Friday 1 November 2024, 7.30pm
“Han Bennink is an international treasure, a towering catalyst bringing sparkle, humour and character to an art form that too often is dull.” – London Jazz News
In the fields of experimental and outsider music, the word "legendary" can be applied far too liberally, but for Han Bennink no other word will do. Celebrating his 82nd birthday this year, the Dutch drummer and percussionist has had a colossal impact and influence in the fields of free jazz and improvised music, from his seminal and varied work with the likes of John Tchicai, Peter Brötzmann and Derek Bailey in the 60s and 70s, to a still restlessly inventive collaborative output with artists as wide-ranging as The Ex, Pat Thomas and Eugene Chadbourne in more recent years.
Combining equal parts virtuosity and anarchic irreverence, Bennink has never rested on his laurels, and this should be an enthralling and thrillingly unpredictable three days.
“What ultimately makes Bennink special is his manifest love for the music, a love that inclines him to tear down the cardboard walls that too often separate different schools of jazz. At his best, with colleagues who share his all-encompassing stylistic embrace, Bennink plays the continuum of jazz as an instrument unto itself.” – Drummerworld
Drummer and multi-instrumentalist Han Bennink was born in Zaandam near Amsterdam in 1942. His first percussion instrument was a kitchen chair. Later his father, an orchestra percussionist, supplied him with a more conventional outfit, but Han never lost his taste for coaxing sounds from unlikely objects he finds backstage at concerts. He is still very fond of playing chairs.
In Holland in the 1960s, Bennink was quickly recognized as an uncommonly versatile drummer. As a hard swinger in the tradition of his hero Kenny Clarke, he accompanied touring American jazz stars, including Sonny Rollins, Ben Webster, Wes Montgomery, Johnny Griffin, Eric Dolphy and Dexter Gordon. He is heard with Gordon on the 1969 album "Live at Amsterdam Paradiso" (on the Affinity label) and with Dolphy on 1964s "Last Date" (PolyGram). At the same time, Bennink participated in the creation of a European improvised music which began to evolve a new identity, apart from its jazz roots. With fellow Dutch pioneers, pianist Misha Mengelberg and saxophonist Willem Breuker, he founded the musicians collective Instant Composers Pool in 1967. Bennink anchored various bands led by Mengelberg or Breuker, and appeared in their comic music-theater productions.
Bennink attended art school in the 1960s, and is also a successful visual artist in several media, often constructing sculpture from found objects, which may include broken drum heads and sticks. He has designed the covers for many LPs and CDs on which he appears. Bennink is represented by Amsterdam's Galerie Espace, and has been the subject of several one-man shows, including one at the Gemeente Museum in the Hague in 1995... [more]
Maggie Nicols joined London's legendary Spontaneous Music Ensemble in 1968 as a free improvisation vocalist. She then became active running voice workshops with an involvement in local experimental theatre. She later joined the group Centipede, led by Keith Tippets and in 1977, with musician/composer Lindsay Cooper, formed the remarkable Feminist Improvising Group. She continues performing and recording challenging and beautiful work, in music and theatre, either in collaborations with a range of artists (Irene Schweitzer, Joelle Leandre, Ken Hyder, Caroline Kraabel) as well as solo.
Hannah Marshall is a cellist who is continuing to extract, invent, and exorcize as many sounds and emotional qualities from her instrument as she can. She has been a regular member of Alexander Hawkins’ Ensembles and has toured in Europe and South America with Luc Ex and Veryan Weston’s ensembles – SOL 6 & 12. She plays with ‘String Terrorists’ - Barrel (a trio with Violinist Alison Blunt & Violist/poet Ivor kallin). And has been invited by Fred Frith and Suichi Chino in their residencies at café Oto. She also plays with Terry Day, Tim Hodgkinson, Roger Turner, Paul May, Kay Grant, and the London Improvisers Orchestra.
Described as ‘a brilliant light in the music world,’ Joanna MacGregor CBE is one of the world's most innovative musicians, appearing as a concert pianist, curator and conductor. As Dame Myra Hess Chair of Piano at the Royal Academy of Music and Professor of University of London, she runs an international piano department of young pianists from all over the world, many of whom have gone on to great success in major competitions like Van Cliburn, Leeds and Sydney International Piano Competitions, representation by Young Concert Artists Trust and busy international careers. She runs two annual Piano Festivals at the Royal Academy of Music, and also curates a year-round series at the Wigmore Hall for Academy pianists.
As a solo artist Joanna has performed in over eighty countries and appeared with many eminent conductors – Pierre Boulez, Sir Colin Davis, Valery Gergiev, Sir Simon Rattle and Michael Tilson Thomas amongst them – and orchestras, including the London Symphony and Sydney Symphony orchestras, Chicago, Melbourne and Oslo Philharmonic orchestras, Berlin Symphony Orchestra and Salzburg Camerata. She has premiered many landmark compositions, and performs regularly at major venues throughout the world, including Wigmore Hall, Southbank Centre and Barbican Centre in London, Sydney Opera House, Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and the Mozarteum in Salzburg. Here 2020 cycle of the complete Beethoven Sonatas in Canterbury was followed in 2023 by an immersive series of Schubert recitals. The 2024-25 season sees her performing in Europe and Scandinavia, China, Australia, Canada and the US.
