8–9 May 2024
Please note performances will begin at 8:15pm on both nights of this residency.
Thrilled to host a two-day residency with experimental vocalist, movement artist and composer, Elaine Mitchener, to mark the release of her first ever solo LP, Solo Throat, released on Otoroku.
Elaine Mitchener is a veteran of vocal expression in the global Black Avant Garde, traversing free improvisation, cross-disciplinary music theatre and contemporary composition with clarity and joy. Drawing on the work of African-American and African-Caribbean poets Edward Kamau Brathwaite, Aimé Césaire, Una Marson and N. H. Pritchard, the twelve new vocal compositions on Solo Throat disrupt semantic sense, play with the margins of lyrical translation and give rise to new voicings.
This special two-day residency centres on the spirit of sonic and physical experimentation / improvisatory encounters in response to - or away from - some texts by Afro-diasporic poets that have inspired Elaine's work, as well as an opportunity for people to play together who wouldn’t normally do so from the world of dance, poetry, music, visual art. Not to be missed!
Elaine Mitchener is a veteran of vocal expression in the global Black Avant Garde, traversing free improvisation, cross-disciplinary music theatre and contemporary composition with clarity and joy.
Her debut album SOLO THROAT released in May 2024 under Café Oto’s OTOROKU label has been described as “An uncompromisingly imaginative approach to text that does credit to the power of the human voice, as well as the mind that pushes it on to previously unheard paths.” (Jazzwise)
Experimental musicians and improvisers she has worked with include Moor Mother, Joelle Leandre, Hamid Drake, William Parker, Pat Thomas, Black Top, David Toop, Xhosa Cole. Elaine is founder of the collective electroacoustic unit The Rolling Calf. Composers, visual artists and poets she has worked with include: George E Lewis, Jennifer Walshe, Matana Roberts; visual artists The Otolith Group, Christian Marclay, Sonia Boyce; Jay Bernard, Roy Claire Potter, Dante Micheaux; chamber ensembles Apartment House, ICE, Ensemble MAM, Klangforum Wien, Van Huynh Co.
