Legendary People Band drummer and improvisor Terry Day presents a quintet with Japanese flautist Miya, pianist Veryan Weston, Dominic Lash on double bass and Trevor Watts on saxophone. Connections run between all 5 musicians, with Terry Day and Miya being regular collaborators - Terry having toured Japan before giving Miya her first opportunity to play in London. Trevor Watts and Veryan Weston have been playing as a duo in the 'Dialogues' project for over 4 years, including a couple of tours in America, one in Australia & Brasil and some in Europe. They have also played together in other combinations since the seventies.

MIYA / flute

Miya graduated from Senzokugakuen Music University Jazz course in 2004 and has since been performing and composing music for dance, design and photography as well as concert performances. She is highly regarded in Japan for her expressiveness and improvising ability and has released 3 CD's, the latest 'Oriental Sun' on T＆K entertainment.

Miya website



TERRY DAY / drums

Terry Day was a founder member in 1965 of the legendary People Band, in which he played drums and myriad other instruments. (A double CD of archive material with notes by Day is just out on Emanem). He was also a member of the group Alterations, which included Beresford, David Toop and Peter Cusack. He makes his own bamboo pipes and writes many poems. For this performance he's back on drumset.

www.terryday.co.uk



VERYAN WESTON / piano

Born 1950; piano. Veryan Weston moved to London from Cornwall in 1972 and began playing as a freelance jazz pianist as well as developing as an improvisor at the Little Theatre Club. He accepted a fellowship with the Digswell Arts Trust in Hertfordshire in 1975 who commissioned him to revise his book on piano improvisation which he was able to do through a subsidy from the Arts Council of Great Britain. During this time he co-founded and composed for Stinky Winkles. With the group he was voted a 'Young musician of 1979' by the Greater London Arts Association and won three major awards in France, Spain and Poland.

Throughout the 1980s and early 90s he worked primarily with the Eddie Prévost Quartet, Trevor Watts' Moiré Music and duets with Lol Coxhill and Phil Minton. He also worked in other ensemble projects with Minton, including 'riverun' the Phil Minton Quartet with John Butcher and Roger Turner. Major festivals have included Zurich, Berlin, Nicholsdorf, Karlsruhr, Warsaw, Wroklaw, San Sebastian, Bombay, Vancouver, St Etienne, Aukland, Nevers, Washington, Lille, Houston, Le Mans, Straasbourg and Victoriaville.

More info on Veryan Weston

"Watts and Weston trade ideas with sometimes dazzling rapidity, moving from percussive aggression to coolly minimal abstraction without ever compromising the coherence of their discourse, negotiating those transitions with consistency, accuracy and, always direct emotional appeal." - Dalston Sound

DOMINIC LASH / double bass

Dominic Lash has performed with Tony Conrad and Evan Parker; other currently active ensembles include a duo with Alex Ward, a trio with John Butcher and John Russell and The Convergence Quartet (with Taylor Ho Bynum, Harris Eisenstadt and Alexander Hawkins). He also leads The Set Ensemble (an experimental music group mainly devoted to the work of composers from the Wandelweiser collective). Recent CD publications include work on the Another Timbre, Cathnor, Clean Feed and Psi labels. He was resident in New York for much of 2011, where he performed with musicians including Michael Pisaro, Fay Victor and Nate Wooley.

www.dominiclash.co.uk



TREVOR WATTS / saxophone

Trevor Watts is an English jazz and free-improvising alto and soprano saxophonist. He is largely self-taught, having taken up the cornet at age 12 then switched to saxophone at 18. While stationed in Germany with the RAF (1958–63), he encountered the drummer John Stevens and trombonist Paul Rutherford. After being demobbed he returned to London. In 1965 he and Stevens formed the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, which became one of the crucibles of British free improvisation. Watts left the band to form his own group Amalgam in 1967, then returned to SME for another stretch that lasted until the mid-1970s. Another key association was with the bassist Barry Guy and his London Jazz Composers' Orchestra, an association that lasted from the band's inception in the 1970s up to its (permanent?) disbandment in the mid-1990s.

Though he was initially strongly identified with the avant-garde, Watts is a versatile musician who has worked in everything from straight jazz contexts to rock and blues. His own projects have come increasingly to focus on blending jazz and African music, notably the Moiré Music ensemble which he has led since 1982 in configurations ranging from large ensembles featuring multiple drummers to more intimate trios. He has far from abandoned freer modes though, duo recordings with Veryan Weston: '6 Dialogues', '5 More Dialogues' (both on Emanem) and 'Dialogues in Two Places' (on HI4Head Recs) all demonstrate his ability to delve headfirst into improvised adventure.

Watts has toured the world over numerous times, run workshops, received grants and commissions, and he has collaborated with some of the great jazz musicians including Archie Shepp, Steve Lacy, Don Cherry and Jayne Cortez.

“Watts's bird-calling high sounds over Weston's balletic dances often sound as bright and shapely as compositions, and wriggling sax runs against boogie-like piano fuse together so heatedly that both players' notes blur into drones. Watts's alto tones sometimes echo the soulful quaver of Albert Ayler, and there are contrastingly minimal sections in which the instruments are barely blown or touched, followed by squalls bursting over percussive piano rumbles.” - John Fordham, The Guardian