THE SEEN

Mark Wastell has been organising larger formations of musicians, collectively known as THE SEEN for over a fifteen years. Using predominantly improvised material with occasional instructions or themes distributed to individual musicians just prior to performance. No formation has ever been repeated, THE SEEN never stays static.

Phil Durrant : modular synth, objects
Phil Julian : electronics
Clive Bell : woodwinds
Mandhira de Saram : violin
Chris Burn : piano
Jennifer Allum : violin
Otto Willberg : double bass
Graham MacKeachan : double bass
Henry Bowers-Broadbent : electric piano
Mark Wastell : tam tam, gongs, cymbal

Giacomo Salis

Currently collaborates with fellow Italian radical percussionist Paolo Sanna in a timbre research project and non-idiomatic improvisation. With his solo project My Problem Child, he faced the study of sonic cut-up and noise-searching, creating sound spaces destined to meet other languages with particular attention to video art, installation and theater with a sound that swings between dark ambient, noise, electro-acoustic experimentation.

John Butcher

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

http://www.johnbutcher.org.uk

Olie Brice

Olie Brice is a double bassist, improviser and composer. Raised in London and Jerusalem, he now lives by the sea in Hastings.Olie Brice leads a Quartet featuring Rachel Musson, Alexander Hawkins and Will Glaser, (their debut album “All It Was” will be released in 2025) and an improvising trio with Rachel Musson and Mark Sanders (“Immense Blue”, 2024). He has also led a trio, quintet and octet which can be heard on albums including “Fire Hills” and “Day After Day”.

Brice performs with a wide range of creative improvising musicians, including both legends of the music and his peers. Frequent collaborators include Mark Sanders, Paul Dunmall, Rachel Musson, Tobias Delius, Cath Roberts and Luis Vicente, and he has also appeared with the likes of Evan Parker, Tony Malaby, John Butcher, Trevor Watts, Ingrid Laubrock, Ken Vandermark, Eddie Prevost and Louis Moholo. He is part of several ongoing improvising ensembles including Somersaults (with Tobias Delius & Mark Sanders), a Trio with Ziv Taubenfeld & Kresten Osgood, and the Flame (with Robert Mitchell & Andrew Lisle).