Dominic Lash presents Consorts (Angharad Davies / Tom Jackson / Dominic Lash / Nick Malcolm / Hannah Marshall / Benedict Taylor / Alex Ward)
No Longer Available
Dominic Lash / double bass Angharad Davies / violin Tom Jackson / clarinet, bass clarinet Nick Malcolm / trumpet Hannah Marshall / cello Benedict Taylor / viola Alex Ward / clarinet
Marrella Moulting is a new forty-five minute piece written by bassist Dominic Lash (Convergence Quartet, Set Ensemble, Predicate) for Consorts, a new ensemble he has convened with some of the most exciting and adventurous young musicians in London. Combining written notation with the extensive improvising experience of the septet, the piece also draws on the music of composers such as Phill Niblock and his work with sustained tones (albeit without Phill's customary high-gain assault). Marrella Moulting promises an intense, dramatic and immersive experience.
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.
Angharad Davies is a violinist whose work is situated in the complex intersection of improvised and composed music. She is dedicated to exploring and expanding sound production on the violin, and has developed a specific approach to the violin, which extends the sound possibilities of the instrument by attaching and applying objects to the strings or by sounding unexpected parts of the instrument's body.
Davies is an active performer in contemporary, improvisation and experimental music both as a soloist, within ensembles such as Apartment House and Common Objects, and in smaller improvised groups with musicians such as Axel Dörner, Taku Unami, and Tisha Mukarji.
Her sensitivity to the sonic possibilities of musical situations and attentiveness to their shape and direction make her one of contemporary music's most fascinating figures.
Tom Jackson is a clarinettist and saxophonist based in London, largely dedicated to the fields of contemporary classical music and free improvisation. He maintains an exciting, extensive and eclectic performance schedule and has performed throughout Europe, Australia and Hong Kong as well as throughout the UK. He is currently undertaking a PhD funded by AHRC, researching issues of free improvisation. 'Songs from Badly-Lit Rooms', an album of duos with violist Benedict Taylor, was released on Squib-Box in 2013.
"Jackson has a great range: flipping from long unfolding lines to dense clotted knots of spluttering scribble" - Michael Holland, Ears For Eyes
NICK MALCOLM / trumpet
Nick Malcolm is an original, exciting and heart-felt improviser. His rich, warm sound and sense of improvisational daring inform each and every musical situation and he plays with a total commitment to the music in the moment, whatever the stylistic context.
His own quartet plays original compositions combining the rhythmic and harmonic complexities of contemporary jazz with the intensity and interaction of free improvisation. They made a big impression at The Vortex, Manchester Jazz Festival and Ealing Jazz Festival during the summer of 2011 and toured nationally in June 2012 to coincide with the release of their first album, 'Glimmers', on FMR records. He also plays in an open trio setting featuring world-class rhythm section of Olie Brice and Mark Sanders. Nick has played at the 606 Club, Brecon, Cheltenham, Glastonbury and Oxford festivals, London Jazz Cafe and Ronnie Scotts and with musicians such as Gail Brand, Chris Batchelor, Alexander Hawkins, Emily Wright, Nostalgia 77 and BBC Folk Award Winner Jim Moray.
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.
“sublime technical abilities...she reinvents melodic lines, provides spectacular harmonic intervention”...’ sets the pulse around which much of the music revolves” Raul D’Gama Rose
BENEDICT TAYLOR / viola
Benedict Taylor is a solo violist & composer specialising in contemporary music and improvisation. He studied at the Royal Northern College of Music & Goldsmiths College, and is a leading figure within the area of contemporary string performance. Taylor is at the forefront of the British & European new and improvised music scene. He performs, records and composes throughout the UK, EU and Asia as a soloist and ensemble performer, in the worlds leading venues and festivals alongside working collaboratively with artists, from painters to contemporary dancers and experimental filmmakers. Through his work he is involved with a number of higher education institutions, having given lectures, seminars & performances at the Royal College of Music and Goldsmiths, amongst others. He is the founder and artistic director of CRAM, a music collective and independent record label dedicated to new and improvised music.
ALEX WARD / clarinet
Alex Ward is a composer, improviser, and performing musician, working primarily with clarinet and guitar. His involvement in freely improvised music dates back to 1986, when he met the guitarist Derek Bailey. He subsequently took part regularly in Bailey's Company events, and has gone on to become a major figure in British improvised music. His current work ranges from the duo Dead Days Beyond Help, in which he plays guitar and sings, his group Predicate who perform his compositions, regular improvising groups with Steve Noble, Kay Grant and others, as well as more ad hoc encounters with musicians as diverse as Eugene Chadbourne, Thurston Moore, Joe Morris and Weasel Walter, and co-running the label Copepod with Luke Barlow. He brings a unique energy and inventiveness to all these projects, elevating them far above the ordinary and injecting them with a thrilling sense of danger and possibility.
"Alex Ward is one of those players who seems to get interesting music out of anything he touches" - Nate Dorward, Paris Transatlantic
The OTO Project Space is located just around the corner from Cafe OTO at 1-7 Ashwin Street - E8 3DL.
It was created as a space for artists to develop new work and for OTO Projects to present workshops, talks, film screenings and installations relating to the core programme at Cafe OTO. The building was designed by Assemble - a young, critically acclaimed design practice based in London - and built by a team of more than 30 volunteers.
