Monday 7 December 2026, 7.30pm
Charles Hayward's two-night residency at OTO revisits compositions that continue to change with each performance, alongside new groups assembled from across London's experimental and improvised music communities, focusing on new connections, new players and processes.
Over the past few years, Hayward has been working across genres with younger musicians in London; here those relationships meet less familiar collaborations with players including Evan Parker and John Bisset. Hayward describes the possibility of what once seemed like a distance between musicians becoming an interesting contrast, with ‘concepts and codes falling away into pure sound’.
Timestretch Alarmsong, part of Hayward's programme at The Albany in 2019, was described by Hayward at the time as a sequence of 'tunes and sound snakes', with tightly worked passages moving between melody, and much heavier material. It returns here in a revised form with a new line-up.
PROGRAMME – MONDAY 7 DECEMBER:
- Timestretch Alarmsong
Charles Hayward, Charlotte Keeffe, Agathe Max, Roberto Sassi, Lascelle Gordon, Jordan Muscatello
- Ready Reckoner
Charles Hayward, John Bisset, Nathan Greywater
- Dwoh
Charles Hayward, CJ Calderwood
Charles Hayward is an English drummer/singer/composer and was a founding member of the experimental rock groups This Heat and Camberwell Now. He also played with early European improv group Mal Dean's Amazing Band and gigged and recorded with Phil Manzanera in Quiet Sun as well as a short stint with Gong. Since the late 80's he has concentrated on solo projects and collaborations including Massacre (with Bill Laswell and Fred Frith), Monkey Puzzle Trio, Albert Newton (with Pat Thomas and John Edwards) and This Is Not This Heat which toured the UK, Europe, USA and Japan between 2016-2019 performing expanded versions of This Heat’s oeuvre to unfaltering critical acclaim. Hayward’s latest group, Abstract Concrete, formed from London players from a diversity of European underground scenes, released its self-titled debut album in November 2023.
