Monday 2 March 2015, 6.30pm, OTO Project Space
As part as an enduring serie of public (and private) experiments in the Project space since its opening in 2013 - opportunity makes the thief - this concert is jumping at the first visit of french trumpet player Sébastien Cirotteau in London. The quartet is secretly inspired by Bill Dixon's music; the frame is an on-going exploration of (what might still be called) ‘free-jazz’.
Sébastien Cirotteau / trumpet
Steve Noble / drums
Tim Fairhall & Guillaume Viltard / double-basses
Sébastien Cirotteau studied trumpet at the ENM (Le Mans) and the CNR (Rennes) between 1986 and 1993, then with Emmanuel Maurice until 1995. He later studied sound engineering in Toulouse (BTS Audiovisuel, 1999). His training and his meeting with a few pioneering musicians (Michel Doneda, Fabrice Charles, Marc Démereau) have deeply altered his instrumental approach, now influenced by electroacoustics and soundscapes. Listening is the basis of his work, active listening, an ear sensitive and open to the world. His current projects include music, improvisation, performance, and the use of audio media (electronics, sound art, phonography).
Steve Noble is London's leading drummer, a fearless and constantly inventive improviser whose super-precise, ultra-propulsive and hyper-detailed playing has galvanized encounters with Derek Bailey, Matthew Shipp, Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith, Stephen O'Malley, Joe McPhee, Alex Ward, Rhodri Davies and many, many more.
In the early eighties, Noble played with the Nigerian master drummer Elkan Ogunde, Rip Rig and Panic, Brion Gysin and the Bow Gamelan Ensemble, before going on to work with the pianist Alex Maguire and with Derek Bailey (including Company Weeks 1987, 89 and 90). He was featured in the Bailey's excellent TV series on Improvisation for Channel 4 based on his book ‘Improvisation; its nature and practise’. He has toured and performed throughout Europe, Africa and America and currently leads the groups N.E.W (with John Edwards and Alex Ward) and DECOY (with John Edwards and Alexander Hawkins).
An intensely physical double-bassist Viltard was one of OTO’s first associate artists – he has played and performed here with musicians as diverse as Otomo Yoshihide and Kan Mikami, Louis Moholo-Moholo, and Evan Parker. Particularly memorable was a sensational solo set in support of Marc Ribot. Most often his work has been in the ‘classic’ jazz format of saxophone/bass/drums: from trios with the late Tony Marsh and Shabaka Hutchings, to most recently Eddie Prévost and Ken Vandermark.
His uncompromising, physical and rhythmic approach to the double-bass – always acoustic, adamant – connects to jazz learning from sources as diverse as Jean-Jacques Avenel, Barre Phillips, Johnny Mbizo Dyani and Ronnie Boykins.
His close association with OTO endures, and since late summer 2013 he has been part of a group of musicians playing, pushing and learning day and night in the OTO project space. Most often private, groupings around this new energy these groups are increasingly public, for example Steve Noble’s (new) Quartet.
Video by Helen Petts
