Thursday 24 June 2021, 7.30pm
Very excited to present a month-long series of concerts from one of the all-time great improvising drummers, Steve Noble! A fearless and constantly inventive improviser, Steve's 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.
For each of these shows, Steve will be performing a solo set followed by a duo with one of a specially selected line-up of collaborators for what should be an unmissable series.
Steve Noble / drums
Alex Ward / clarinet
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).
Alex Ward's diverse musical activities since the early '90s have straddled the worlds of free improvisation, contemporary composition and avant rock, and have seen him work with such significant musical figures as Derek Bailey, Duck Baker, Lol Coxhill, Eugene Chadbourne, Simon H. Fell, Thurston Moore, Joe Morris, Steve Noble, Evan Parker, Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Pat Thomas and Weasel Walter, amongst a host of others. His work as a composer/bandleader has encompassed his own ensembles such as Predicate, Forebrace, the Alex Ward Quintet and Items 4, 6, 7 & 10, alongside collaborative projects such as his duos with Dominic Lash, Jem Doulton (as Dead Days Beyond Help) and Sean Noonan (as Noonward); while his solo releases have ranged from unaccompanied performances on clarinet and guitar to the layered studio creations found on 2021's Gated. He currently plays guitar and sings in math/noise trio Heckle Chamber (with Roberto Sassi and Jem Doulton), and is working on the completion of the final album by legendary band Pere Ubu (which he joined in 2021) alongside the other surviving members.
"...guitarist Alex Ward [is] a compulsively creative polymath... a reliably unpredictable axe-hero for collaborators of all backgrounds." – Stewart Lee, The Sunday Times Review
