Friday 7 July 2017, 6.45pm, OTO Project Space
An early evening solo clarinet performance by Alex Ward to mark the release of his new CD "Proprioception", out June 30th on the Weekertoft label. The recordings which comprise "Proprioception" are the culmination of a 3-year period during which Ward strove to radically overhaul his approach to solo playing. Known for his work with a wide range of improvising musicians including Derek Bailey, Eugene Chadbourne, Lol Coxhill, Thurston Moore, Joe Morris and Steve Noble, Ward's solo work encompasses all he has learned from such a variety of collaborations, whilst also addressing the very specific challenges of the solo situation. As with the album itself, this performance will feature both acoustic and amplified clarinet - Ward's amplified clarinet playing, heard previously in his own groups Forebrace and the Alex Ward Quintet, has also recently been featured to notable effect in Charles Hayward and Charles Bullen's This Is Not This Heat ensemble, and the use of distortion, feedback and reverberation to transform, submerge and disfigure the clarinet's voice pushes Ward's already disorienting deployment of multiphonics and unconventional articulation into even more unexpected sonic realms.
£5 DOOR ONLY, OR FREE ENTRY WITH CD PURCHASE (£10)
https://weekertoft.bandcamp.com/album/proprioception
http://alexward.org.uk
Alex Ward's diverse musical activities since the early '90s have straddled the worlds of free improvisation, contemporary composition and avant rock, and have seen him work with such significant musical figures as Derek Bailey, Duck Baker, Lol Coxhill, Eugene Chadbourne, Simon H. Fell, Thurston Moore, Joe Morris, Steve Noble, Evan Parker, Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Pat Thomas and Weasel Walter, amongst a host of others. His work as a composer/bandleader has encompassed his own ensembles such as Predicate, Forebrace, the Alex Ward Quintet and Items 4, 6, 7 & 10, alongside collaborative projects such as his duos with Dominic Lash, Jem Doulton (as Dead Days Beyond Help) and Sean Noonan (as Noonward); while his solo releases have ranged from unaccompanied performances on clarinet and guitar to the layered studio creations found on 2021's Gated. He currently plays guitar and sings in math/noise trio Heckle Chamber (with Roberto Sassi and Jem Doulton), and is working on the completion of the final album by legendary band Pere Ubu (which he joined in 2021) alongside the other surviving members.
"...guitarist Alex Ward [is] a compulsively creative polymath... a reliably unpredictable axe-hero for collaborators of all backgrounds." – Stewart Lee, The Sunday Times Review
