Monday 5 October 2015, 8pm
Please note that due to ill health, Barre Phillips has unfortunately had to pull out of these shows. We wish him a speedy recovery and hope to have him back at OTO soon. To mark his 80th birthday, we will be screening some rarely-seen footage of Barre both nights.
Spontaneous, direct, together. Without any preparation, conferring, or planning. Faced with the same challenge as on the very first day they met - sculpting sounds in an empty room. AlI these three musicians can contribute is their decades of experience in free improvisation and their own personal styles of musical expression - no more and no less.
For the past fifteen years the American double bass player Barre Phillips and the two Swiss musicians Urs Leimgruber and Jacques Demierre have been coming together to play on an irregular basis and have already chalked up something in the region of two hundred concerts.
All three have unlocked a whole new dimension of their instruments and it is this that gives them their unmistakable sound. Every time they get together, their music is simultaneously reinvented and carried forward. At that point their musical styles either become more densely interwoven or evaporate until verging on silence.
Monday 5 October
Duo Eddie Prévost / John Tilbury
Barre Phillips film screening
Trio Leimgruber / Demierre / Turner
As much a composer as a performer, Barre works in the areas of film, ballet and theater. He has written music for numerous feature films – Robert Kramer, Jacques Rivette, William Friedkin, Marcel Camus… scores for ballet for Carolyn Carlson and the Paris Opera… At the same time he has continue his experiences in the jazz and contemporary improvised music scene. Barre has recorded over 175 records, 30 under his own name. His experience spans a wide range of musical styles, from Coleman Hawkins to Derek Bailey. His work in the 70‘s with John Surman and Stu Martin, „The Trio“, became a model in itself, and influenced many younger musicians.
He is constant demand throughout Europe, North America and Japan as a soloist and teacher. Besides many other musicians he has collaborated togehter with: Archie Shepp, Chick Corea, George Russel, Lee Konitz, Ralph Towner, Charlie Mariano, Michel Portal, Albert Mangelsdorf, Anthony Braxton, Jimmy Guiffre, Paul Bley, Evan Parker, Ornette Coleman, Leonard Bernstein Terje Rypdal, Benny Golson, Pierre Favre, Cecil Taylor, Barry Guy.
Urs Leimgruber has been working since many years in the fields of Contemporary Improvisation, Jazz and New Music. He has enriched and expanded for decades the saxophone sound with new playing techniques in solo concerts and many different acclaimed groups he was touring in Europe, Canada, U.S.A. and Cuba. Among his many concerts and recordings are those with Joëlle Léandre, Marilyn Crispell, Fritz Hauser, Evan Parker, Fred Frith, Steve Lacy, Dorothea Schürch, Roger Turner, Thomas Lehn, Günter Müller… Together with Jacques Demierre he is leading the group 6ix. In the seventies, he was cofounder of the Electricjazz-Freemusic group OM. His music is to be found on CD on HatArt, Unit, FOR 4 EARS Victo and LEO.
Jacques Demierre is pianist, performer and composer, his musical and sound work develops itself in various directions : improvised music, contemporary music, sound poetry, sound installation. His compositions and sound realisations are concerned with the activity of listening and with sound space. On the piano, Jacques Demierre has developed a unique operating style, never ceasing to redraw new sound topographies, making us forget the physical weight of the instrument.
He collaborates with many improvising musicians – Okkyung Lee, Thomas Lehn, Martial Solal, Radu Malfatti, Joëlle Léandre, Axel Dörner, Fritz Hauser, Sainkho Namtchylak, Urs Blöchlinger, Irene Schweizer, Hans Koch, Isabelle Duthoit, Brandon Labelle, Jason Kahn, Butch Morris, Carlos Zingaro, Gunter Müller, Jaap Blonk, Barry Guy, Lucas Niggli, Sylvie Courvoisier, Hann Bennink, Rhodri Davis, Martin Schütz, Paul Lovens, Dorothea Schürch, Phil Minton, …-, regularly plays solo piano concerts, and works with Vincent Barras in the field of performance and language art.
Eddie Prévost began his life in music as a jazz drummer. A recurring interest in this form has been maintained, although always with an experimental ethos. Along the way he has maintained his fifty-year plus experimental credentials with AMM and numerous other improvisation projects, including his now twenty-year long weekly workshop. But drumming has generally been backgrounded to his experimental percussion work. More though, is to be expected of his drumming in 2020 on forthcoming multi-CD album: The Unexpected Alchemy. A part of this Krakow festival recording features the drums and saxophone trio of Ken Vandermark, Hamid Drake, and Eddie Prévost. His most recent released recordings include AMM’s: An Unintended Legacy, and a duo with John Butcher - Visionary Fantasies, both on Matchless Recordings. Also, a solo percussion LP on the Earshots label called Matching Mix. Later, in 2020 he meets with Jason Yarde and Nathan Moore, while in March concerts and recording will hear him drumming with US guitarist Henry Kaiser and saxophonist Binker Golding.
And, early 2020 should see the publication of his fourth book: An Uncommon Music for the Common Man: a polemical memoir.
“Prévost's free drumming flows superbly making use of his formidable technique. It’s as though there has never been an Elvin Jones or Max Roach.” - Melody Maker
“Relentlessly innovative yet full of swing and fire.” – Morning Star
John Tilbury is renowned for his peerless interpretation of the piano music of Morton Feldman, John Cage, Christian Wolff and Howard Skempton. In addition to the performances and seminal recordings that he has made of these composers’ works, he has been an eloquent advocate of their music in his writing and speaking about them. The same is true of the attention he has paid to the music and ideas of Cornelius Cardew, the subject of his authoritative biography published in 2008, and with whom he played in the legendary improvisation groups the Scratch Orchestra and AMM. In the last ten years John Tilbury has performed a range of plays and prose pieces by Samuel Beckett.
Video by Helen Petts
Over decades Roger Turner has brought the renowned volcanic power and finely-honed precision of his drum work to ensembles that have forged substantial connections with musicians both sides of the Atlantic and more recently from Japan. In addition to pioneering an acoustic percussive language that can run in tandem with approaches to contemporary electronic instruments, he has worked extensively in the microscopic laboratory of the acoustic duo situation where he acquired a highly developed sense of detail and of dynamic control. One of that select group of world-class players who have collectively redefined the language of contemporary percussion, in Turner's hands minute inflections of tension can shape the group's musical direction and galvanise a new level of audience experience.
