Thursday 18 June 2026, 7.30pm
Thrilled to host the great Palestinian musician and sound artist, Dirar Kalash alongside collaborators Adrian Utley, Neil Charles, and Youmna Saba
Dirar Kalash's work spans a wide range of musical and sonic practices within a variety of instrumental, compositional and improvisational contexts. He is mostly known for his politically driven soundscape / electro-acoustic project "The Sonic Front", and the compositions "we can't breathe (for eric garner, george floyd, and frantz fanon)" and "by any means necessary (for Malcolm X)".
In recent years, Kalash has provided some incredible moments at OTO with his Improvesistance Ensemble - featuring the likes of Pat Thomas, Shabaka Hutchings, John Edwards, Caius Williams, Momoko Gill and more - creating sound as a direct act of solidarity, disruption, and insistence. A restlessly creative and deeply committed aritst, Dirar Kalash's work has a visceral, undeniable power, and we're very excited to welcome him back to OTO for two nights.
Adrian is most widely known for his work as a member of Portishead.
The past couple of years have found him producing Sorry for Domino and co-producing Ladan for Mute. He’s also working on a couple of solo albums.
Late summer 2022 he will be doing some live shows performing the “Arcadia” soundtrack composed with often collaborator Will Gregory in 2017 for the BFI film of the same name which was directed by Paul Wright.
Neil Charles is one of the most in-demand musicians on the scene, with a huge array of credits to his name, including Jack DeJohnette, the Sun Ra Arkestra, Mingus Big Band, Jose James, Jerry Dammers, Courtney Pine, and Terence Blanchard. His own projects have included Zed U, with Shabaka Hutchings and Tom Skinner, and the more recent ensemble Dark Days, dealing with the work of James Baldwin. Most recently, he has been heard across the international scene with Gabriels. As well as being known as a bass player with a huge sound and immaculate sense of time, he is equally renowned as a producer, going by the alias Ben Marc.
"Bassist Neil Charles went flying, from the first moment filling the space with the sound of his mighty wings Henning Bolte," – Europe Jazz Media Chart
Youmna Saba (Beirut, 1984) is a musician, composer, and musicologist. She holds a Master’s degree in musicology from Antonine University, Lebanon. Her current research focuses on the relationship between electroacoustic music and the Arabic language in its sung form, as well as instrument and space resonances. These explorations manifest across her solo projects, collaborations, sound installations, and innovative experiments with digitally-augmented versions of her instrument, the oud.
Her fifth solo album, Wishah (2023), marks a transformative point in her career. Released by the UK-based label Touch, the album delves into the acoustic and emotional possibilities of a digitally-extended oud, a device developed as part of her research project, Taïma’. Wishah was conceived as a five-stage suite, blending voice, electronics, and oud to evoke themes of memory and transformation.
