Monday 11 November 2019, 7.30pm
"[Leila Bordreuil] casually accesses concepts from jazz, contemporary classical, noise, and experimental traditions, but adheres to none of them... she generates bewildering skeins of sound that defy the ears." – Chicago Reader
Leila Bordreuil is a Brooklyn based cellist, composer and sound artist from France. Her cello playing is often improvised, and mainly focuses on texture variations and a collage of phantom overtones and pitched utterances. Through an original vocabulary of extended techniques, preparations, and imaginative amplification methods, her instrument is used as an abstract resonant body to challenge conventional cello practice. Her composed works draw from a similar texture-based musical aesthetic, but also focus on the relationship between sound and space. In her site-specific electro-acoustic compositions, architecture is the foundation of the piece and musicality arises from an organized spacialization of sound.
Bordreuil's collaborative projects include duos with Michael Foster and Tamio Shiraishi, a trio with Sean Ali and Joanna Mattrey, and the no-wave band “Signal Break”.
Since moving to Brooklyn in 2012, Leila has maintained an active concert schedule performing with Marina Rosenfeld, Eli Keszler, Tom Chiu (Flux quartet), Anthony Coleman, Peter Evans, Nate Wooley, SENYAWA, Toshimaru Nakamura, Tetuzi Akiyama, Bill Nace, Lee Ranaldo, Weasel Walter, Chris Corsano, Lea Bertucci and more.
Otto Willberg plays various bass instruments and lives in London. Live, Otto performs unashamedly melodic improvisational workouts created almost entirely with heavily filtered bass harmonica and electric bass. Strangely abstracted funk and fusion, a blend of the abstruse and immediate. silky smooth, luxurious, odd and compelling, "like listening to Eberhard Weber through a drainpipe”.
Otto is often heard on acoustic and electric bass with Laurie Tompkins (Yes Indeed) and Charles Hayward (Abstract Concrete//This Heat), as well as the fractured No Wave unit Historically Fucked. His previous solo releases have ranged from extended technique double bass to explorations of the acoustics of a 19th century artillery fort.
He has a solo record called ’The Leisure Principle’ out on Oren Ambarchi's the Black Truffle label. 6 unashamedly melodic & profoundly strange workouts for heavily filtered bass harmonica & electric bass!
“deftly weaves a breathtaking range of techniques and textures on the instrument, spanning frenetic highs to lows of bracing physicality. From dizzying clusters of notes to multilayered melodicism […] Silver gives a visceral, bodily performance”
Bass clarinet and multi-instrumental solos, keyboard player in Charles Hayward’s band Abstract Concrete, member of Ana Maria Avram and Iancu Dumitrescu's Hyperion Ensemble, RAY trio with Ashley Paul and Otto Willberg, orchestral song arrangener for Nico Teen and others, collaborations with Steve Noble, Sharon Gal, John Edwards, etc.
