Thursday 27 July 2017, 7.30pm
OTO PROJECT SPACE: SOLO:DUO:TRIO #2 – ALISON BLUNT / GRAHAM DUNNING / SUE LYNCH (TRIO) + ALEX WARD / MICHAEL SPEERS (DUO) + LUCIA H CHUNG (SOLO)
SOLO:DUO:TRIO is a monthly night of improvised performances bringing together a wide variety of musicians and artists. Each show features a solo, a duo, and a trio performance where performers are invited to present something new or play with a person they haven’t played with before in an intimate and open environment.
SOLO: Lucia H Chung
DUO: Alex Ward & Michael Speers
TRIO: Alison Blunt, Graham Dunning & Sue Lynch
£7 on the door (£5 members)
Alison Blunt
Alison Blunt has performed new work using improvisation throughout Europe, Scandinavia, US, Brazil, Australia and New Zealand with a wide array of artists including Avreeayl Ra Amen, Renee Baker, John Edwards, Vinny Golia, Elisabeth Harnik, Tristan Honsinger, Audrey Lauro, Hannah Marshall, Gianni Mimmo, Evan Parker, Ute Wassermann and Trevor Watts. She is a founder member of several ensemble projects including Barrel, Barcode Quartet and Hanam Quintet and occasionally performs as soloist. Amongst broader performance and research activities Alison has collaborated with writers, visual artists, dancers and film makers and leads creative music workshops with children, families, conservatoire students and professional musicians.
"Blunt herself has the same spontaneous attitude for superb control of timbre and sound, while remaining utterly free in her inventiveness". Steff Gijssels, FREE JAZZ BLOG
Graham Dunning
Graham Dunning is self-taught as an artist and musician having studied neither discipline academically. His work explores sound as texture, timbre and something tactile, drawing on bedroom production, tinkering and recycling found objects. He has performed solo and in ensembles across the UK, and Europe, and shown solo sound installations in the UK, New Zealand and USA. He teaches Experimental Sound Art at the Mary Ward Centre in London and also gives various independent workshops. Dunning has released through Entr’acte, Seagrave, Tombed Visions and more.
Alex Ward
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 includes the avant-rock duo Dead Days Beyond Help in which he plays guitar, sings and co-writes the material; various groups which perform his compositions-for-improvisers including Forebrace, the Alex Ward Quintet/Sextet, and the Item series of ensembles (the first of which, Item 10, debuted at Cafe Oto in September 2017); and improvising collaborations both regular and ad-hoc with musicians including Steve Noble, Dominic Lash, Kay Grant, Joe Morris and Weasel Walter. Besides his own groups and improvisational work, he also performs in ensembles including the Duck Baker Trio/Quartet, Thurston Moore’s recent multi-guitar projects Galaxies and New Noise Guitar Explorations, and Charles Bullen and Charles Hayward’s This Is Not This Heat. 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. Much of his work is documented on the label Copepod, which he co-runs with Luke Barlow.
"...guitarist Alex Ward [is] a compulsively creative polymath... a reliably unpredictable axe-hero for collaborators of all backgrounds." Stewart Lee, The Sunday Times Review
Michael Speers
Michael Speers is a musician from Northern Ireland, currently based in London. Feedback is the basis of most of his practice, using the limitations of himself and electronic / acoustic equipment—namely percussion, no-input mixer, sampled media, test equipment and field recordings—to depict his engagement with reality through sound phenomena. The resultant soundscape is generally dense and abrasive, focussing on texture and spatial / material resonance, which is formed live in improvised performances, installations and electronic compositional work.
Collaborating with Paul Abbott as yPLO—the duo uses real/synthetic drums/electronics towards realising a speculative drum kit. A solo record is scheduled for release in 2019 with C.A.N.V.A.S.
Sue Lynch
Sue Lynch runs ‘The Horse Improvised Music Club’ with Adam Bohman and Hutch Demouilpied.
Lynch is currently a member of David Petts-‘Remote Viewers’, with John Edwards, Mark Sanders, Caroline Kraabel , Adrian Northover and David Petts. She also performs with Adam Bohman, Eddie Prevost, Hutch Demouilpied, Richard Sanderson, Steve Noble and Sharon Gal. She has recently performed as part of Tarek Atoui’s ‘Reverse Collection’ at The Tate Modern and with Tristan Honsinger. She has also performed with the Cambodian Space Project and currently performs Psychedelic Afro Beat Sudanese band ‘The Scorpios’.
Lucia H Chung
Lucia H Chung is an electronic sound artist based in London. She performs and releases music under the alias ‘en creux’ whose sound creation springs from her view on the medium of sound as preposition. Sound as preposition, expresses a relation between two elements. Without preposition, a clause will not form and a relation will not take place. Yet, at the same time, the role of preposition is also affected and determined by the two elements that it connects.
‘...similar to Ryoji Ikeda’s formidable, stone-wall electronics: ruthlessly precise and undeniably physical. Cleansing blasts of sub and clipping static are oddly calming despite their force.’ - Stray Landings
