Wednesday 17 August 2022, 8pm
Lisa Ullén / piano
Johan Arrias / saxophones
Henrik Olsson / friction, piezo elements
Dimitra Lazaridou-Chatzigoga / zither
Angharad Davies / violin
Lara Agar / violin
Dom Lash / double bass
Marjolaine Charbin / voice, objects
Tim Parkinson / reed organ
Reading Music is a plattform for collaborations within the field of experimental music initiated in 2021 by Lisa Ullén, Johan Arrias och Henrik Olsson. Our ambition is to gather and create synergy effects between composers and improvising musicians with an interest in semicomposed music and performing arts.
Reading Music was initiated in 2017 as a collaboration with the composers Hanna Hartman (SWE/DE), Nomi Epstein (US) and Michael Pisaro Liu (US), each one of the three composers gave their personal reply to the question that was asked in our project:
Composition is one thing, performance another, hearing a third, what do the three have to do with one another?
Lisa, Johan and Henrik will for this concert invite a number of special London based guests to perform extended versions of the original pieces Foreign Fridges (Hartman), portals (Epstein) and Der erste Stern ist das letzte Haus (Pisaro Liu).
Lisa Ullén is a pianist and composer, born in Seoul, Korea, raised in the north part of Sweden. She has fronted her own quartet, since the mid nineties, and to date has released as a pianist over 30 albums . She studied at the Royal Musical Academy, Stockholm, and conducted further studies in jazz at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA, EAM at the electronic music studio EMS in Stockholm and the Royal Institute of Art. She has been working for many years in the field of improvisation, free jazz and contemporary art music. Ullén tours internationally, solo as well in different groups.
A saxophone and clarinet player active in the field of improvised, experimental and contemporary music. He works with deconstructing and fragmenting the traditional ways of playing his instrument with extended techniques and preparation, regarding sound as an autonomous matter. When composing music he moves freely from traditional to graphic notation and concepts. He organizes concerts within the series KROCH and runs the label Ausculto Fonogram.
From 2005 he is based in Stockholm and collaborates with musicians such as Tisha Mukarji, Angharad Davies, Tetuzi Akiyama, Axel Dörner, Derek Shirley, Kai Fagaschinski, Lucio Capece, Audrey Chen, Anna Lindal, David Stackenäs, Christer Bothén, Nina de Heney, Jonatan Liljedahl, Lisa Ullén, Henrik Olsson, Emil Strandberg and more. He has toured Sweden, Norway, South Africa, USA, Poland, UK, Germany, Romania and released records on labels such as MonotypeRec, Headspin Recordings, Crazy Wisdom, Jahr null Aufnahmen and his own ausculto fonogram. He holds an MFA in music received in 2001 at The Academy of Music and Drama, University of Gothenburg.
Born in 1975 in the village of Kyrkhult, a small industrial community in the south of Sweden. Studied classical percussion and received his MFA in 2001 at The Academy of Music and Drama, University of Gothenburg. Henrik moves freely between notated music and free improvisation, blending acoustic and amplified sounds with the use of contact microphones. His music has been released on labels such as Another Timbre, Häpna, Kning Disk, BombaxBombax, Monotype Records, iDEAL, Hockey Rawks and more. Member in bands such as Skogen, Muddersten, Gahlmm, Bohuslän Big Bang etc. Over the years he has been collaborating with musicians such as Tetuzi Akiyama, Toshimaru Nakamura, Tisha Mukarji, Dimitra Lazaridou-Chatzigoga, Angharad Davies, Axel Dörner, Ko Ishikawa and many more.
Dimitra Lazaridou-Chatzigoga (Thessaloniki, Greece) is a musician and linguist based in London. She is active in experimental and improvised music since 2006. She plays the zither, a string instrument, and uses ebows and objects on its resonance box to produce sustained or granulated sounds. Her approach focuses on the interplay between spontaneity and elaborate techniques.
Recently, Mikroton released ‘Borough’ that documents the singular meeting of ‘The Holy Quintet’ with Johnny Chang, Jamie Drouin, Dominic Lash and David Ryan.
In the last few years she has been performing mainly in and around London, while most recent shows have been in Berlin. At the moment, she is exploring multiple ways to reroute her music.
http://www.strokebystroke.net/
Angharad Davies is a Welsh violinist based in London working with free-improvisation, compositions and performance. Her approach to sound involves attentive listening and exploring beyond the sonic confines of her instrument, her classical training and performance expectation.
angharaddavies.com
Lara’s music blends electronic soundscapes and sampled material with traditional acoustic and classical instruments. Taking a home grown and intuitive approach, Lara’s interests lie in the accidental, the found, indeterminacy, messiness of stuff, experimental and collaborative music making, going with mistakes, (Beckett - “Fail again, fail better”), not knowing, and so on... Her work takes interest in voice: own voice, other voices, human voice, emulating voice. Space as a place to inhabit, cerebral, imagined vs physical. Direct, subtle. Intimacy is relevant. Gut feeling, sometimes humour. Instinctive, intuitive.
Performers and collaborators who have played Lara’s music include Juliet Fraser, Mark Knoop, Orkest de Ereprijs, Louis D’heudieres, Lola de la Mata, members of the London Symphony Orchestra, the National Dance Company of Wales, Exaudi, Plus-Minus Ensemble, Quatuor Bozzini, National Youth String Orchestra, Vaganza, Matsena Productions, Waste Paper Opera Company, Satoko Inoue, Quatuor Danel and No Door Theatre Company.
Dominic Lash concentrates on the double bass and electric guitar. He works regularly with musicians including John Butcher, Angharad Davies, Emil Karlsen, Mark Sanders, Pat Thomas, and Alex Ward. He has lived and worked in Oxford, New York and Bristol, and is currently based in Cambridge where he and N.O. Moore curate the monthly improvised music series Soundhunt. He also runs the label Spoonhunt.
http://dominiclash.blogspot.co.uk/
Marjolaine Charbin plays piano with an ever mutating mix of keyboard technique and various inside-piano techniques using hands, objects, voice and contact microphones. Her sound sometimes evokes electronic music. Recent collaborations include Eddie Prevost, Jennifer Allum, Ute Kanngiesser, Angharad Davies, Dimitra Lazaridou-Chatzigoga, Dominic Lash, Ed Lucas and Ken Ikeda.
https://www.marjolainecharbin.com
https://www.instagram.com/marjolainecharbin/
https://marjolainecharbin.bandcamp.com
Tim Parkinson, for the last 25 years based in London writing music (described as “homeless”) such as recent albums piano trio 2020, an album, Here Comes a Monster, piano music 2015-16, (also TIME IS OVER w/Travis Just) and hybrid reclaimed opera Time With People performed somewhere in some form every year since 2014 (except pandemic-time), and other genrefluid things such as Pleasure Island and recent Oxford Triptych (for Audiograft and MAO), as well as for example five string quartets, one of which is in a large box, written for the Samuel Beckett Centre, all written for and performed by friends who understand like Mira Benjamin, Anton Lukoszevieze, the great Philip Thomas, Mark Knoop, Silvia Tarozzi & Deborah Walker, Object Collection, and sometimes broadcast on BBC or Resonance FM or wfmu. Also occasionally performing on piano or keyboards or objects own music or others (like Foetus) from hcmf to Tate Modern to Roadburn to ATP. Also making a corner in London for music noone else programmes at Music We’d Like to Hear since 2005 and still going strong. More of all this on www.untitledwebsite.com
