Thursday 4 June 2015, 8pm
Every single instrument takes from its structure a (un)limited range of possible sounds. Hidden behind this structure lays a long history of techniques. Every single musician has a personal approach to this history. While every single body takes from its close relationship to the physical instrument a (un)limited ability to produce a wide range of possible sounds.
Juxtaposition of four instruments is a simple fact that open a wide range of possible combinations from a (un)limited range of possible sounds. First (wide open) step of composition.
Hidden behind this simple fact is a statement : the choice of musicians. Ending up straight away with the idea of composition. For there is no such a complex thing that four bodies, four personalities, sharing a similar (but very personal) knowledge of /relationship to the hidden tradition that lays behind this simple fact : a juxtaposition of saxophone, piano, bass and drums.
Sébastien Coste / soprano saxophone
Pat Thomas / piano
Guillaume Viltard / double-bass
Steve Noble / drums
Sébastien Coste plays soprano saxophone and balloons. His experience in dance, street festivals and clown decisively shaped his work. He's been stirred up by encounters with a great many musicians such as Compagnie Lubat, Joelle Léandre or Steve Lacy. Through his eclectic projects he also met – among others – Will Guthrie, Catherine Jauniaux, Barre Phillips or Shadi Fathi. He's now involved in his Earthly Bird quartet – along with singer Benat Achiary, drummer Edward Perraud and guitarist Julien Desprez. Quite an eclectic character, he's also playing with the famous crazy Rosette rock band and in a fairy hiphop duet called Peter Panpan. He co-started the Compagnie Brouniak in 2009. Since then, he has created two solos : Baudruche and Feathers in the Ear, both musical shows.
Previous appearances in London have included a memorable duet with Terry Day and, thanks to his lasting partnership with Guillaume Viltard, he has also performed with Eddie Prévost, Tony Marsh, and more recently Seymour Wright & Paul Abbott.
Pat Thomas studied classical piano from aged 8 and started playing Jazz from the age of 16. He has since gone on to develop an utterly unique style - embracing improvisation, jazz and new music. He has played with Derek Bailey in Company Week (1990/91) and in the trio AND (with Noble) – with Tony Oxley’s Quartet and Celebration Orchestra and in Duo with Lol Coxhill.
"Sartorially shabby as Thomas may be, and on first impression even rather stolid, he has a somewhat imperious charisma that’s immediately amplified when he starts to play. Unlike other pianists whose virtuosity seems to be racing ahead of their thought processes Thomas always seems supremely in command of his gift, and his playing, no matter how free and ready to tangle with abstraction, always carries a charge of authoritative exactitude." - The Jazzmann
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
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).
