Tuesday 31 March 2026, 7.30pm
Incredibly excited to welcome the great drummer / percussionist / composer, Mark Sanders to OTO for a three-day residency. Despite being responsible for a huge number of highlights at OTO over the years, this is the first time that we've devoted a residency to Mark's work and its long overdue! We're looking forward to hosting him for three nights alongside a stacked line-up of incredible improvisers.
"I'm knocked out to be asked to present three days of music at Oto, its always a joy to play at the club, I've played concerts here with so many fantastic and legendary players since the club's inception.
It's truly a daunting prospect to choose who to play with as I'm very fortunate to have many colleagues here and from other countries, so it was very difficult to leave out so many friends.
So I decided to base this residency around new line ups that have only recently played once or twice, but not in London.
Many, many thanks to all the Oto staff and I look forward to presenting these line ups to the wonderful Oto audiences." – Mark Sanders
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
Composer/pianist Georg Graewe (born 1956 in Bochum, Germany) founded his first group, The Georg Graewe Quintet, in 1974 and put out his first record two years later on the prestigious FMP label. He has since been leading a variety of ensembles - ranging from trio to chamber orchestra formats - which have involved some of the leading instrumentalists in contemporary music. Graewe has also performed and recorded with Anthony Braxton, Evan Parker, John Tchicai, Roscoe Mitchell, Phil Minton, Barre Phillips, Joelle Leandre, Paul Lovens a.m.o. His compositions include chamber music and works for full orchestra as well as scores for films, theater productions, radio drama and video. He is currently working on his fourth opera. His music is documented on over 50 recordings under his own name.
http://randomacoustics.net/
RACHEL MUSSON is a saxophonist, improviser and composer based in the UK. She has spent the last decade immersed in improvised music, and has also gradually been introducing composed elements into her work, drawing on text, field recordings and processing sounds. She is involved with a variety of improvisation projects, and works regularly with Mark Sanders, Pat Thomas, Hannah Marshall, Julie Kjaer, Corey Mwamba, Olie Brice, Alex Ward and Alex Hawkins, amongst others. She features on several releases, including a nonet featuring her composition 'I Went This Way' (577 Records), two with Shifa, feat. Pat Thomas and Mark Sanders, (577 Records), one with Mark Sanders and John Edwards (Two Rivers Records), trio with Liam Noble and Mark Sanders (Babel), and Corey Mwamba (Takuroku).
Born near London in 1957, Phil Durrant is a multi-instrumentalist improviser/composer/sound artist who currently performs solo and group concerts. As a violinist (and member of the Butcher/Russell/ Durrant trio), he was one of the key exponents of the "group voice approach" style of improvised music. In the late 90s, his trio with Radu Malfatti and Thomas Lehn represented a shift to a more “reductionist” approach. Recently, he has been performing solo and duo concerts with Bill Thompson and Gaudenz Badrutt using a semi-modular synth system. He has also recently recorded and performed with Dominic Lash’s quartet which includes Rachel Musson and Steve Noble. As an acoustic or electric mandolinist, he has been performing duos with guitarists Daniel Thompson and Martin Vishnick. He also performs regularly in a trio with Mark Wastell and John Butcher and has many ongoing projects with drummer Emil Karlsen including a trio with Maggie Nicols. Durrant still performs regularly with the acoustic/electronic group Trio Sowari (with Bertrand Denzler and Burkhard Beins) and Mark Wastell’s The SEEN, as well as the international electronic ensemble MIMEO with Keith Rowe, Kaffe Matthews, Thomas Lehn, Rafael Toral a.o.
Violist Laura Strobl received a classical education in violin, viola, piano, singing and dance from an early age. She studied viola at both the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna and the Music and Arts University of the City of Vienna, while exploring the fields of music theater, performance art, free music and sound production. Focusing on contemporary music she earned her joint masters degree from the Dresden University of Music and the Bern Academy of the Arts with Jim Black, Patrick Jüdt, Manos Tsangaris and Pauline Sachse among others.
Currently she pursues a doctorate degree in musicology and library sciences in Dresden, plays in the viola section of the Loh-Orchester Sondershausen and is a long serving member of Georg Graewe's Sonic Fiction Orchestra in Vienna. Praised by the international press for her plaintively abstract playing style she works regularly with colleagues such as Frank Gratkowski, François Houle, Earl Howard, Gerry Hemingway, Martin Siewert, Valentin Duit, Peter Herbert, Günter "Baby" Sommer and many more.
In 2026 she will premiere a new trio with Georg Graewe and Mark Sanders as well as a collaboration with the Viennese experimental noise band kit cut. Further, she embarked on a new long term project featuring the viola as a contemporary solo instrument. Recordings of her work are published with bastille musique, Random Acoustics, Edition Ars Femina Louisville, GENUIN classics and NEOS Music.
