A very special two-day residency to celebrate the 60th birthday of one of the greats of improvised music - John Butcher. Featuring a line-up comprised of some of Butcher's closest and most long-standing collaborators as well as some brand-new groupings brought together specially for these two days, this should be a unmissable celebratory residency for a musician who has provided a whole host of highlights at Cafe OTO since we opened.
John Butcher is a saxophonist of rare grace and power, who has expanded the vocabulary of the saxophone far beyond the conventions of jazz and other musics, to encompass a staggering range of harmonics, multiphonics, overtones, percussive sounds, and electronic feedback. But his playing is far more than merely an array of special effects: it's characterised by an intensity that propels it into strange new places that are both incredibly beautiful and deeply exhilarating.
"When he was finished there were audible exclamations from the audience and the question was asked, not for the first time: “why does no one else play saxophone like that?”" - Dalston Sound, review of John Butcher at Cafe OTO, 2012
JOHN BUTCHER
John Butcher's work ranges through improvisation, his own compositions, multitracked pieces and explorations with feedback and extreme acoustics. Originally a physicist, he left academia in '82, and has since collaborated with hundreds of musicians - inc. Derek Bailey, John Tilbury, John Stevens, The EX, Gerry Hemingway, Polwechsel, Gino Robair, Rhodri Davies, John Edwards, Toshi Nakamura, Paul Lovens, Eddie Prevost, Mark Sanders, Christian Marclay, Otomo Yoshihide, Phil Minton, and Andy Moor.
"John Butcher is one of my favourite musicians to watch live. I have been fortunate to have seen him play quite a bit over the past few years and it is always a captivating experience, for reasons I can’t quite pin down. Beyond his incredible skill with the sax there is something about his focus, the look of absolute immersion and concentration across his face, and an aura of quiet authority about his body language that all adds to the performance." - The Watchful Ear
He is well known as a solo performer who attempts to engage with the uniqueness of place. Resonant Spaces ('06) is a collection of site-specific performances collected during a tour of unusual locations in Scotland and the Orkney Islands. His first solo CD, Thirteen Friendly Numbers ('91), includes compositions for multitracked saxophones, whilst later releases focus on live performance, composition, amplification and saxophone-controlled feedback. Recent collaborative projects include The Apophonics with Gino Robair and John Edwards and Anemone with trumpeter Peter Evans.
Butcher values playing in occasional encounters - ranging from large groups such as Butch Morris' London Skyscraper and the EX Orkestra, to duo concerts with David Toop, Kevin Drumm, Thomas Lehn, Fred Frith, Okkyung Lee, Matthew Shipp and Akio Suzuki.
Rhodri Davies was born in 1971 in Aberystwyth, Wales and now lives in Gateshead in the northeast of England. He plays harp, electric harp, live-electronics and builds wind, water and fire harp installations. His regular groups include: a duo with John Butcher, The Sealed Knot, a trio with David Toop and Lee Patterson, Common Objects, Cranc, a trio with John Tilbury and Michael Duch, SLW and Apartment House. In 2008 he collaborated with the visual artist Gustav Metzger on ‘Self-cancellation’, a large-scale audio-visual collaboration in London and Glasgow. He also performs and researches contemporary music. New pieces for harp have been composed for him by: Eliane Radigue, Christian Wolff, Ben Patterson, Alison Knowles, Michael Pisaro, Carole Finer, Mieko Shiomi, Radu Malfatti and Yasunao Tone.
Magda Mayas is a pianist living in Berlin. Developing a vocabulary utilizing both the inside as well as the exterior parts of the piano, using preparations and objects, she explores textural, linear and fast moving sound collage.
Alongside the piano, Mayas has recently been performing on a Clavinet/Pianet, an electric piano from the 60s with strings and metal chimes, where she engages with noise and more visceral sound material, equally extending the instrumental sound palette using extended techniques and devices.
ANGHARAD DAVIES / violin
Angharad Davies is a violinist whose work is situated in the complex intersection of improvised and composed music. She is dedicated to exploring and expanding sound production on the violin, and has developed a specific approach to the violin, which extends the sound possibilities of the instrument by attaching and applying objects to the strings or by sounding unexpected parts of the instrument's body.
Davies is an active performer in contemporary, improvisation and experimental music both as a soloist, within ensembles such as Apartment House and Common Objects, and in smaller improvised groups with musicians such as Axel Dörner, Taku Unami, and Tisha Mukarji.
Her sensitivity to the sonic possibilities of musical situations and attentiveness to their shape and direction make her one of contemporary music's most fascinating figures.
Gino Robair is a San Francisco Bay Area-based percussionist and composer who has performed and recorded with Anthony Braxton, Tom Waits, John Butcher, LaDonna Smith, Otomo Yoshihide, Eugene Chadbourne, John Zorn, Nina Hagen, Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, Myra Melford, ROVA Saxophone Quartet, and the Club Foot Orchestra. He is a founding member of the Splatter Trio and Pink Mountain. Robair's multimedia work "Grand Electric Skull" was commissioned and performed by the ROVA Saxophone Quartet with Ikue Mori in San Francisco in 2013, while his theater piece "The Amanuensis" was premiered at GIOfest VI in Glasgow the same year. His opera "I, Norton," based on the life of Norton I, Emperor of the United States, has been staged throughout North America, Europe, and Japan.
"[Gino Robair] holds the listener captive as he oscillates between the accidental and the intentional; between the tiniest, most delicate noise and a torrential outpouring of sound." - San Francisco Bay Guardian
DIEB13 / turntables
dieb13 is the performing name of Dieter Kovačič, a Viennese based avant-garde musician. He has also performed under the names Takeshi Fumimoto, Echelon, Dieter Bohlen, and dieb14. After appearing on several compilations documenting the burgeoning Viennese avant-garde scene of the late 1990s, he released his first solo album in 2000. He has gone on to perform in a number of collaborations with other notable performers, including Burkhard Stangl, erikm, Mats Gustafsson and the John Butcher Group.
Born in 1975 in the North of Ivory Coast, Viltard grew up in the wild countryside with almost no music. Back in France, he played with many artists of the French underground improv scene, including dancers and poets as well as musicians.
After moving to London in late 2007, Viltard has worked with many of London’s best improvisers, forming strong associations with the circle of musicians centred on Eddie Prevost's experimental workshop, becoming a mainstay of the London Improvisers Orchestra, and playing in a great free jazz trio with Tony Marsh and Shabaka Hutchings that was sadly curtailed by Marsh's untimely death.
It is this eclectic appetite for collaboration across the whole spectrum of improvised music as well as his resolutely unamplified and powerfully physical playing that marks Viltard out as one of the most interesting musicians to emerge from London's fertile improvised and experimental scene in the last few years.
Dominic Lash has performed with Tony Conrad and Evan Parker; other currently active ensembles include a duo with Alex Ward, a trio with John Butcher and John Russell and The Convergence Quartet (with Taylor Ho Bynum, Harris Eisenstadt and Alexander Hawkins). He also leads The Set Ensemble (an experimental music group mainly devoted to the work of composers from the Wandelweiser collective). Recent CD publications include work on the Another Timbre, Cathnor, Clean Feed and Psi labels. He was resident in New York for much of 2011, where he performed with musicians including Michael Pisaro, Fay Victor and Nate Wooley.
OLIE BRICE / double bass
Olie Brice is a jazz and improv double bassist. He is a member of the Riverloam trio (with Mikolaj Trzaska and Mark Sanders) and leads and composes for his own quintet (featuring Mark Hanslip, Alex Bonney, Waclaw Zimpel and Jeff Williams). He has also appeared with a wide range of musicians including Paul Dunmall, Tobias Delius, Achim Kaufmann, Ingrid Laubrock, Louis Moholo-Moholo and Ken Vandermark.
“Brice makes the entire body of his bass sing. He has the ability to deliver a fractal line that is as purposeful as any by the great jazz bassists, but to do so within an entirely abstract setting” - Brian Morton, Point of Departure
ADAM BOHMAN / objects
Adam Bohman has been operating on the outer fringes of underground music for decades. Working with home-built instruments, found objects, tape cut-ups, collages, ink drawings and graphic scores. Favouring acoustic sounds over electronics, he explores the minute tendrils of sounds coaxed from any number of non-musical instruments and objects. He is a member of British experimental groups, Morphogenesis, The Bohman Brothers, Secluded Bronte, and The London Improvisers Orchestra. Adam's music is unique and experimental, incorporating Fluxus japery, musique concrete, sound poetry and free improvisation.
Tony is regarded as one of Australia's most creative and adventurous exports, with vast experience across the globe. He has been involved in a highly diverse array of projects but is probably best known around the world as a member of the trio The Necks.
Following studies and early experience in Australia he spent time in Japan, where he formed PERIL with Otomo Yoshihide and Kato Hideki before relocating to Europe in the mid-nineties.
Some of the more high profile projects he has been involved with include the band Kletka Red, and touring and recording with, among others, The EX, The Exiles, and Corchestra, and involvement with most of the international improvisation and new music community and festivals.
He also creates video works for use with live music performance and has had pieces shown in Tokyo, Belfast, Berlin, New York and Sydney.
Current projects include long standing duos with Axel Doerner and Magda Mayas; New York based trios "Glacial" (with David Watson and Lee renaldo); "The Fell Clutch" (with Ned Rothenberg, Stomu Takeshi and Davd Tronzo); Berlin based "Heaven And" and "Asiplusband (with Asi Foecker and Andy Moor) and "project/TRANSMIT" (a guitar driven post-rock project based in Sydney and Berlin).
