Tuesday 4 February 2025, 7.30pm
GRAIN is a concert series and residency for experimental and improvised music, operating mainly out of Avalon Cafe, South Bermondsey.
GRAIN is curated and produced by Caius Williams and Theodora Laird. The series is focussed on programming new and adventurous music and nurturing a growing community with cross-scene and cross-generational collaboration. The residency also documents music made in and around South Bermondsey, and gives occasional workshops aiming to widen access, interest, and explore processes for improvising and collective music-making.
Caius Williams is a musician from London who plays the double bass, guitar, and bass guitar. He works in collaboration with others, alongside various solo projects, and often works with improvisation and explorations of resonance and perception.
He is in the collaborative groups ‘Crosspiece’ (with Theodora Laird), ‘Argia’ (with Tara Cunningham & Theo Guttenplan). He also works as guitarist/bassist for feeo, alongside lots of other varied work as a supporting musician, both in studio and touring internationally. Some recent collaborators include Steve Noble, Tom Challenger, Charles Bullen, Jack Dove, Zheng Hao, Maggie Nicols, Mark Wastell, Rory Salter, Regan Bowering, Sachiko M, Mark Sanders, and others
Caius has also been organising ‘GRAIN’ since 2022: a concert series and label, focussed on programming new and adventurous music
https://caiuswilliams.bandcamp.com
Charles Bullen was a member of timeless pre/post-everything trio This Heat. He grew up in Liverpool and after moving to London in the early 70’s he formed the improvising duo Dolphin Logic with Charles Hayward, which later, with the addition of “non-musician” Gareth Williams, became This Heat. After releasing two seminal albums the band split in 1982 and Bullen made an album the following year under the name Lifetones focusing on repetition and a more syncopated dub influenced sound. Between 2016-2019 Bullen and Hayward formed This Is Not This Heat which toured the UK, Europe, USA and Japan performing expanded versions of This Heat’s oeuvre to unfaltering critical acclaim. Bullen also reformed Lifetones in 2023 for a short run playing Café Oto, Haus Der Kunst, Munich, and for the Pinault Foundation, Paris.
Tara Cunningham is a guitarist and composer whose work focusses on both improvisation, and pushing the textural boundaries of her instrument. Ongoing projects include; duo with bassist Caius Williams and acid-jazz group Red Snapper. She has also recently recorded part of Jack Cooper’s Modern Nature for their fourth studio album, as well as currently working with drummer Seb Rochford on his latest project for 6 guitars.
Theo Guttenplan is a drummer and percussionist from London, playing improvised and other musics. He is also interested in woodworking, crosswords, computers, and football.
Theodora Laird is a vocalist and multidisciplinary artist. Releases under her solo project ‘feeo’ have received critical acclaim. Theodora's practice has involved in tandem with an interest in situating narratives within freely improvised music, specifically through frequent involvement in the GRAIN residency.
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 - solo and in collaboration with others. Much of her work has evolved in relationship with other art forms such as film, poetry, 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 collaborations have been with Paul Abbott, Tom Wheatley, Theodora Laird, Nik Colk Void, Okkyung Lee, Caius Williams, Bo-Sung Kim, Steve Noble, Kenichi Iwasa, and Phil Minton. She has also performed alongside poets Denise Riley, Nathaniel Mackey, Evie Ward, and Zara Joan Miller.
Lauren Kinsella is an Irish vocalist based in London. Her work as a composer, improviser, collaborator and performer has been described as “truly captivating” (For Folk’s Sake), “stunning” (BBC Radio 3) and with “inventive curiosity and imagination” (Irish Examiner). A regular performer at many of London’s celebrated venues and festivals including Kings Place, Cafe Oto, the Vortex, the Royal Albert Hall, Southbank Centre, Songlines Encounters and the London Jazz Festival, she has also performed at several European festivals including Unerhört Jazz (Switzerland), InJazz (Netherlands), Cool Britannia (Vienna), Klaeng (Cologne), Down With Jazz (Ireland), Ankara International Music Festival (Istanbul), 12 Points (Porto), Dublin Literary Festival (Ireland), European Jazznights (Oslo), Jazzy Colours (Paris), Belfast Literary Festival (UK), Südtirol Jazz Festival (Italy) and the Cardiff Poetry Festival (Wales). She specialises in improvisation and her unique style of vocalisation involves exploring the different types of vocabulary connected with vocal and instrumental sound. From singing to speech, utterance to lexicon, syllabic deconstruction to stream of consciousness, Lauren’s work celebrates the human voice in multi-faceted ways. “A modernist, Kinsella is pushing vocal improvisation into new areas” (AllAboutJazz)
https://laurenkinsella.com/
