An evening of deep listening, featuring three musicians intesely immersed in the materiality of their instruments. Each will play solo before coming together for a trio.

The trio is new but not entirely unprecedented: all the points have been connected, even if the triangle itself hasn't yet materialised. Wright and Viltard have played together in many different combinations along a continuum that includes free jazz and less easily identified forms of experimentation. Wright and Russell have only played togther a few times, including a dense, musicky duo at Necessary Praxis last year. Russell and Viltard have connected occasionally as well, memorably in a resounding trio with Phil Minton at St Mark's Church. This shared but fragmentary history makes the trio particularly interesting, as it combines the frisson of the first meeting with tense expectations arising from previous encounters.

JOHN RUSSELL

“for Russell the fingerboard is apparently multiple. He finds new tones in the same place, new relationships in the same gesture. A second trip across the fingerboard is always a different excursion. The harmonic is a transparent sound: silence and ambient sound pass through it. It accounts for Russell’s unhurried pace and his sense of order, even when he’s playing fast: there’s simply so much going on.” - Stuart Broomer, Point of Departure

John Russell website



GUILLAUME VILTARD

One of the most interesting musicians to emerge from London's fertile improvised and experimental scene in the last few years, Viltard's bass playing is resolutely unamplified and powerfully physical, and has anchored and illuminated groups with the likes of Shabaka Hutchings, John Butcher, Eddie Prevost and Tony Marsh.

Guillaume Viltard website

SEYMOUR WRIGHT

“Saxophonist Seymour Wright has emerged as the most important saxophonist of his generation. . . [He] shows a command of the saxophone which in contrast to most ‘non-idiomatic’ playing – cynically translated as ‘make your saxophone sound like anything other than a saxophone’ – has deep roots in a tradition of playing that goes back to Frankie Trumbauer, Coleman Hawkins and Willie Smith.” - Brian Morton

Seymour Wright website