Tuesday 9 June 2026, 7.30pm
Thrilled to welcome back the incredible pairing of Evan Parker and Bill Nace to OTO, following their barnstorming 2024 set here which was subsequently released as Branches on our inhouse OTOROKU label.
To make this night a smasher, we've asked label mates Breathing Heavy (the saxophone and sampler duo of Sam Andreae and Ciaran Mackle) to start the proceedings. Their release Not Bad went straight to the top of the charts in 2025.
"It was one of those nights where art as a liberating force of spirit gifted the listeners with an offering of exaltation and joy. It was entirely mystical and mind blowing. A night of Total Music." – Thurston Moore on Nace & Parker's 2024 OTO performance
"If you've ever been tempted by free improvisation, Parker is your gateway drug." - Stewart Lee
Evan Parker has been a consistently innovative presence in British free music since the 1960s. Parker played with John Stevens in the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, experimenting with new kinds of group improvisation and held a long-standing partnership with guitarist Derek Bailey. The two formed the Music Improvisation Company and later Incus Records. He also has tight associations with European free improvisations - playing on Peter Brötzmann's legendary 'Machine Gun' session (1968), with Alexander Von Schlippenbach and Paul Lovens (A trio that continues to this day), Globe Unity Orchestra, Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath, and Barry Guy's London Jazz Composers Orchestra (LJCO).
Though he has worked extensively in both large and small ensembles, Parker is perhaps best known for his solo soprano saxophone music, a singular body of work that in recent years has centred around his continuing exploration of techniques such as circular breathing, split tonguing, overblowing, multiphonics and cross-pattern fingering. These are technical devices, yet Parker's use of them is, he says, less analytical than intuitive; he has likened performing his solo work to entering a kind of trance-state. The resulting music is certainly hypnotic, an uninterrupted flow of snaky, densely-textured sound that Parker has described as "the illusion of polyphony". Many listeners have indeed found it hard to credit that one man can create such intricate, complex music in real time.
Bill Nace is an artist and musician based in Philadelphia, PA. He has collaborated with an extraordinary range of musicians, including Michael Morley, Graham Lambkin, Matt Krefting, Twig Harper, Jooklo Duo, chik white, John Truscinski, Thurston Moore, Jake Meginsky, Jessica Rylan, Paul Flaherty, Wally Shoup, Aaron Dilloway, and Kim Gordon, with whom he regularly plays as one half of the duo Body/Head. In 2020 Nace released the critically acclaimed solo record "BOTH" on Drag City. A collaboration with Gordon and Dilloway -- "Body/Dilloway/Head" -- is out now on Three Lobed Records and his newest solo LP Through a Room was released last November on Drag City.
He has been a featured musician in festivals such as ATP (curated by Jim Jarmusch and held in Monticello, NY), Colour Out of Space(Brighton, UK), Supersonic Festival (Birmingham, UK), International Festival Musique Actuelle (Victoriaville, QC), and Homegrown (Boston, MA). He has performed in a wide variety of venues, running the gamut from the Musee d'Art Contemporain (Strasbourg, France) to The Stone (NYC) to Bennington College (Vermont). Nace’s range has been described as “veering from sculptural, almost Remko-Scha-esque chime to Loren Connors-style elegance in only a few short moves.” (Mimaroglu Music, 2010).
In addition to Drag City and Three Lobed, recordings can be found on Ecstatic Peace (Northampton, MA), Ultra Eczema (Belgium), Holidays (Italy), Throne Heap (VA), HP Cycle (Toronto, ON), as well as on Nace’s own label Open Mouth.
https://openmouthrecords.bandcamp.com/
Breathing Heavy is the saxophone and sampler duo of Sam Andreae and Ciaran Mackle.
Ciaran Mackle is one half of long-running South London improv duo Ashcircle. Specialising in micro feral concrète and music to soundtrack the grinding and repetitive feeling of endless Tory rule. He explores a restricted sound palette, and what happens when language and discourse are squeezed so that all meaning and context is lost.
https://ashcircle.bandcamp.com/
Sam Andreae has been active across Europe over the last decade as a saxophonist, composer and organiser. Through improvisation and composition he explores a music of colliding sound gestures and aural detritus, built up from an intentionally fractured instrumental language and playful spontaneity. His compositions place a focus on gestural processes which in their unraveling reveal a trail of sound artefacts to be picked through.
https://samandreae.com/
“what Sam Andreae does is liminal music, he shows you the clicks, the noises, the breaths, the rattle and hum” – John Doran, Quietus, 2017 on BBC 3 Late Junction
