Thursday 5 December 2024, 7.30pm
A performance of a new longform continuous piece of music written specifically for our Cafe OTO residency and Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.
“The way we perform [our songs]… we don’t hold back on the emotiveness,” says Nick Granata, organ player of Shovel Dance Collective. An ensemble of nine, the group journeys through the traditional folk of the British Isles with a modern political lens, exploring its relationship with queer culture, proto-feminist beliefs and working-class stories. Although traces of drone and metal can be heard in their work – including on 2022’s The Water is the Shovel of the Shore – their symphony of banjos, harps, flutes and citterns emits a calming energy most palpable at their live shows.
Caroline Kraabel is a London-based improviser.
In 2022 Kraabel brought together a large improvising group made up of all sorts of women, non-binary, and transgender improvisers: ONe_Orchestra New.
https://oneorchestranew.com/
Other active groups include:
Transitions Trio (with Charlotte Hug and Maggie Nicols); Fit To Burst, a song-based trio with Sarah Washington and John Edwards (https://carolinekraabel.bandcamp.com/album/fit-to-burst); a duo with Pat Thomas (on piano); the Poetry Quintet with Rowland Sutherland, John Edwards and Sofia Vaisman-Maturana, which incorporates live poetry from guest poets, including Moor Mother.
Kraabel has performed and recorded with many other excellent improvisers, including Robert Wyatt, Louis Moholo, Cleveland Watkiss, Hyelim Kim, Susan Alcorn, Veryan Weston, Mariá Portugal, Neil Metcalfe, Mark Sanders, Shima Kobayashi, and Chris Corsano.
Kraabel’s solo saxophone improvisations while walking in London and elsewhere with her infant child/ren in their pushcair were broadcast weekly 2002-2006 on Resonance 104.4 FM as Taking a Life for a Walk and more recently (without children) as Going Outside. Other radio work includes a series of interviews with improvisers in many media (music, dance, visual art, politics, activism), Why is Improvising Important.
Improvisers and Improvisation, made with John Edwards, is a 22-hour radio piece including music, noise, electronics, live performance and new interviews with improvisers; broadcast as part of 2022’s Radio Art Zone: https://radioart.zone/saturday-10-september
Some Kraabel compositions:
Performances for Large Saxophone Ensemble 1, 2, 3 and 4, for 21-piece spatial saxophone/voice ensemble; Get Used To Balancing, a suite of pieces for alto sax, percussion and two flutes; Now We Are One Two, a 45-minute solo performance; Recording The Other, for soprano, cello, flute, piano and four recording devices; LAST 1, 2 and 3 for pre-recorded voice (Robert Wyatt) and large ensemble; many songs; numerous pieces for large improvising ensembles in London and around the world, including Une note n’écoutant qu’elle-même and Missing.
Kraabel’s 40-minute soundfilm about lockdown London (London 26 and 28 March 2020: imitation: inversion, https://vimeo.com/505430655) received its avant-première at Café Oto in 2021, is available on the Jazzed app, and won the 2021 Ivor Novello Award for Sound Art Composer.
Kraabel conducted, devised pieces for, and played with the London Improvisers Orchestra (LIO) from 1998-2022, and organised their 20th anniversary celebrations, which featured celebrated LIO members from throughout the group’s history.
http://www.masskraabel.com/
https://carolinekraabel.bandcamp.com/
https://oneorchestranew.com/
https://oneorchestranew.bandcamp.com/releases
https://lonelyimpulsecollective.bandcamp.com/
https://jazzed.com/
Zhuyang Liu is a Beijing-born, London-based guzheng musician, sound and multimedia artist. Described as a “new generation guzheng virtuoso” by the Beijing Daily Music Weekly, her practice bridges traditional Chinese instruments and contemporary experimental sound.
Working primarily with the guzheng, alongside Chinese minority instruments such as the sanxian and duxianqin, as well as Asian string instruments including the koto and gayageum, Zhuyang combines improvisation, electronics, noise, and expanded instrumental techniques to challenge traditional boundaries and rearticulate Eastern sonic languages within a contemporary context.
Her work spans sound, performance, writing, and technological art, constructing immersive sonic environments that move between tradition and futurity. Drawing from Chinese opera, folk traditions, field recordings, poetry, and vernacular storytelling, she creates evolving compositions where acoustic and electronic elements intertwine.
Alongside performance, Liu develops original instruments, wearable sound systems, and hybrid acoustic-electronic structures that reshape listening, language, and physical space, extending musical practice into installation and embodied environments.
She has performed at venues including the V&A, British Museum, Hundred Years Gallery, and IKLECTIK, JZ club Hangzhou etc. and has collaborated and shared the stage with artists including Tim Hodgkinson, Maggie Nicols, Atsuko Kamura, Paul Cheneour, Shabaka Hutchings, Dudu Kouaté,Moor Mother, and Jacob Collier.
As a researcher, Liu focuses on sound politics, instrumentality, and sonic ecology. Her writing includes The Sonic Arsenal of Alternative Instruments: An “Unconventional Warfare” in Sound, Noise, and Conflict.
Ins:zhuyangleiu
www.zhuyangliu.com
https://zhuyangliu.bandcamp.com
