A real pleasure to have Thurston Moore here for an evening exploring his parrallel interests in poetry and improvised noise. 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. He'll be presenting a reading together with poetry giant Tom Raworth and improvised sets on electric guitar with powerhouse drummer Steve Noble and Alex Ward on clarinet.

THURSTON MOORE / Guitar, Poetry

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.

He is also the founder of independent poetry press Flowers and Cream and has been involved with editing the Ecstatic Peace Poetry Journal since early 2000. His own verse has been published in various anthologies and by a number of imprints since Water Row Press first presented Alabama Wildman, a collection of scattered writings from the 1970s and 80s. He has been on faculty at the Summer Writing Program at Naropa University.

TOM RAWORTH / Poetry

Described by Thurston Moore as a 'giant' of the poetry world, Raworth's early endeavours included the publication of Outburst, a magazine in which he published a number of British and American poets including Ed Dorn, Allen Ginsberg and LeRoi Jones. His first book, The Relation Ship appeared in 1966 and he went on to teach in the USA and Mexico before returning to the UK where he further developed his disjunctive style, built from short, unpunctuated lines that entice the reader into following multiple syntactic possibilities, as they knit together everything from observations of the everyday to self-reflexive commentary on the acts of thinking and writing, to affectionate lifts from pulp fiction and film noir, to political satire.

ALEX WARD / Clarinet

Alex Ward seems to be very busy at the moment playing loud, skronking electric guitar in groups such as NEW (with Steve Noble and John Edwards), Dead Days Beyond Help (with Jem Doulton, where he sings as well), and with the ecstatic agonies of his own free jazz quartet Predicate (with Tim Hill, Dom Lash and Mark Sanders. H can also be spotted on clarinet in duos with Steve Noble and Dom Lash...

Perched precariously on top of a bar stool, Ward's intensely concentrated clarinet playing draws deep on his own immersion in free improvisation and reference the whole history of his instrument, invoking the experimental extensions of John Zorn and Anthony Braxton, the studied elegance of Jimmy Guiffre, the Ellingtonian rubato of Harry Carney, the classicism of Mozart, and even the prehistoric pipes of frenzied bacchic ritual.

STEVE NOBLE / Drums

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).