Saturday 16 July 2022, 8pm
Delighted to present 'Eddie Prévost at 80 — marking a journey to a bright nowhere', a series of concerts marking the 80th birthday of one of the UK's foremost improvising musicians.
Whether through his pioneering work with AMM, his long-running London Workshop group, his work with his own Matchless Recordings imprint, or his many collaborations - live and recorded - with the likes of Evan Parker, John Butcher, Joe McPhee, Derek Bailey, and Jim O'Rourke to name just a few, Prévost has had an incalculable impact on the fields of improvised and new music in this country and beyond. These four concerts seek to bring together some of the many facets that make up the body of Eddie's work.
Eddie would like to dedicate this series to Victor Schonfield, the hugely influential promoter who helped change the landscape of experimental music in the UK in the 1960s and 70s, and who died in May this year.
Saturday July 16th, 2022
‘Sounds of Assembly’
Jennifer Allum, violin. John Butcher saxophones, Marjolaine Charbin piano, Ute Kanngeisser cello, Eddie Prévost percussion
ALL SHOWS IN THE SERIES: https://www.cafeoto.co.uk/events/eddie-prevost-at-80/
The investigative dynamic of AMM leads a musician to seek out new material. It is the fabric and constitution of stuff that is considered as more important than any historical or cultural heritage. It is Prévost's constant exploration's that has produced the range of sounds associated with his work, particularly within AMM and its extension to the many workshop ensembles. This philosophy leads to what Seymour Wright has so aptly described as the "awkward wealth" of investigation.(citation) It is a position of constant examination and artistic redress.
Jennifer Allum is a violinist who improvises and plays experimental music.
While she was a post graduate student at Goldsmiths, London she began to attend Eddie Prevost's weekly improvisation workshops where she met musicians like Ross Lambert, Ute Kanngiesser, Dimitra Lazaridou-Chatzigoga and Daichi Yoshikawa. She also began working with composers such as Christian Wolff, Tom Johnson, Michael Pisaro and Michael Parsons around the same time too.
More recently she has played and recorded with The Seen, including performances of John Stevens 'For Sake Of Joy Of Study Of Oneself Together' featuring Stewart Lee as narrator.
She has a number of other recordings available, and her most recent is with John Butcher, Eddie Prevost and Ute Kanngiesser on Ftarri records. Other releases are available from Matchless Recordings.
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
Marjolaine Charbin is a French pianist performer based in London. After studying sound engineering and later jazz piano at the conservatoire in Brussels, she has developed a practice rooted in improvisation. Her sonic palette moves fluidly between prepared and unprepared piano: inside-piano techniques, objects, contact microphones and voice merge with the keyboard.
She has collaborated with a wide range of musicians including Eddie Prévost, Ute Kanngiesser, John Butcher, Phil Durrant, Bill Thompson, Artur Vidal, Chris Cundy, Angharad Davies, Grundik Kassiansky, Emmanuelle Waeckerlé, Dominic Lash, Maggie Nichols… as well as with dancers, theatre and film.
Drawing from her practice of musical, sonic and philosophical fragments that attracts her attention, Marjolaine approaches performance as a site of discovery and social reconstruction.
Latest releases include, on matchless recordings, a duet with Eddie Prévost “The Cry of a Dove Announcing Rain” and “The Art of Noticing”, with John Butcher, Ute Kanngiesser and Eddie Prévost, which was listed amongst the 10 best albums of the year 2023 by the New York City Jazz Review. She received a grant from the Arts Council England to develop her creative practice in 2022.
https://www.marjolainecharbin.com
https://www.instagram.com/marjolainecharbin/
https://marjolainecharbin.bandcamp.com
Ute Kanngießer is a London based cellist and composer from Germany. Over the years, she has carefully deconstructed her classical roots and almost exclusively performs unscripted, improvised music. Much of her work has evolved in relationship with other art forms such as film, poetry, dance and site specific work. She is interested in the vast expressive possibilities of her instrument in relation to body, space, and others, always looking to rediscover or redefine what is musical/lyrical in this moment in time.
Recent releases include Blue Monday - a collaboration with writer Zara Joan Miller - on New York label Reading Group.
