Friday 5 June 2026, 7.30pm, The Old Church, Stoke Newington
Áine O’Dwyer is a multi-disciplinary artist, musician, composer and performer whose work is informed by both the conceptual concerns of sound-art and traditional compositional techniques, embracing the broader aesthetics of sound and its relationship to environment, time, audience and architecture. She has created performances and recorded works which often allow for both planned and chance events to co-exist in an attempt to bind together both the intrinsic and extraneous in real-time. Recent presentations include Old Songs, a performance installation commissioned by Oscillation festival, Brussels and Sing in the Dark for voice and Acousmonium performance at Archipel festival, Switzerland.
We’re thrilled to have been working with Áine to present four events, two of which take place in The Old Church in Stoke Newington where Áine has been developing pieces especially for this residency.
The Old Church, Stoke Newington, Friday 5th June. 7.30pm
Please note that this event does not take place in the Cafe.
Áine O'Dwyer & Rhodri Davies (duo) + Áine O'Dwyer / Rhodri Davies / Beibei Wang (trio)
Following shows in Belgium and Glasgow, the duo harp performance from Rhodri Davies and Áine O’Dwyer will perform in London for the first time at The Old Church. Both Rhodri and Áine have a deep and critical engagement with the harp's long history, taking the instrument apart, sometimes literally, and expanding upon it. Coming together with two harps in the stunning setting of the Stoke Newington Old Church - one of the oldest churches in London - this promises to be a very special one-off performance.
Rhodri Davies is immersed in the worlds of improvisation, musical experimentation, composition and contemporary classical performance. He plays harp, electric harp, live-electronics and builds wind, water, ice, dry ice and fire harp installations and has released six solo albums. His regular groups include: HEN OGLEDD, Cranc, Common Objects and a duo with John Butcher. He has worked with the following artists: David Sylvian, Jenny Hval, Derek Bailey, Sofia Jernberg, Lina Lapelyte, Pat Thomas, Simon H Fell and Will Gaines.
For the last ten years Davies has been closely associated with the pioneering composer Eliane Radigue performing seventeen of her pieces. She composed OCCAM I for Davies in 2011, the first in an ongoing series of solo and ensemble pieces for individual instrumentalists in which a performer’s personal performance technique and particular relationship to their instrument function as the compositional material of the piece. New pieces for solo harp have also been composed for him by: Christian Wolff, Carole Finer, Philip Corner, Phill Niblock, Ben Patterson, Alison Knowles, Mieko Shiomi and Yasunao Tone.
In 2008 he collaborated with the visual artist Gustav Metzger on ‘Self-cancellation’, a large-scale audio-visual collaboration in London and Glasgow. In 2012 he was the recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Grants to Artists Award, he was a Chapter Associate Artist (2016-19) and in 2017 he received a Creative Wales Award. He is a co-organiser of the NAWR concert series in Swansea.
Genre-defying percussionist Beibei Wang is an acclaimed international virtuoso percussionist with both a Chinese and British musical education background. Beibei has enjoyed a meteoric rise in the classical music world, receiving international praise for her performances. She was listed in the top 50 Chinese musicians in the “Sound of East” project by the Chinese Ministry of Culture, as well as endorsed by the Arts Council, England receiving an Exceptional Talent visa from the British Government. Following a successful world tour, Beibei now leads a traditional Chinese percussion programme at SOAS, University of London. In 2020, Beibei was named Associate of the Royal Academy of Music. Most recently Beibei was appointed as percussion professor of the Crossover Studies Faculty at London Performing Academy of Music. www.beibeimusic.com
