Great to have Thurston Moore back on stage at Cafe OTO for a duo with pivotal London improvisor and Mopomoso guitarist John Russell. The duo performed a densely enveloping set together at Thurston's residency with Mats Gustafsson at OTO in September last year and it's a pleasure to welcome them back for an acoustic set and an electric set this time around!

"Moore's and Russell's eerie reverb, slide guitar and acoustic clicks set out the stall for their tense opening duet, all rhythmic judders and jarring chordal strums, flattening the high notes to lend a clipped acoustic chime" - London Jazz review of the duo's previous OTO performance



JOHN RUSSELL / guitar

“for Russell the fingerboard is apparently multiple. He finds new tones in the same place, new relationships in the same gesture. A second trip across the fingerboard is always a different excursion. The harmonic is a transparent sound: silence and ambient sound pass through it. It accounts for Russell’s unhurried pace and his sense of order, even when he’s playing fast: there’s simply so much going on.” - Stuart Broomer, Point of Departure

John Russell got his first guitar in 1965 while living in Kent and began to play in and around London from 1971 onwards. An early involvement with the emerging free improvisation scene (from 1972) followed, seeing him play in such places as The Little Theatre Club, Ronnie Scott’s, The Institute of Contemporary Arts, The Musicians’ Co-Op and the London Musicians’ Collective.

From 1974 his work extended into teaching, broadcasts (radio and television) and touring in the United Kingdom and, ever extensively, in other countries around the world . He has played with many of the world’s leading improvisers and his work can be heard on over 50 CDs. In 1981, he founded QUAQUA, a large bank of improvisers put together in different combinations for specific projects and, in 1991, he started MOPOMOSO which has become the UK’s longest running concert series featuring mainly improvised music.



John Russell website

THURSTON MOORE / guitar

Thurston Moore needs little introduction - an inventive and instantly recognisable guitarist both in his solo work and as a member of Sonic Youth, Thurston has also been a long running participant in and champion of much of the music that we hold dear at Cafe OTO.

www.sonicyouth.com