Otomo Yoshihide is one of the most important musicians of the Japanese underground/avant-garde. He moves between free jazz, noise, improvisation, composition and the unclassifiable with a generosity that opens up the possibilities for expression in all of the constellations with which he's involved. The friday night will see him in a quartet with John Butcher, John Edwards and Mark Sanders plus a quintet set where they'll be joined by saxophonist Mats Gustafsson. The second night will be a quartet with Daichi Yoshikawa, Guillaume Viltard and Rie Nakajima where they will all be positioned around the space. That evening will also open with a reprise performance of Otomo's magnificent solo for piano which he's only done on a handful of occasions.

These two concerts will also act as a launch for two new Otomo Yoshihide LPs - both recorded during Otomo's first residency here in 2009 - the first is a recording of his 'solo piano' and the second is a quintet/sextet LP that features the late Tony Marsh, Sachiko M, Evan Parker and John Edwards plus John Butcher.

Photo by Fabio Lugaro

OTOMO YOSHIHIDE / guitar, turntables, ...

Otomo Yoshihide spent his teenage years in Fukushima, about 300 kilometers north of Tokyo. Influenced by his father, an engineer, Otomo began making electrical devices such as a radio and an electronic oscillator. In junior high school, his hobby was making sound collages using open-reel tape recorders. This was his first experience creating music. Soon after entering high school he formed a band which played rock and jazz, with Otomo on guitar. It wasn't long, however, before he became a free jazz aficionado, listening to artists like Ornette Coleman, Erick Dolphy and Derek Bailey; and hearing music, both on disk and at concerts, by Japanese free jazz artists. Especially influenced by alto sax player Kaoru Abe and guitarist Masayuki Takayanagi, Otomo decided to play free jazz.



In 1990, Otomo started what was to become Ground Zero. Until it disbanded in March 1998, the band was at the core of his musical creativity, while it underwent several changes in style and membership. Since Ground Zero, Otomo has embraced minimal improvisation, film music and the jazz/big band conceptions of his New Jazz Quartet/Quintet/Orchestra.



JOHN BUTCHER / saxophones

John Butcher is a saxophonist of rare grace and power, who has expanded the vocabulary of the saxophone far beyond the conventions of jazz and other musics, to encompass a staggering range of harmonics, multiphonics, overtones, percussive sounds, and electronic feedback. But his playing is far more than merely an array of special effects: it's characterised by an intensity that propels it into strange new places that are both incredibly beautiful and deeply exhilarating.

MARK SANDERS / drums

Mark Sanders has been acclaimed as “the most exciting, original and overwhelmingly powerful drummer alive” (Steve Reynolds, Jazz Corner) and his precise and propulsive drumming has graced projects with Evan Parker, Axel Dörner, Agusti Fernandez, John Butcher, Roswell Rudd, Otomo Yoshihde and many more...

"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



MATS GUSTAFSSON / saxophones

Mats Gustafsson is one of the most distinctive saxophonists of his generation - a player of impossible physical power and constant invention as a soloist, collaborator and group player in The Thing, Fire!, Brötzmann's Chicago Tentet and countless other configurations.

Hailing from Umeå in Northern Sweden, Gustafsson is works across noise, electronics, contemporary rock and free jazz as well as contemporary dance, theater and art projects. He has performed both as a solo artist and toured internationally with Peter Brötzmann, Sonic Youth, Merzbow, Jim O´Rourke, Barry Guy, Otomo Yoshihide, Yoshimi, Ken Vandermark and in working groups The Thing, Sonore, FIRE!, Gush, Boots Brown, Swedish Azz and Nash Kontroll. He also participates in the large ensembles Barry Guy New Orchestra, Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet and the NU – ensemble.

www.matsgus.com

GUILLAUME VILTARD / double bass

Born in 1975 in the North of Ivory Coast, Viltard grew up in the wild countryside with almost no music. Back in France, he played with many artists of the French underground improv scene, including dancers and poets as well as musicians.

After moving to London in late 2007, Viltard has worked with many of London’s best improvisers, forming strong associations with the circle of musicians centred on Eddie Prevost's experimental workshop, becoming a mainstay of the London Improvisers Orchestra, and playing in a great free jazz trio with Tony Marsh and Shabaka Hutchings that was sadly curtailed by Marsh's untimely death.

It is this eclectic appetite for collaboration across the whole spectrum of improvised music as well as his resolutely unamplified and powerfully physical playing that marks Viltard out as one of the most interesting musicians to emerge from London's fertile improvised and experimental scene in the last few years.

unrevenu.free.fr

RIE NAKAJIMA

Rie Nakajima was born in Japan in 1976, and lives and works in London. Nakajima works with installations and performances that produce sound. Her works are most often composed in direct response to unique architectural spaces using a combination of audio materials and found objects. She is the current associate artist at Café OTO, London. Having studied art in her native Japan, he completed a BA in Sculpture at the Chelsea College of Art and Design and an MA in Sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Art, London. Nakajima has exhibited and performed widely, both in the UK and overseas.

www.rienakajima.com

DAICHI YOSHIKAWA

Daichi Yoshikawa's inventive feedback interventions have been enlivening encounters with the more experimental end of London's improvised music community for some years now. Using a variety of inverted, diverted and reinvented electronic and acoustic devices he strikes a constantly evolving balance between harsh atonal feedback, elegant high-frequency constructions and flickering rhythmic oscillations.

daichiyoshikawa.tumblr.com