Monday 30 September 2024, 7.30pm
A first gig for a new band! The Olie Brice Quartet – featuring Rachel Musson, Alexander Hawkins and Will Glaser – play Brice’s compositions, ranging from melancholy ballads to pulsating free jazz. Following on from the Trio and Octet explorations on his album “Fire Hills”, Brice has put together a new band with three of his favourite collaborators, all of whom are among the most individual voices around and have a wide range of experiences in jazz and improvised music.
“Brice has his own way of applying organisation to music, shaping it in interesting ways without compromising the crucial spontaneity of expression and interaction” – Richard Williams
Olie Brice is a double bassist, improviser and composer. Raised in London and Jerusalem, he now lives by the sea in Hastings.Olie Brice leads a Quartet featuring Rachel Musson, Alexander Hawkins and Will Glaser, (their debut album “All It Was” will be released in 2025) and an improvising trio with Rachel Musson and Mark Sanders (“Immense Blue”, 2024). He has also led a trio, quintet and octet which can be heard on albums including “Fire Hills” and “Day After Day”.
Brice performs with a wide range of creative improvising musicians, including both legends of the music and his peers. Frequent collaborators include Mark Sanders, Paul Dunmall, Rachel Musson, Tobias Delius, Cath Roberts and Luis Vicente, and he has also appeared with the likes of Evan Parker, Tony Malaby, John Butcher, Trevor Watts, Ingrid Laubrock, Ken Vandermark, Eddie Prevost and Louis Moholo. He is part of several ongoing improvising ensembles including Somersaults (with Tobias Delius & Mark Sanders), a Trio with Ziv Taubenfeld & Kresten Osgood, and the Flame (with Robert Mitchell & Andrew Lisle).
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).
Alexander Hawkins’ work ranges from his acclaimed solo performances (‘intensely intricate…powerful, technically brilliant and melodically inventive’) through to works on a much larger canvas, such as his Togetherness Music ('[a] masterpiece that can stand next to the best works of Mitchell, Braxton or Parker’). He collaborates regularly with all generations of creative musicians, including the likes of Anthony Braxton, Marshall Allen, Evan Parker, John Surman, Joe McPhee, Hamid Drake, Nicole Mitchell, Tomeka Reid, Sofia Jernberg, Shabaka Hutchings, and many others. Further creative associations, with two very different icons of African music, Louis Moholo-Moholo and Mulatu Astatke, stretch back for well over a decade. He has been widely commissioned as a composer, including by the likes of the BBC, Berlin’s Pierre Boulez Saal, and numerous festivals. His performance schedule takes him to club, concert hall, and festival stages worldwide.
"Sounds like all the future jazz you might imagine without ever being able to conceive of the details" – The Guardian
Will was born in Worksop, Nottinghamshire. In 2010 he moved to London to study at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
Drawing eclectically on the Jazz tradition, Improvised music, Rock, Noise, Folk, Blues, Experimental and Electronic music - Will leads his own projects and is a highly in demand drummer on the British Jazz and Experimental music scenes.
He is a member of avant-rock bands Snack Family & World Sanguine Report and has performed with a wide range of artists including; James Allsopp, Andrew Plummer, Sly and the Family Drone, Ruth Goller, Alex Bonney, Stef Kett, Tom Challenger, Olie Brice, George Crowley, Dave De Rose, Liam Noble, Soweto Kinch, Dame Cleo Laine, Stan Sulzmann, Kit Downes, Ben Van Gelder, Nikki Iles, Iain Ballamy, Dinosaur, Alex Garnett, Josephine Davies, Yazz Ahmed, Henry Lowther, Babelfish, Rick Simpson, Sam Eastmond & Riley Stone-Lonergan.
In September 2018 Will started teaching on the Guildhall School of Music's Jazz course.
