Monday 22 April 2019, 7.30pm
Massimo Magee / saxophone
Ken Ikeda / electronics
Joshua Weitzel / shamisen
Eddie Prévost / drums, percussion
Eddie Prévost began his life in music as a jazz drummer. A recurring interest in this form has been maintained, although always with an experimental ethos. Along the way he has maintained his fifty-year plus experimental credentials with AMM and numerous other improvisation projects, including his now twenty-year long weekly workshop. But drumming has generally been backgrounded to his experimental percussion work. More though, is to be expected of his drumming in 2020 on forthcoming multi-CD album: The Unexpected Alchemy. A part of this Krakow festival recording features the drums and saxophone trio of Ken Vandermark, Hamid Drake, and Eddie Prévost. His most recent released recordings include AMM’s: An Unintended Legacy, and a duo with John Butcher - Visionary Fantasies, both on Matchless Recordings. Also, a solo percussion LP on the Earshots label called Matching Mix. Later, in 2020 he meets with Jason Yarde and Nathan Moore, while in March concerts and recording will hear him drumming with US guitarist Henry Kaiser and saxophonist Binker Golding.
And, early 2020 should see the publication of his fourth book: An Uncommon Music for the Common Man: a polemical memoir.
“Prévost's free drumming flows superbly making use of his formidable technique. It’s as though there has never been an Elvin Jones or Max Roach.” - Melody Maker
“Relentlessly innovative yet full of swing and fire.” – Morning Star
Ken Ikeda is a composer and performer, born in Tokyo. He creates unique electric improvisation by a delicate combination of sine waves. After studying at Berklee College of Music, he has exhibited sound art and visual installations around the world. He has released five solo albums and collaborated on albums with David Toop, Eddie Prevost, John Russell, Toshimaru Nakamura, Tetuzi Akiyama, Chihei Hatakeyama and many other improvising musicians; Also he has collaborated with, amongst others, visual artist Mariko Mori, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Tadanori Yokoo, Darren Almond; and composed and recorded for film maker David Lynch. He released CD albums from Touch, Spekk, Baskaru, White Paddy Mountain and Home Normal. Ken Ikeda currently lives and works in London, UK.
Joshua Weitzel (*1989 in Kassel) is a musician (Shamisen and Guitar) and curator active mostly in the field of experimental music, contemporary jazz and the grey areas in-between. His music is mainly concerned with exploration of contrast, abstract harmony and dynamics and employs a wide array of extended playing techniques.
Founder of Contemporary Shamisen Duo together with shamisen Master Ryota Saito and Ensemble for Experimental Chamber Music Kassel/Interrogation Quartet together with Chie Nagai, Ulrike Lentz and Massimo Magee, which recently debutet at the “Tage Neuer Musik in Weimar” Festival.
He further works/worked with many musicians from all over the world, among them Yumiko Tanaka, Eddie Prévost, Haco, Matthias Schubert, Liping Ting, Tetuzi Akiyama, Katsura Mouri, Simon Rose and many more. His concert series and organising activity in Kassel have become a driving force in the local improvised and experimental music scene, hosting many international artists and being supported in 2018 by municipal and federal funding.
Massimo Magee is a writer, artist and musician based in London. His work is wide-ranging, including fiction, text art, sound and image audiovisual digital art pieces, digital visual art, experimental music (improvised, composed and everything in between), free jazz, radically extended saxophony, electronics, data manipulation and much more. His new acoustic solo alto saxophone record, Toneflower, will be released in August 2022 on 577 Records from New York, a label he has worked with on numerous releases since 2020, including in Cyclone Trio with Tony Irving and Tim Green and in a quartet with Eddie Prévost, Ken Ikeda and Joshua Weitzel. The following month, his new audiovisual novel will be published by Eleusinian Press.
