Sunday 16 April 2023, 1pm
Pleased to welcome Japanese saxophonist Nonoko Yoshida, performing solo and in various combinations with Yumi Hara, Tim Hodgkinson and Hannah Marshall.
Nonoko Yoshida was born in 1987 in Hokkaido, Japan. She studied classical piano from the age of three, and began playing the saxophone as her main instrument at age 10. In 2006, she moved to New York where she experienced a life-changing encounter with John Zorn and the Downtown Music Scene. She studied with Ned Rothenberg, and learned music in streets from the underground musicians themselves, attending concerts, rehearsals, recording and mastering sessions and seeing the mechanics of making music first hand. Her band project SSSS (Super Seaweed Sex Scandal) played at Moers Festival in Germany in 2010 and had their first Europe tour. Her other band project Pet Bottle Ningen has toured in Japan four times and released two albums from Tzadik Label. Her collaborations include Cyro Baptista's Banquet of the Spirits, and Ron Anderson's PAK with Yoshida Tatsuya. She has been working on sax solo project, released solo album "Lotus" from her own label Nonoya Records, and toured Canada in 2014. After moving back to Japan in December 2015, she has been working on various band projects including Cubic Zero, Rooftop Camels, Kata-inu, Iwamizawa Noise Summit and Total Knock Out Orchestra. Nonoya https://nonoyarecords.themedia.jp/
Yumi Hara studied the piano from 3 years old but stopped at the age of 12 when she felt the classical material she was practising was boring compared to British rock she found then. She subsequently studied North Indian music and dance, and went on to study medicine and became psychiatrist, but at the age of 33, she decided to go back to music and settled in London. She studied West African percussion, Korean percussion, North Indian vocal music, Javanese Gamelan at SOAS as occasional student, then continued to study 20th Century piano music, ethnomusicology, instrumental and electroacoustic composition and recording at City University and gained BMus and PhD. She performed as a member of Frank Chickens, run a concert series Bonobo’s Ark, did some drum’n’bass production and DJ, and her compositions have been performed by contemporary classical ensembles such as PianoCircus and the BBC Singers, but she has become increasingly well-known as an improvisor and performer in the avant-rock, Canterbury and RIO scene since she performed with David Cross (ex-violinist of King Crimson), and released a CD album DUNE with Hugh Hopper (ex-Soft Machine bassist) as HUMI in 2008. Since then, she has been collaborating with ex-Henry Cow musicians Chris Cutler, Tim Hodgkinson, Geoff Leigh, John Greaves and Dagmar Krause, faUSt musicians Jean-Herve Peron and Zappi, ex-GONG Daevid Allen as The Artaud Beats, THE WATTS, Half the Sky/Lindsay Cooper Songbook, you me & us, and Jump for Joy! She has also performed and/or collaborated with Tatsuya Yoshida, Kazuhisa Uchihashi, David Jackson, Guy Evans, Asaf Sirkis, Charles Hayward, Fred Frith, Akira Sakata, Chloe Herington, Pierre Chevalier, Guy Harries, David Toop and Kiku Day, among others.
With compositions featured at international festivals such as Tectonics, Huddersfield, Spectrum XXI, Nordlyd, and Ars Musica, and two sets of works for ensemble out on the Mode label, TIM HODGKINSON also has a powerful commitment to intense and highly energised performance practice. For over fifty years he has placed himself in a series of definitive projects, whether as cofounder of the seminal group Henry Cow, as saxophonist with influential avant-metal band God, or as bass clarinet soloist in the spectral compositions of Iancu Dumitrescu. His lap steel guitar playing remains completely uncategorisable, bringing subdued and not so subdued echoes of rock musics and other ethnicities.
http://www.timhodgkinson.co.uk/
Hannah Marshall is a cellist who is continuing to extract, invent, and exorcize as many sounds and emotional qualities from her instrument as she can. She has been a regular member of Alexander Hawkins’ Ensembles and has toured in Europe and South America with Luc Ex and Veryan Weston’s ensembles – SOL 6 & 12. She plays with ‘String Terrorists’ - Barrel (a trio with Violinist Alison Blunt & Violist/poet Ivor kallin). And has been invited by Fred Frith and Suichi Chino in their residencies at café Oto. She also plays with Terry Day, Tim Hodgkinson, Roger Turner, Paul May, Kay Grant, and the London Improvisers Orchestra.
