Sunday 20 September 2026, 7.30pm
Exactly 30 years and 3 months ago Leo Records was promoting a three-day international music festival called Unsung Music. The event was held at the Royal Festival Hall, London. The idea of the festival was to present innovative, improvisation-based music that had never been heard live in Great Britain before.
Spool 30 years forward, and this kind of music is regularly heard in many venues. To celebrate the thirty-year.25 anniversary of this music, Leo Records will present a one day celebration bringing the best practitioners of this genre to Cafe OTO. As part of the celebrations, we'll also be hosting a special matinee screening of the documentary, 'Leo Records : Strictly For Our Friends'.
"If you've ever been tempted by free improvisation, Parker is your gateway drug." - Stewart Lee
Evan Parker has been a consistently innovative presence in British free music since the 1960s. Parker played with John Stevens in the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, experimenting with new kinds of group improvisation and held a long-standing partnership with guitarist Derek Bailey. The two formed the Music Improvisation Company and later Incus Records. He also has tight associations with European free improvisations - playing on Peter Brötzmann's legendary 'Machine Gun' session (1968), with Alexander Von Schlippenbach and Paul Lovens (A trio that continues to this day), Globe Unity Orchestra, Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath, and Barry Guy's London Jazz Composers Orchestra (LJCO).
Though he has worked extensively in both large and small ensembles, Parker is perhaps best known for his solo soprano saxophone music, a singular body of work that in recent years has centred around his continuing exploration of techniques such as circular breathing, split tonguing, overblowing, multiphonics and cross-pattern fingering. These are technical devices, yet Parker's use of them is, he says, less analytical than intuitive; he has likened performing his solo work to entering a kind of trance-state. The resulting music is certainly hypnotic, an uninterrupted flow of snaky, densely-textured sound that Parker has described as "the illusion of polyphony". Many listeners have indeed found it hard to credit that one man can create such intricate, complex music in real time.
Carolyn Hume / piano, keyboards
Paul May / drums
Paul May and Carolyn Hume have been playing and recording together for 27 years. They have released 8 critically acclaimed albums on Leo Records.
Hume and May create potent ambient atmospheres, moving from minimalist sci-fi to rhythmic landscapes.
Paul May is one of the most respected drummers on the improvising circuit. His CV includes work with the likes of Alexander Hawkins, Petra Jean Phillipson, Tim Hodgkinson, Klaus Filip and Matthias Eick, as well as electro-acoustic improvisers Sonnamble and the improv trios Elvers (with trumpeter Ian R Watson) and Found Drowned (with guitarist James O'Sullivan). He was also responsible for co-founding the critically acclaimed spiritual jazz collective Woven Entity alongside Lascelle Gordon and Patrick Dawes. May’s longstanding duo with Carolyn Hume has resulted in 8 well received albums on Leo Records and led to the formation of Fourth Page. He’s also worked closely with UK bluesman Duke Garwood for some two decades and features heavily on Garwood’s critically acclaimed recent albums 'Heavy Love’ and 'Garden of Ashes’.
Hume has released 14 albums since 2000 on ‘Leo Records’; 8 collaborations with the drummer, Paul May, 3 collaborative project albums and 3 solo albums featuring compositions for cello and voice.
She has performed Internationally, in Europe and the UK and provided music for short films, including work by Sub Gravity Films, Pan MacMillan and ‘Elegy Japan’ with photographer Darron Davies.
Her collaborations include work with Oliver Coates, Alexey Kruglov, Sonia Hammond, Judie Tzuke, Kuljit Bhamra, Duke Garwood, Oleg Yudanov, Pete Marsh, Charlie Beresford, Russell Webb and John McGeoch.
Mark has worked with many greats of the British, European and American free jazz improvised music scene including Roscoe Mitchell, Roswell Rudd, Evan Parker, John Butcher, Henry Grimes, Elaine Mitchener, Wadada Leo Smith, Myra Melford, Charles Gayle , Sirone and William Parker
He has also played with Jah Wobble, Harold Budd, Bill Laswell, Christian Marclay, International Contemporary Ensemble, Ilan Volkov and The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.
He is a member of many working groups including duos with Nicole Mitchell and Rhodri Davies, Neil Charles' 'Dark Days' with Cleveland Watkiss & Pat Thomas, 'Last Dream of the Morning' with John Butcher & John Edwards, 'Shifa' with Rachel Musson and Pat Thomas and 'Sarost' with Larry Stabbins & Paul Rogers.
As an educator he has taught improvisation at many universities around the country as a lecturer and guest tutor.
Mark has played concerts and festivals around the world and appears on over 220 CD and Vinyl releases.
Mark was a recipient of the Paul Hamlyn Award for Artists 2024
"Drop the needle on the first track — or any track for that matter — and the first thing one is bound to notice is the amazing percussion skills of Mark Sanders" – Peter Thelen... Exposé
"Mark is just incredible and immensely diverse, he is at the center of "Kwingyaw" and it is difficult to tell what he is doing to get some of these sounds." – Bruce L Gallenter, Downtown Music Gallery, NY
