Saturday 21 March 2026, 7.30pm
Doors are at 7:30pm and music will start from 8pm
Émilie Škrijelj | accordion
Siwan Rhys | piano
eavesdropping returns to Cafe OTO for another four-day festival, curated by Juliet Fraser, which includes four evening double-bill events and a weekend-long forum of provocations up the road at Vortex Jazz Club. We hope to stimulate your ears and your imagination by presenting new work by eight artists working at the experimental fringes of a variety of genres. The programming within each set is artist-led: repertoire is only announced on the night.
eavesdropping
eavesdropping is a platform for the sharing of new music and new ways of thinking about music. Founded by soprano Juliet Fraser in 2017, our activity includes a festival, a forum, a podcast, outpost events around the UK and artist development opportunities. Our mission is to build community through an ethics of curiosity and care, in the belief that ripples do make waves.
https://www.eavesdropping.london
eavesdropping is a PRS Foundation Talent Development Network Partner supported by PPL. eavesdropping gratefully acknowledges the generous support of Arts Council England's National Lottery Project Grants & the eavesdropping consortium patrons.
EMILIE ŠKRIJELJ explores the accordion in its smallest folds and uses it both as a percussion instrument and a generator of electroacoustic materials. Inspired by her research around the turntable, modular synths and field recording, she brings the accordion to the abstract territory of electronics by manipulating the bellows, rubbing its contours and exploring its extremities. In 2020 she created the label eux sæm with Tom Malmendier, which is dedicated to improvised and experimental music and which brings together some of her current projects such as the duo ‘Les Marquises’ and collaborations with Mike Ladd or Otomo Yoshihide. Emilie’s sound-art projects include ‘Presque île’, a series of small sound forms in situ created for the landscape, and the performative sound installation ‘Bruine’ with Michael Thieke and Tom Malmendier.
https://www.emilieskrijelj.com/en
Welsh pianist SIWAN RHYS enjoys a varied career of solo, chamber and ensemble work with a strong focus on contemporary music and collaboration. Her work has taken her to venues including all the major London concert halls, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Philharmonie de Paris, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Carnegie Hall, Walt Disney Hall and Tokyo Opera City. She has appeared at the BBC Proms, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Aldeburgh Festival, Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, Darmstadt Festival and many others. Her recordings include solo music by Barbara Monk Feldman, Ryoko Akama, James Weeks and Mira Calix, and chamber music by Lisa Illean, Oliver Leith, Alex Paxton, Stockhausen, Cassandra Miller, Eva-Maria Houben, Lawrence Dunn and Steve Reich, released on labels such as NMC, Platoon, HCR, all that dust, Nonesuch and Another Timbre. With percussionist George Barton, she makes up one half of award-winning piano-percussion duo GBSR Duo, and she is also a member of new-music groups Explore Ensemble and the Colin Currie Group.
https://www.siwanrhys.co.uk/
