Thursday 10 September 2026, 7.30pm

Seijiro Murayama / Jean-Luc Guionnet (duo) + Vespertilio folia ferens

£14 £12 Advance £7 MEMBERS

An evening of two duo sets from 4 musicians who have a longstanding history with one another. Seijiro Murayama and Jean-Luc Guionnet have been consistantly playing as a duo from 2006 and this is the second concert from Vespertilio folia ferens - the duo of Seymour Wright and Luciano Maggiore.

Jean-Luc Guionnet

"My musical work subdivides itself into as many ways as occasions arise for me to think and act with sound and forms. Those occasions have always to do with a strong meeting with an outside element : an instrument (saxophone/organ), a theoretical idea (what is "rumour"?), and mainly a collaborating friend (Lotus Edde Khouri, Éric La Casa, Thomas Bonvalet, Seijiro Murayama) ... or the long term adventure of a team (Hubbub, Ames Room, Jupiter Terminus ...). There then follows a collection of themes which, in turn, influence the evolution of the musical work and define the direction of meetings to come: the thickness of the air, the pidgin, the musical instrument considered as affective automaton, sound as a signature of space, signature of objects, signature of what it is not... The coming emotion is made out of all these strata and the sliding of one over the other during the act of listening. When music is giving time."

Seijiro Murayama

Percussionist Seijiro Murayama was born in 1957 in Nagasaki, Japan. He started performing improvised music in 1972, under some influence of Vinko Globokar and musicologist Fumio Koizumi. After graduated from Tokyo University in 1982 in Urdu studies he toured the USA with Keiji Haino as part of the seminal psychedelic band Fushitsusha. Returning to Japan after a period in NYC he continued playing drums and electronics in K.K. Null‘s noise/rock band A.N.P. (Absolut Null Punkt), while further exploring free improvisation. A relocation to France in 1999 led to collaborations that extended into dance, theatre and performance as well as ongoing partnerships with musicians Jean-Luc Guionnet, Eric Cordier, Michel Doneda, Mattin, Lionel Marchetti, among many others. After over a decade in Europe he relocated back to Japan in 2013.

His artistic principal is to work with the idea of the plural or inter-disciplinary relationships between music and other disciplines of art: dance, video, paintings, photos, literature etc. In this way, he collaborates with musicians, composers, and sound artists. Improvisation is always the major concern for him, even if it is not his artistic goal. His approach is based on the attention to space and place, to the energy of the audience and to the quality and perception of silence on various levels.

http://www.seijiromurayama.com/

Vespertilio folia ferens

Vespertilio folia ferens is Luciano Maggiore on trumpet and Seymour Wright on saxophone.

 Their work echoes locations, mimics other beings as a way to learn and discover new ways of making music, and en-sounds liquid and darkness as sites of a new aural visibility, and visible aurality.