Tuesday 5 July 2016, 8pm
We are delighted to bring together two of London’s consistently unique voices in improvised music, Steve Noble and John Butcher for a rare pairing (last performing together as a duo in the late 90s). Sound artists Dunning/Macedo/White work as a trio for the first time, with a brand new performance conceived specifically for this event. Jennifer Allum and Dimitra Lazaridou-Chatzigoga present a duo exploring the boundaries between music and sound.
Born in Brighton and living in London, John Butcher is a saxophonist whose work ranges through improvisation, his own compositions, multi tracked pieces and explorations with feedback, unusual acoustics and non-concert locations. He is well known as a solo performer who attempts to engage with a sense of place. Resonant Spaces, for example, is a collection of performances recorded during a tour of unusual locations in Scotland and the Orkney Islands.
Butcher originally studied Physics, but after publishing a PH.D (1982) on quantum chromodynamics he left academia and took off with music. He has since collaborated with hundreds of artists, some for many decades, including Derek Bailey, Eddie Prévost, Angharad Davies, John Stevens’ Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Okkyung Lee, Andy Moor, Sophie Agnel, Christian Marclay, Pat Thomas, Phil Minton, Rhodri Davies, Tony Buck, Magda Mayas, John Russell, Chris Corsano, Steve Beresford, Ståle Liavik Solberg, and Matthew Shipp.
Additionally he values occasional encounters - with large groups ranging from the WDR Sinfonieorchester (as soloist), and the 20+ piece EX Orkest to duos with Akio Suzuki, Liz Allbee, Keiji Haino, Isabelle Duthois, David Toop, Mariam Rezaei, Fred Frith and Joe McPhee.
Recent compositions include “Fluid Fixations” (an hcmf commission), “Penny Wands” for Futurist Intonarumori, “Good Liquor…” for the London Sinfonietta and “Tarab Cuts” (shortlisted for a British Composer’s Award).
"Over 40 years of sustained performance and publishing, English saxophonist, improvisor and composer John Butcher has shaped much of what soprano and tenor saxophone can do, and what their roles and vocabulary in improvised music might be. I’ve always heard Butcher’s playing as a kind of nose-to-tail saxophony, where the whole instrument from reed-tip to brim of bell is available, accessible and articulate. Few other saxophonists slice as sharply back into the physical history, material (and physics) of the instrument, across its near 200 year history. When Hector Berlioz wrote of his friend Adolphe Sax’s then fresh invention, “the varied beauty of its accent, sometimes serious, sometimes calm, sometimes impassioned, dreamy or melancholic, or vague”, he could have been imagining Butcher's distinctively clean but complex, enquiring soundworld." WIRE - October 2024. The Primer by Seymour Wright
Steve Noble is London's leading drummer, a fearless and constantly inventive improviser whose super-precise, ultra-propulsive and hyper-detailed playing has galvanized encounters with Derek Bailey, Matthew Shipp, Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith, Stephen O'Malley, Joe McPhee, Alex Ward, Rhodri Davies and many, many more.
In the early eighties, Noble played with the Nigerian master drummer Elkan Ogunde, Rip Rig and Panic, Brion Gysin and the Bow Gamelan Ensemble, before going on to work with the pianist Alex Maguire and with Derek Bailey (including Company Weeks 1987, 89 and 90). He was featured in the Bailey's excellent TV series on Improvisation for Channel 4 based on his book ‘Improvisation; its nature and practise’. He has toured and performed throughout Europe, Africa and America and currently leads the groups N.E.W (with John Edwards and Alex Ward) and DECOY (with John Edwards and Alexander Hawkins).
Graham Dunning is self-taught as an artist and musician having studied neither discipline academically. His work explores sound as texture, timbre and something tactile, drawing on bedroom production, tinkering and recycling found objects. He has performed solo and in ensembles across the UK, and Europe, and shown solo sound installations in the UK, New Zealand and USA. He teaches Experimental Sound Art at the Mary Ward Centre in London and also gives various independent workshops. Dunning has released through Entr’acte, Seagrave, Tombed Visions and more.
John Macedo is an artist and performer from London. His work explores connections, relationships, interdependence and revealing the hidden potential in all sounds, environments and technologies, often in intimate, immersive and intuitive ways.
He performs live solo and has collaborated with a wide variety of musicians and artists including Phil Julian, Graham Dunning, Tom White, Yoni Silver, John Butcher, Cath Roberts, John Edwards, Michael Speers, Steve Noble, Sue Lynch, Lee Fraser and Adam Bohman, to name a few. He has had work released by The Tapeworm, Hideous Replica, Sound Holes, and Beartown Records as well as releasing small run and object editions on his own label, The Black Plume Editions. He has performed and presented work in the UK, Europe and US and has led workshops and produced collaborative, educational and community-based projects for Whitechapel Gallery, South London Gallery, Artsadmin and New Contemporaries.
Tom White is an artist focusing predominantly on sound-based practices such as live performance, installation, recordings, composition for dance and film. He is interested in the physicality and phenomena of sound; how it can be felt by the body and experienced in architectural space. Past projects include commissions and appearances for Radiophrenia, Glasgow (CCA); BRAUBLFF (KRAAK & De Player); Whitechapel Gallery, London & Colour out of Space Festival, Brighton. Recent collaborators include Surface Area Dance Theatre, Maya Dunietz, Ben Knight, Renato Grieco and Lia Mazzari. He has performed extensively across the UK and Europe, travelled to North America and Japan and had work published by labels such as Takuroku (Cafe OTO), Glistening Examples, Vitrine, Chocolate Monk, Calling Cards Publishing and South London Gallery. He won the British Composer Award in 2014 (Sonic Art) for Public Address, commissioned by South London Gallery.
In 2016 he founded Apologies in Advance; a
platform for artists presenting work in progress performances.
https://tomwhitesound.com
http://tomwhite.bandcamp.com
Jennifer Allum is a violinist who improvises and plays experimental music.
While she was a post graduate student at Goldsmiths, London she began to attend Eddie Prevost's weekly improvisation workshops where she met musicians like Ross Lambert, Ute Kanngiesser, Dimitra Lazaridou-Chatzigoga and Daichi Yoshikawa. She also began working with composers such as Christian Wolff, Tom Johnson, Michael Pisaro and Michael Parsons around the same time too.
More recently she has played and recorded with The Seen, including performances of John Stevens 'For Sake Of Joy Of Study Of Oneself Together' featuring Stewart Lee as narrator.
She has a number of other recordings available, and her most recent is with John Butcher, Eddie Prevost and Ute Kanngiesser on Ftarri records. Other releases are available from Matchless Recordings.
Dimitra Lazaridou-Chatzigoga (Thessaloniki, Greece) is a musician and linguist based in London. She is active in experimental and improvised music since 2006. She plays the zither, a string instrument, and uses ebows and objects on its resonance box to produce sustained or granulated sounds. Her approach focuses on the interplay between spontaneity and elaborate techniques.
Recently, Mikroton released ‘Borough’ that documents the singular meeting of ‘The Holy Quintet’ with Johnny Chang, Jamie Drouin, Dominic Lash and David Ryan.
In the last few years she has been performing mainly in and around London, while most recent shows have been in Berlin. At the moment, she is exploring multiple ways to reroute her music.
http://www.strokebystroke.net/
