Saturday 8 December 2018, 7.30pm
Very pleased to welcome composer, saxophonoist and all-round musical polymath, Matana Roberts back to OTO, in a very special, first-time duo performance with the great pianist, Pat Thomas.
Over the course of her ongoing Coin Coin project, Roberts has carved out an utterly compelling and evocative soundworld all her own, and this pairing with Thomas, whose own approach to the piano is ever curious, transcendent and distinct, should make for an unmissable evening.
Matana (mah-tah-Nah) Roberts (they/them) is an internationally documented multidisciplinary artist,composer, saxophonist,and sound experimentalist.
Roberts works in many contexts and mediums, including improvisation, sound art, dance, poetry, and theater. they made two classic records as a core member of the Sticks And Stones quartet in the early 2000s and has gone on to release a diverse body of solo and ensemble work under their own name on a variety of international record labels. They are perhaps best known for their acclaimed Coin Coin project, a multi-chapter sound work of “panoramic sound quilting” that aims to expose the mystical roots of American creative expression while maintaining a deep and substantive engagement with global narrativity, history, community and political expression within improvisatory structures. Constellation began documenting the Coin Coin project in 2011 and has released the first 5 of a projected twelve album-length “chapters” to date.
They have been invited to teach, lecture, run workshops and/or take up artistic residencies in countless places under a variety of conditions and with diverse communities over the past two plus decades.
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
