Saturday 26 March 2016, 8pm
First visit to OTO since 2013 for the formidable, no-holds-barred grouping of Mats Gustafsson, Johan Berthling, Andreas Werliin. Having expanded out into a full-blown 28-piece Fire! Orchestra in recent years, this show sees them return to the original trio. Consisting of members from The Thing, Tape and Wildbirds & Peacedrums, Fire! is all about burning up tradition and blazing new paths and fresh approaches in improvised music - approaches informed equally by garage punk, electroacoustics and the noise of heavy industry.
Hailing from Umeå in Northern Sweden, Gustafsson is a saxophonist/composer/improviser working across noise, electronics, contemporary rock and free jazz as well as contemporary dance, theater and art projects. He has performed both as a solo artist and toured internationally with Peter Brötzmann, Sonic Youth, Merzbow, Jim O´Rourke, Barry Guy, Otomo Yoshihide, Yoshimi, Ken Vandermark and in working groups The Thing, Sonore, FIRE!, Gush, Boots Brown, Swedish Azz and Nash Kontroll. He also participates in the large ensembles Barry Guy New Orchestra, Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet and the NU – ensemble.
Bassist Johan Berthling has been very active during the last 25 years on the international scenes for jazz, rock, and improvised music, and have also frequently been working with music for film and theatre. Together with Mats Gustafsson and Andreas Werliin, he’s running the free jazz/rock/noise-bethemoth Fire! Orchestra, who recently released the massive triple-LP box ECHOES, on Rune Grammofon. Among other current projects are trios with Paul NIlssen-Love and Akira Sakata, Steve Noble and Martin Küchen, and Oren Ambarchi and Andreas Werliin, respectively. His stunning album BJÖRNHORN (2022) – the first solo album of his – sold out quickly but have been repressed several times. On the album, Ken Waxman of Jazzword wrote: ”His clenched hand-on-bass-neck techniques concentrate most billowing buzzes into a solid mass, yet on 'Björnhorn V' he spackles high-pitched colors to lighten the narrative. While the presto and staccato friction projected by his bow work sometimes suggests the strings are a millisecond away from literally bursting into flames, his one turn to pizzicato thumps out wide spatial suggestions. Furthermore when he assays Charlie Haden’s balladic 'For Turiya', his buoyant vibrations show he’s also capable of melodic story telling.”
Born in 1982 in the vast snow of northern Sweden and raised in the small west coast village Strömstad. With improvised music at heart and drums as main instrument he is currently part of some well acclaimed and award-winning bands like Wildbirds & Peacedrums, Dan Berglund's Tonbruket and Loney Dear. He has also written music for theater and film.
