Saturday 26 October 2024, 7.30pm
Join us to celebrate the 70th birthday of one of the greats of improvised music - John Butcher - featuring a line-up comprised of collaborators old and new alongside a solo performance. 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.
"It still feels quite mysterious to me. How strongly individual players bring their own music to real-time, collaborative performance; and then something new gets cooked, often quite beyond the seeming ingredients. It's in this spirit that I've invited these singular musicians, drawn from a web of connections to be stretched and explored anew. We'll have three duos, the “Fictional Souvenirs” trio, and two new quartets. I’ll also play solo, something I lost a taste for during/after the lockdowns but have recently felt ready to revisit.
Over 25 years my duo with constructive and destructive harp pioneer Rhodri Davies has developed through acoustic, electrical, and symbiotic materials. Now, elements from world-wide harp musics have begun to enter. Sophie Agnel has forged a new sonic space by dissolving the barrier between inside and outside piano. Our duo is relatively new and I find this fluidity inspiring to play with.
Sophie will also join a group with two musicians I’ve valued working with on many projects. Angharad Davies, whose violin can release both lines of mercury and knotty interjections, often at the same time, and Mark Sanders, who is remarkable at shaping endlessly malleable energy and colour.
A completely new situation for me will be to play in duo with Isabelle Duthois. Music that relies on the breath has a special quality and I look forward to interacting with her unique voice work and forensic clarinet. “Fictional Souvenirs” is me, Pat Thomas and Ståle Liavik Solberg, meeting for our third concert. Music formed from Pat’s deep knowledge of piano history and future electronics and Ståle’s sense of pitch, space and propulsion. The final set will be the us in quartet for the first time." – John Butcher
Born in Brighton and living in London, John Butcher is a saxophonist whose work ranges through improvisation, his own compositions, multi tracked pieces and explorations with feedback, unusual acoustics and non-concert locations. He is well known as a solo performer who attempts to engage with a sense of place. Resonant Spaces, for example, is a collection of performances recorded during a tour of unusual locations in Scotland and the Orkney Islands.
Butcher originally studied Physics, but after publishing a PH.D (1982) on quantum chromodynamics he left academia and took off with music. He has since collaborated with hundreds of artists, some for many decades, including Derek Bailey, Eddie Prévost, Angharad Davies, John Stevens’ Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Okkyung Lee, Andy Moor, Sophie Agnel, Christian Marclay, Pat Thomas, Phil Minton, Rhodri Davies, Tony Buck, Magda Mayas, John Russell, Chris Corsano, Steve Beresford, Ståle Liavik Solberg, and Matthew Shipp.
Additionally he values occasional encounters - with large groups ranging from the WDR Sinfonieorchester (as soloist), and the 20+ piece EX Orkest to duos with Akio Suzuki, Liz Allbee, Keiji Haino, Isabelle Duthois, David Toop, Mariam Rezaei, Fred Frith and Joe McPhee.
Recent compositions include “Fluid Fixations” (an hcmf commission), “Penny Wands” for Futurist Intonarumori, “Good Liquor…” for the London Sinfonietta and “Tarab Cuts” (shortlisted for a British Composer’s Award).
"Over 40 years of sustained performance and publishing, English saxophonist, improvisor and composer John Butcher has shaped much of what soprano and tenor saxophone can do, and what their roles and vocabulary in improvised music might be. I’ve always heard Butcher’s playing as a kind of nose-to-tail saxophony, where the whole instrument from reed-tip to brim of bell is available, accessible and articulate. Few other saxophonists slice as sharply back into the physical history, material (and physics) of the instrument, across its near 200 year history. When Hector Berlioz wrote of his friend Adolphe Sax’s then fresh invention, “the varied beauty of its accent, sometimes serious, sometimes calm, sometimes impassioned, dreamy or melancholic, or vague”, he could have been imagining Butcher's distinctively clean but complex, enquiring soundworld." WIRE - October 2024. The Primer by Seymour Wright
Isabelle Duthoit completed her clarinet studies at the CNSM in Lyon in Jacques Di Donato's class.
She soon turned her attention to contemporary music, working with a number of composers. She then found her preferred medium in free improvisation. She has performed and collaborated with many artists on the international experimental scene, including Dieb13, Angelica Castello, Martin Tetreault, Franz Hautzinger, Hamid Drake, Michael Zerang, Naoto Yamagishi, Phil Minton, Luc Ex , Thomas Lehn, Lê Quan Ninh, Jacques Di Donato, Xavier Charles, Sophie Agnel and EriKm. She is a member of Hiatus, Système Friche, Where is the sun, Uruk and has performed at numerous festivals in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Russia, Europe and Japan.
She has always been interested in the voice, and for nearly 20 years has been developing a unique and personal vocal technique. A language before language. A song rooted as much in the breath as in the cry...
Pat Thomas studied classical piano from aged 8 and started playing Jazz from the age of 16. He has since gone on to develop an utterly unique style - embracing improvisation, jazz and new music. He has played with Derek Bailey in Company Week (1990/91) and in the trio AND (with Noble) – with Tony Oxley’s Quartet and Celebration Orchestra and in Duo with Lol Coxhill.
"Sartorially shabby as Thomas may be, and on first impression even rather stolid, he has a somewhat imperious charisma that’s immediately amplified when he starts to play. Unlike other pianists whose virtuosity seems to be racing ahead of their thought processes Thomas always seems supremely in command of his gift, and his playing, no matter how free and ready to tangle with abstraction, always carries a charge of authoritative exactitude." - The Jazzmann
Ståle Liavik Solberg (drums/percussion) has established a base for himself as a central part of Oslo's thriving improvised music scene. Working with ensembles VCDC, Will it float? (with John Russell, Steve Beresford & John Edwards), Silva-Rasmussen-Solberg trio and in duos with Fred Lonberg-Holm and John Russell his open and attentive drumming has received many positive responses from musicians and audiences in both Europe and the USA. Solberg is also known as one of the driving forces behind the series Blow Out! in Oslo, and he curates the festival with the same name together with fellow drummer / percussionist Paal Nilssen-Love.
