Sunday 5 October 2025, 7.30pm
An evening in two parts, moods and new constellations, shaped by London’s diverse and restless improvised music communities.
The night opens with Bint Mbareh and Joe Namy in their debut as a duo. Bint Mbareh’s work turns to the voice and electronics as a site of collective ritual, a way of marking presence across fractured geographies, while Namy’s electronic practice emerges through systems, migrations and the infrastructures that carry sound.
The second set shifts to an acoustic quartet with Tom Chant on saxophones, John Edwards on double bass, Mark Sanders on drums and Pat Thomas on piano. Each has been central to London’s free improvisation, working in innumerable combinations. Here they meet in this configuration for the first time live, sounding out new ground together.
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
John Edwards grew up in London and started experimenting with the bass guitar before he switched in his twenties to play double bass. He is deeply rooted in the creative free jazz and improvisation genre. Since the 80ties he is as soloist and in many groups and ensembles in Europe active and became one of the most renowned bass players. He played/plays regular for example with Peter Brötzmann, Joe Mc Phee, Phil Minton, Maggie Nichols, Evan Parker, Roscoe Michtell, Louis Moholo-Moholo, Mark Sanders, Caroline Kraabel, John Butcher, Pat Thomas, Irène Schweizer, Hans Koch, Florian Stoffner, Gabriele Mitelli, John Dikeman.
"I think John Edwards is absolutely remarkable: there’s never been anything like him before, anywhere in jazz." - Richard Williams, The Blue Moment
Tom Chant, born 1975, Dublin, is an improvising saxophonist, living in Barcelona. Active in Barcelona and in London where he grew up, Tom has been playing improvised music for over thirty years. He started his adventures playing with Maggie Nicols, Eddie Prévost and John Edwards, and was soon playing with many luminaries of the English and international scene. He has played and recorded with Steve Beresford, Otomo Yoshihide, Ferran Fages, Rhodri Davies and the London Improvisors Orchestra amongst many others. Tom’s current playing explores the entropy of technique and the spaces this opens up for new forms of expression.
Mark has worked with many greats of the British, European and American free jazz improvised music scene including Roscoe Mitchell, Roswell Rudd, Evan Parker, John Butcher, Henry Grimes, Elaine Mitchener, Wadada Leo Smith, Myra Melford, Charles Gayle , Sirone and William Parker
He has also played with Jah Wobble, Harold Budd, Bill Laswell, Christian Marclay, International Contemporary Ensemble, Ilan Volkov and The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.
He is a member of many working groups including duos with Nicole Mitchell and Rhodri Davies, Neil Charles' 'Dark Days' with Cleveland Watkiss & Pat Thomas, 'Last Dream of the Morning' with John Butcher & John Edwards, 'Shifa' with Rachel Musson and Pat Thomas and 'Sarost' with Larry Stabbins & Paul Rogers.
As an educator he has taught improvisation at many universities around the country as a lecturer and guest tutor.
Mark has played concerts and festivals around the world and appears on over 220 CD and Vinyl releases.
Mark was a recipient of the Paul Hamlyn Award for Artists 2024
"Drop the needle on the first track — or any track for that matter — and the first thing one is bound to notice is the amazing percussion skills of Mark Sanders" – Peter Thelen... Exposé
"Mark is just incredible and immensely diverse, he is at the center of "Kwingyaw" and it is difficult to tell what he is doing to get some of these sounds." – Bruce L Gallenter, Downtown Music Gallery, NY
Bint Mbareh is a musician with a curiosity about water, pedagogy and the parallels that bring together and keep separate material and unseen worlds. For example, the wave mechanics that govern both sound and water and their uncanny abilities to break borders, with a focus on Palestinian histories of water governance. Bint Mbareh scores films, like Forensic Architecture's Dawaymeh Masssacre investigation and Julie-Yara Atz' What if We Were Happy?, and she makes material work such as the dancing bucket of water she showed at the Sharjah Biennial, derived from earlier work shown at the Royal College of Art, The Tate Modern. She also convenes a choir for non-musicians, and has been regularly installed at Cafe OTO since her Youth Music Residency here in 2021. more at bintmbareh.today
Joe Namy is a Lebanese artist and musician based in London, whose practice encompasses sound, its history and impact on the built environment. Namy's work critically engages with the gender dynamics of bass, migration patterns of instruments, and the complexities of translation in all this—from language to language, from score to sound, from drum to dance. Ongoing projects by Namy focus on the history and resonance of opera houses across eleven countries in the MENA region, and activations on the archive of pioneering electronic musician Halim El-Dabh. Recent commissions include Art on the Underground at Waterloo Station, Ashkal Alwan, the Brooklyn Public Library Central Branch, Busan Biennale, Darat Al Fanun, and the Sharjah Art Foundation. Namy is the founding director of BBS Community Radio and has held radio residencies on Radio Alhara, Clocktower Radio and WNYU.
