject of Dominic Watson’s preparation David Bowie (Market Square, Aylesbury) (a pewter cast of the nose of a David Bowie statue). Welch then continued playing almost non-stop through the nearly 30 minute set, shifting through section after section of percussive, theatrical, almost vaudevillian sounds. Throughout, Welch used Joseph Bradley Hill’s Roller (With Hidden Paolozzi) to dampen the bass strings, and the main preparations that punctuated the performance were the lid of Joe Moss’ Loot Box slamming open and shut, and Vita Lerche’s Piano Bell sliding along the strings. A brief whistling interlude added to one of the more romantic refrains in the centre of the piece, and as Welch rattled towards the end, works by Vita Lerche, Gillies Adamson Semple, Patrick Cole, Eleni Papazoglou and Zoe de Caluwé were shifted onto the bass strings to provide him with a dense padding that converted to a loud thumping noise he used to great effect (and to close his performance).

Ted Mair & Ed Bernez - Pursuit across a landscape old/new: Mair & Bernez were the most physically active with the preparations of the three performances, as Bernez was able to roam around the piano using the objects percussively whilst Mair played the keys. Bernez began his interactions with the sculptures by using Jacob Clayton’s Fishing magnet to put inside a piano, plucking the lowest strings with the plastic keyring element of the work. He then moved onto shuffling Yasmine Brennan’s My Albion?? and Karanjit Panesar’s Small vessel in sea green on the same set of strings, which were densely occupied by Aga Ujma, Georgia Gendall, Joseph Bradley Hill, Gabriele Ciulli & Leo DMB’s works. As the piece progresses he moves round to the belly of the piano, rearranging many of the objects closer to the centre strings, including Grace Black’s Conical Side Effect. In the later stages of the performance, Bernez relied heavily on Leo DMB’s waste i saw lorelei to to strum the strings with the clay tipped metal comb prongs, as well as using Karanjit Panesar’s ceramic pot to create a slide effect. Preparations is an event where 23 artists create a preparation each for the grand piano. Three pianists/groups are then tasked with constructing individual live performances with the adaptable unit of preparations. For this second iteration of Preparations, musicians Finn Carter, Dear Laika and Ted Mair & Ed Bernez performed on the grand piano with preparations made by Ryoko Akama, Zoë Annesley, Jasper Appleby Sherring, Grace Black, Joseph Bradley Hill, Yasmine Brennan, Kara Chin, Gabriele Ciulli, Jacob Clayton, Leo DMB, enorê, Georgia Gendall, Harley Kuyck-Cohen, Kiran Leonard, Ruoru Mou, Siân Newlove-Drew, Karanjit Panesar, Lou Lou Sainsbury & Gabi Dao, Harry Smithson, Aga Ujma, Jake Vine, Tiffany Wellington & Isobel Whalley Payne. Finn Carter - untitled: For the preparation of the piano, Carter decided to leave the preparations untouched during his performance of the piece, with the sculptures positioned as follows: Yasmine Brennan’s My Albion?? was draped over the cast iron frame in the centre, next to Isobel Whalley Payne’s Untitled clover handkerchief which was weaved between the strings. Joseph Bradley Hill’s Jerry (an old oil can with ball bearings inside and a cloth coated wooden wedge protruding from the underside) sat on the iron frame closer to the keys, accompanied by Harley Kuyck-Cohen’s Demerara, Coffee, Tobacco (a carved wooden cat with a rotating head and beeswax eyes). Moving further up the piano, the arms of Jake Vine’s Mermaid’s Purse (a leather pouch with ceramic buttons inside) were fed in-between the strings, followed only by Gabriele Ciulli’s M & Ruoru Mou’s Scratch - Ciulli’s engraved brake pad dulled the strings with its weight, with Mou’s elongated ceramic hand causing a light resonance. Grace Black’s Conical Side Effect (a metal cone with a connected battery compartment that causes an LED to flash if the compartment is jolted) protruding behind them accompanied by Jacob Clayton’s Fishing magnet to put inside a piano, which stuck firmly to the frame, leaving the plastic keyring attached to the magnet to dangle on the strings and be moved by the vibrations. Sian Newlove-Drew’s Physics Angel was deemed too perishable to sit inside the piano itself, so for all three performances the glow-in-the-dark candle angel resided on the outer ledge of the piano, looking out at the audience. Dear Laika - Small vessel in sea green: For the performance, Thorn began by using Aga Ujma’s a midwinter night's dream (a silver aluminium wiry net of bells) as a shaken percussion instrument and Leo DMB’s waste i saw lorelei to as a mallet to hit the lower strings of the piano. The lower half of the piano was heavily prepared with Georgia Gendall’s Tapestry of Breath (a vacuum packed Ryvita with toothpaste, tic tacs and broken spaghetti), Kara Chin’s Shopping List (a large photo-covered, raisin box-filled, tentacled object), Harry Smithson’s Pothole to Aven (wrapped in Isobel Whalley Payne’s handkerchief) & Jasper Appleby-Sherring’s Praise (cavolo nero) (a bronze cast of kale atop a wooden and metal plate with locator bolts) all sat along one set of strings. Near the end of the performance Thorn used Karanjit Panesar’s Small vessel in sea green as a slide against certain strings, bifurcating them so each one would play two separate pitches on either side of the pot, reaching a sound halfway between that of a slide guitar and ondes martenot/theremin.

Max Syedtollan: Max prepared the piano by dividing it into several sections: percussion in the bass strings, “harpsichord” in the centre and traditional piano/bells/shakers in the treble. Max began the performance theatrically by walking towards the piano shaking Gwenllian Spink’s “Cloch”, a resin coated mottled aluminium circle surrounded by small bells, dropping it into the piano before beginning his piece. Mathilda Bennett-Greene’s “Hounds of Love Tastes Like Gum” was instrumental in the “harpsichord” sound, with the metal prongs weaved between several strings. In the middle of the performance, Max stands up with Laila Majid’s “Vertebra 2” in hand, walks round to the back of the piano and begins to smash the sculpture into the strings, thumping and scraping the 3D-printed-Alien-vs-Predator-inspired-spine-bone and his hand across the surface. After some sporadic (but calculated) plucks with his hands, Max accidentally broke Angus McCrum’s “Höhepunktinstrument” - in rehearsals he had figured out that the pinecone wedged in a head massager could alter the tone of the note the further you pushed it into the string, and one of the rubber bands snapped in the process. From his proclamation of the preparation’s death “it’s f*cked now” to the end, Max mostly stays seated, slowly disassembling the rest of the preparations from the piano in a satisfyingly manic finale. *All three pianists wedged Hamish Pearch’s “Please water the plants please” in-between two of the bass strings - a black resin cast of a piece of toast - to create a dull flat thud. Faye Milburn’s “Pleuche” was also attached to the strings in all three performances - Faye’s “piano jewellery” is comprised of a silver necklace joining two felted croc clips together. The clips bite the strings and the chain jingles and buzzes around across the surface.* Delighted to present a release featuring three live performances from the Late Works: Preparations event that took place at Cafe OTO on 20th September 2021. For the event, 23 artists were asked to create a ‘preparation’ each for the grand piano (shown on album cover). Three pianists then had to construct an individual live performance with the adaptable unit of preparations. Featuring GLARC regulars Finlay Clark (Still House Plants) & Max Syedtollan (Horse Whisperer) & Slow Dance signee Aga Ujma, the playful live album shifts from dynamic refrain-based contemporary classical sensibilities (Clark) to flowing melodies and improvisations full of pop influences (Ujma) to theatrical avant-garde baroque-tinged experiments (Syedtollan), together showing off the range of musical possibilities with a prepared piano. Finlay Clark: For the preparation of the piano, Finlay placed the majority of the preparations close to the hammers in the central space of the piano, so that they could easily reach into the belly to shuffle the sculptures around whilst still playing with the other hand. Isobel Neviazsky’s “Figure”, Daisy Harvey’s “Clover” & Jack Bidewell’s “middlegame” were three of the preparations sat in the centre of the piano, creating a harpsichordal sound. Finlay often shuffles these around during the performance, as well as Mathilda Bennett-Greene’s “Hounds of Love Tastes like Gum”, a metal Smint case with metal prongs and lychees stuck on and a secret model figure shut inside. Early on in the piece, Finlay picks up Ralph Parks “The Duke and I” (inbetween picking up Louis Eager’s “Piano Keys”) to pluck the treble strings whilst simultaneously playing a refrain on them. In the middle of the performance, Clark reaches deep into the piano to shift Tawfik Naas’ “Seed” from where it was sat in one of the piano’s iron cavities, leaving it to teeter on the strings. A few of the larger sculptures sat much closer to Finlay throughout the performance (Tom Sewell’s 5000-year-old bog wood “Peg”, Angus McCrum’s “Höhepunktinstrument” & Laila Majid’s “Vertebra 2”), and near the crescendoing finale of the piece they are all used to interact with the strings closest to the pins. Aga Ujma: For the performance, Aga didn’t touch the preparations once they were in place, and opted to shuffle them around by hitting the keys at various strengths. The bottom section of the piano was set up to have snare-like qualities by combining Tawfik Naas’ “Seed” and Katharina Fitz’s “Rendezvous” together. The middle section - like Finlay’s - had many sculptures inside to rattle on the strings. One of the most effective preparations in Aga’s performance is Siyi Li’s “Untitled” stickers which were used to weave and attach a £10 note to the strings. The result is a set of peculiar vibrations that extend the sound. If you have ever tried to use the new pound notes to play an LP on your record player you will have heard a similar sound. Ujma frequently uses Joseph Bradley Hill’s “Knucklebone”, a red Tupperware from the Cafe OTO kitchen with two black dice inside, to contribute to the snare noise, though midway through the performance it gets bounced up and wedged sideways between the strings - when you hear Aga slamming the lower octaves of the piano she is trying to dislodge the Tupperware from its string! Daisy Harvey’s “Clover” almost came flying out of the piano at this point. From here until the end, Aga uses her voice as a preparation, rejecting the use of a vocal mic to allow her voice to merge with the sound of the piano.