Monday 13 October 2025, 7.30pm
The quintet of Elaine Mitchener, Pat Thomas, Neil Charles, Mark Sanders and Fay Victor comes together at a musical crossroads of culture, traditions and genres. All of the musicians here collective are powerful artist leaders in their own right, gathering now in communal sonic vibrations connected with music from all over the world with a starting point in the Caribbean. Expect the unexpected as song forms and composed works morph and stretch into free improvisations and back again creating and calling on all the sounds they ever heard.
“She’s essentially invented her own hybrid of song and spoken word, a scat style for today’s avant-garde.” -The New York Times on Fay Victor
“...she conjures up a drama of communication beyond language. Mitchener’s vocal dexterity can’t be overstated.” - The Wire on Elaine Mitchener
Elaine Mitchener is a veteran of vocal expression in the global Black Avant Garde, traversing free improvisation, cross-disciplinary music theatre and contemporary composition with clarity and joy.
Her debut album SOLO THROAT released in May 2024 under Café Oto’s OTOROKU label has been described as “An uncompromisingly imaginative approach to text that does credit to the power of the human voice, as well as the mind that pushes it on to previously unheard paths.” (Jazzwise)
Experimental musicians and improvisers she has worked with include Moor Mother, Joelle Leandre, Hamid Drake, William Parker, Pat Thomas, Black Top, David Toop, Xhosa Cole. Elaine is founder of the collective electroacoustic unit The Rolling Calf. Composers, visual artists and poets she has worked with include: George E Lewis, Jennifer Walshe, Matana Roberts; visual artists The Otolith Group, Christian Marclay, Sonia Boyce; Jay Bernard, Roy Claire Potter, Dante Micheaux; chamber ensembles Apartment House, ICE, Ensemble MAM, Klangforum Wien, Van Huynh Co.
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
Neil Charles is one of the most in-demand musicians on the scene, with a huge array of credits to his name, including Jack DeJohnette, the Sun Ra Arkestra, Mingus Big Band, Jose James, Jerry Dammers, Courtney Pine, and Terence Blanchard. His own projects have included Zed U, with Shabaka Hutchings and Tom Skinner, and the more recent ensemble Dark Days, dealing with the work of James Baldwin. Most recently, he has been heard across the international scene with Gabriels. As well as being known as a bass player with a huge sound and immaculate sense of time, he is equally renowned as a producer, going by the alias Ben Marc.
"Bassist Neil Charles went flying, from the first moment filling the space with the sound of his mighty wings Henning Bolte," – Europe Jazz Media Chart
Mark has worked with a host of renowned musicians including Derek Bailey, Henry Grimes, Mathew Shipp, Evan Parker, Roswell Rudd, in duo and quartets with Wadada Leo Smith and trios with Charles Gayle with Sirone and William Parker.
In situations using composition Mark works in a number of projects including Christian Marclay’s Everyday for film and live music and John Butcher’s Tarab Cuts - both projects have performed major festivals throughout Europe and Brazil. He has performed works by guitarist John Coxon in Glasgow and Sydney playing with the Scottish and Sydney Symphony Orchestras. With New York’s ICE Ensemble he has performed John Zorn’s The Tempest in London and at Huddersfield New Music Festival.
Mark also works in the groups of Paul Dunmall including Deep Whole Trio with Paul Rogers, and the ensembles of Sarah Gail Brand, including a long-standing duo. He has a lengthy discography including a solo album, has performed internationally and played at major festivals including, Nickelsdorf, Ulrichsburg, Womad and notably at Glastonbury with legendary saxophonist John Tchicai.
"ubiquitous, diverse and constantly creative, drummer Mark Sanders always outdoes himself, whether playing with restraint or erupting like a dynamo." Bruce L Gallenter, Downtown Music Gallery. NY
“An avant-garde Nina Simone with the performance punch of Betty Carter, Victor’s unabashed acrobatics mesmerize...” – MOJO Magazine
New York based sound artist/composer Fay Victor hones a unique vision for the vocal role in jazz and improvised music regarding repertoire, improvisation and composition. Victor has an ‘everything is everything’ aesthetic, using the freedom in the moment to inform the appropriate musical response, viewing the vocal instrument as full of possibilities for sound exploration, a throughline for direct messages in an improvising context. Victor embraces all of these ideas in real time and on Victor’s 13 critically acclaimed albums as a leader one can hear the evolution of this expansive expression.
Victor’s work has been featured in media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, Rolling Stone Magazine, The Huffington Post and The Wire; Victor’s performed with luminaries such as William Parker, Roswell Rudd, Dr. Randy Weston, George Lewis, Nicole Mitchell, Misha Mengelberg, Moor Mother, Archie Shepp, Marc Ribot & Tyshawn Sorey to name but a few; Performance highlights include The Museum of Modern Art & The Whitney Museum of American Art (NYC), The Hammer Museum (LA), The Kolner Philharmonie (Germany), De Young Museum (SF), Symphony Space (NY), The Earshot Jazz Festival (Seattle),The Winter Jazz Festival (NYC), The Kennedy Center (Wash. DC), The Big Ears Festival (Knoxville, TN) and the Bimhuis (Netherlands).
As a composer, Victor has been awarded prizes such as the 2017 Herb Albert/Yaddo Fellow in Music Composition, a 2018 AIR in Composition for the Headlands Center for the Arts in California and a 2020 recipient of a Jazz Coalition Commission to create during the pandemic. Victor’s compositions have been performed at such venues as HKW Berlin (Germany), Roulette Intermedium (NY), The University of California-Irvine, The Fridman Gallery (NY) and at The Walden School (NH).
In April 2024, Victor released Life is Funny That Way: Herbie Nichols SUNG, dedicated to the unsung bop pianist Herbie Nichols with Victor lyrics and arrangements on the Tao Forms label. This album received high critical acclaim including being #1 Vocal performance the 19th Annual Francis Davis Critic’s Poll and #23 on overall albums for the year. An innovative educator, Victor is on the faculty of the College of Performing Arts at the New School where she teaches interdisciplinary practices and Vocal Performance, at Long Island University where she runs a private vocal salon. Victor continues to give talks and clinics on Jazz, Creative Improvisation, Composition and more at institutions around the world including a visiting professorship at Harvard University in Spring 2025 in the Department of Creative Practice and Critical Inquiry. As a bandleader, Victor continues to lead and collaborate with musicians involved in myriad practices and approaches including Herbie Nichols SUNG, The Tree Trini Collective (a collective around Victor’s roots in the Caribbean), Flutter (DUO with Nicole Mitchell) and more. Victor is also a member of the International Contemporary Ensemble, Chairs the Advisory Board for the Jazz Leaders Fellowship, a new initiative of the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music to fund black women and non-binary jazz leaders of the future.
Learn more about Fay Victor at www.fayvictor.com
Follow Fay Victor on IG/FB as @freesongsinger
