Tuesday 16 June 2026, 7.30pm
A two night residency celebrating the legacy of master drummer, composer, educator and painter, TONY OXLEY.
Tony’s metamorphic large group, CELEBRATION ORCHESTRA, first performed in 1984, and lasted, in various permutations, until 1998. Normally between fifteen and twenty members, the ensemble lent heavily on string players and multiple percussionists. They would perform Tony’s graphic scores, music which would often require two days of rehearsal beforehand. The orchestra was broadcast on German radio and television many times, and various compositions over the years included ambitious works for three grand pianos, spoken word, opera singer, and Scottish Pipes and drums. Tonights Orchestra features original members Phil Minton, Matt Wand, Marcio Mattos and Phil Wachsmann.
Phil Minton / voice
Loz Speyer / trumpet
Raph Clarkson / trombone
Larry Stabbins / tenor/soprano saxophone
Phil Wachsmann / violin, electronics
Tansy Spinks / violin, electronics
Matt Wand / electronics
Phil Durrant / electronics
Alexander Hawkins / piano
Dee Byrne / alto saxophone
Tom Ward / alto saxophone, flute, bass clarinet
Michael Bardon / cello
Marcio Mattos / double bass
Regan Bowering / drums
Emil Karlsen / drums
Mark Wastell / drums
For a long time now Phil Minton has been working as a improvising singer, solo and in groups and situations at various locations all over the place, deserts, quarries, concert halls, pubs, holes, dodgy clubs, containers, up trees, in prisons, on mountains, in churches, under bridges and cafe oto etc.
Phil Minton comes from Torquay. He played trumpet and sang with the Mike Westbrook Band in the early 60s - Then in dance and rock bands in Europe for the later of part of the decade. He returned to England in 1971, rejoining Westbrook and was involved in many of his projects until the mid 1980′s.
For most of the last forty years, Minton has been working as an improvising singer in lots of groups, orchestras, and situations. Numerous composers have written music especially for his extended vocal techniques. He has a quartet with Veryan Weston, Roger Turner and John Butcher, and ongoing duos, trios and quartets with above and many other musicians, including tours with American singer Audrey Chen - with whom he has sang far and wide in the last ten years.
Since the eighties, His Feral Choir, where he voice-conducts workshops and concerts for anyone who wants to sing, has performed in over twenty countries.
Loz Speyer (trumpet, flugelhorn) has become known as a trumpeter/composer pushing all boundaries with his own groups ever since the mid 90s. His free jazz quintet Inner Space, and his Cuban-Jazz 6-piece Time Zone, both running since 2002, have toured all over the UK and each released a series of albums, earning critical acclaim and international reviews. His music for Time Zone is a ‘deep fusion’ of Cuban music and Jazz, with clave rhythms in odd meters and unusual time changes. He also writes and arranges for big groups – such as two sets of Sun Ra compositions for Merseyside Improvisers Orchestra, and his own compositions for the 12-piece composers’ collective Rare Mix (with Jason Yarde, Ben Davis, Julian Siegel…).
Starting out with workshops at University of the Streets in NYC, Jamey Aebersold Jazz summer school, and improvisation workshops led by John Stevens and later Phil Wachsmann, Loz has always embraced both Jazz and free improv, with quartets delving deep into Monk’s music and Ornette Coleman’s, free improv for many years with maverick guitarist Hugh Metcalfe, and FreeTrio with the great free jazz drummer Tony Marsh. He continues to explore the openness of the Trio format in Tumbatareco, and large group improvisation with London Improvisers Orchestra and David Leahy’s Musicians in Space. In the wider musical field, Loz has worked with Simo Lagnawi, Yann Tiersen, Sarah-Jane Morris, Amancio daSilva, Alex Maguire, Test Dept, and the Happy End; and in Cuba with Orquesta Chepín-Chovén, veteran trumpeter Inaudis Paisán, and Proyecto Evocación - a collaboration with master percussionist Rafael Cisneros, featured in Festival del Caribe 2009.
Raph Clarkson has extensive experience as a UK trombonist, including performing with World Service Project, Laura Jurd, and with his own groups Resolute and Dissolute Society. Raph also has significant experience of workshop leading, including with Spitalfields Music and English National Opera.
Philipp Wachsmann, who came from a classical background in violin and in contemporary composition, has been occupied with the development of music and improvisation since 1970. For many years he ran workshops at the West Square Music studio that impacted on many young musicians.
He worked with others including significant groups of the time, Chamberpot, Balance and String Thing (with Ian Brighton and also with Marcio Mattos and Trevor Taylor in the latter), and Company. He was asked to join the Musician’s Co-operative (then in its last years), and was in the London Musicians Collective from its start.
He is an active participant in the Bead Record Label (started by Peter Cusack and Simon Mayo), which is still producing new music over 40 years later, managed by him and Mathew Hutchinson.
Regarded by many as an outstanding improviser of great invention, he has always been able to create new approaches within improvised music utilising acoustic and electronic sources. He considers himself to be “fortunate to have toured with Derek Bailey, Christine Jeffries, and Frank Perry in the 70’s, and more recently with Evan Parker’s Electro-acoustic Ensemble”. He can be heard on over 100 LP’s & CD’s - groups including, King Ubu, the LJCO, Iskra 1903, Stellari String Quartet, Duos with Paul Lytton (ECM and Bead), Lawrence Casserley, Matthew Hutchinson and Roger Turner. Most recently he has been working in the group RSIK with Michael Bunce (electronics and sound taken from painting by artist, Catherine Hope-Jones).
Currently he states that:-
“I am concerned with innovation, the violin and what it might do, with intent, perception and memory, with construction defining space, issues of continuity, whether communication needs to be prescriptive, the potential for the roles of listeners to be more active and nonetheless the multitudinal ways individuals hear and listen including the spontaneous non-intellectual.”
Multi-disciplinary artist and performer, Tansy Spinks’ practice includes photography, sound, video, drawing, painting, text based and written works.
She received her PhD researching site-specific sound as a performative practice from LCC, (CRiSAP), University of the Arts London, with David Toop, Angus Carlyle and Cathy Lane. She studied Fine Art in Leeds, has an MA in Photography from the Royal College of Art and is a Licentiate of the Guildhall School of Music, London (violin teaching).
She has also exhibited widely both at home and abroad. Photographic images have been purchased for several collections including the National Media Museum, Bradford and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas. Major publishers of book and CD covers have used her visual work commercially.
More recently, she has been a regular member of The London Improvisers Orchestra, the weekly London Improvisation Workshop (with Eddie Prevost) and has performed in many alternative venues such as Café Oto, Iklectik, South London Gallery, Beaconsfield, Hundred Years Gallery, Whitstable Biennale fringe and for many promoters such as Ad Lib, Konsztrukting Soundz, Avant Garden, Cozy Nook, Jazz Rumours, Luft, Flim Flam, Babble & Squeak, The Instant Orchestra (Latitude) and The Sound Bureau, playing alongside many notable performers of live improvisation, on violin, objects and with voice.
Recent music was devised for artist film-makers Anne Robinson shown at APT and Keith Piper shown at Tate Britain.
website: tansyspinks.com
Rare London appearance of this electronic music legend. Matt Wand played with Stock, Hausen & Walkman, collaborated with Derek Bailey, Tony Oxley, documented on Incus, The Tony Oxley Quartet and The Tony Oxley Orchestra on Soul Note. Has worked on many commissions for installations and exhibitions in the UK and abroad. He has written film scripts for short films and animations (one winning the Goldcrest Award for best short in 1988).
Born near London in 1957, Phil Durrant is a multi-instrumentalist improviser/composer/sound artist who currently performs solo and group concerts. As a violinist (and member of the Butcher/Russell/ Durrant trio), he was one of the key exponents of the "group voice approach" style of improvised music. In the late 90s, his trio with Radu Malfatti and Thomas Lehn represented a shift to a more “reductionist” approach. Recently, he has been performing solo and duo concerts with Bill Thompson and Gaudenz Badrutt using a semi-modular synth system. He has also recently recorded and performed with Dominic Lash’s quartet which includes Rachel Musson and Steve Noble. As an acoustic or electric mandolinist, he has been performing duos with guitarists Daniel Thompson and Martin Vishnick. He also performs regularly in a trio with Mark Wastell and John Butcher and has many ongoing projects with drummer Emil Karlsen including a trio with Maggie Nicols. Durrant still performs regularly with the acoustic/electronic group Trio Sowari (with Bertrand Denzler and Burkhard Beins) and Mark Wastell’s The SEEN, as well as the international electronic ensemble MIMEO with Keith Rowe, Kaffe Matthews, Thomas Lehn, Rafael Toral a.o.
Alexander Hawkins’ work ranges from his acclaimed solo performances (‘intensely intricate…powerful, technically brilliant and melodically inventive’) through to works on a much larger canvas, such as his Togetherness Music ('[a] masterpiece that can stand next to the best works of Mitchell, Braxton or Parker’). He collaborates regularly with all generations of creative musicians, including the likes of Anthony Braxton, Marshall Allen, Evan Parker, John Surman, Joe McPhee, Hamid Drake, Nicole Mitchell, Tomeka Reid, Sofia Jernberg, Shabaka Hutchings, and many others. Further creative associations, with two very different icons of African music, Louis Moholo-Moholo and Mulatu Astatke, stretch back for well over a decade. He has been widely commissioned as a composer, including by the likes of the BBC, Berlin’s Pierre Boulez Saal, and numerous festivals. His performance schedule takes him to club, concert hall, and festival stages worldwide.
"Sounds like all the future jazz you might imagine without ever being able to conceive of the details" – The Guardian
Dee Byrne is a saxophonist, composer and improviser with an interest in jazz and experimental music. Dee collaborates with artists from the UK and Europe who occupy the area of contemporary jazz, avant-garde and free improvisation. Her sextet Outlines serves as a vehicle for Dee’s exploration of group improvisation and original composition. Other bands include European Quintet Ydivide, Loz Speyer's Inner Space, UK/Swiss band MoonMot, London Improvisers Orchestra, and Orchestra New, an improvising ensemble led by Caroline Kraabel.
Tom Ward is a musician, composer and computer programmer from Yorkshire, currently based in London. His primary instrument is the saxophone, but in recent years he has also increasingly explored the bass clarinet and flute. Tom leads a number of groups playing his own compositions (including Madwort Saxophone Quartet and Madwort’s Menagerie), as well as collaborating on a number of freely improvised and collective groups including Cotovelo (PortaJazz), Spinningwork, Ma/ti/om, and an ever-shifting variety of duos and trios. He co-runs the regular BRÅK night, an improvised music gig in a South London homebrew shop where he has played with such improvisers as John Edwards, Corey Mwamba, Charlotte Keeffe and more.
Born 1986 in Ireland. He first came to Leeds in 2007 to study Jazz (BA Hons) at Leeds College of Music and graduated in June 2010. Since then he worked with a variety of musicians from different disciplines and backgrounds. Some of the bands Michael has played with include Shatner's Bassoon, Tipping Point, Sean Noonan’s Pavees Dance, Hiby-Bardon-Hession Trio, Hession/DeBezenac/Bardon, Craig Scott’s Lobotomy, Dave Kane's Rabbit Project Orchestra, Nat Birchall Quintet and Ben Cottrell’s New Seeing.
Michael has had the privilege of playing at some of the top venues and festivals throughout the UK and Europe including Sant'anna Arresi Jazz Festival (Sardinia), Haldern Pop Festival
(Germany), Experimenta Festival, (Bari, Italy) Locomotive Jazz Fest (Italy), Jazz Od Nowa Fest (Poland), Manchester Jazz Festival, The Vortex, Club Integral (London).
Since coming to London in the early 70’s he has performed, recorded and broadcast both in Britain and abroad with most exponents of the Improvised Music world: Evan Parker, John Stevens, John Surman, Roswell Rudd, Dewey Redman, Roscoe Mitchell and Marylin Crispell amongst many others.
Has also worked with dance companies such as Ballet Rambert and The Extemporary Dance Theatre Company, and in electro-acoustic music groups such as the West Square Electronic Music Ensemble, where he developed his own electronic treatment of the double bass and cello both in recording and live performance.
A long-standing member of various Eddie Prevost and Elton Dean formations. International projects working in Europe have included the "Bardo State Orchestra"- a project with Tibetan monks and Jim Dvorak, various projects with Georg Graewe, Tony Oxley's Celebration Orchestra,"AXON" with Phil Minton/ Fred van Hove and Martin Blume, "LINES" with Phil Wachsmann/ Jim Denley/ Martin Blume and Axel Dorner. Current international projects include a duo with shakuhachi player Shiku Yano, the string quartet “Gocce Stellari” with Charlotte Hug, John Edwards and Phil Wachsmann and ‘ABAETETUBA’ with Panda Gianfratti, Thomas Rohrer and Rodrigo Montoya.
Former member of ‘LIO’, the London Improviser’s Orchestra.
His presence can be heard in very many released CD’s and especially in his latest solo recordings, “SOL[os]’ (EMANEM 5035)
“Mattos is a creative genius…his invention is unparalleled, as is his musicianship.” Marc Medwin, review in ‘The Squid’s Ear”
http://marciomattos-music.jimdo.com
https://musiclay.bandcamp.com/music
Regan Bowering is a percussionist, improviser and sound artist based in London. Her solo work explores various combinations of drums and percussion, objects, amps, speakers, and feedback. Her debut album “Solos for _ _ _ _ Spaces” (Dec 2023 on Bezirk Tapes) was described as “a play of contrasts, contradicting voluminous expressions with confined phrases, taming resounding feedback with faint percussive flutters, but one that feels driven by the desire to craft electrifying drama rather than pure autotelic dissonance.” (The Quietus). She is one third of a collaborative project with Li Song and Conal Blake, with two releases: “2 Movements” (Feedback Moves, 2024) and "Music for Snare Drums and Portable Speakers" (Infant Tree, 2023). Her debut LP A Technology of Feeling is set to be released January 2026 on Infant Tree.
Emil Karlsen is a Norwegian improvising drummer currently based in the UK. Described as a “significant addition to the UK free jazz scene” and an “exceptional improv drummer”, he’s establishing himself on the improvised music circuit working the span from free improvisation to free jazz. Occupied with the exploring timbral possibilities of the drum kit, he performs with Philipp Wachsmann, John Butcher, Phil Durrant and Maggie Nicols to mention some. Apart from being an active performer he’s central in the revitalisation of the historic Bead Records.
Mark Wastell is a versatile improvising musician who has played a central role in the British improvised music scene for thirty years. He has performed and recorded extensively and his varied resume includes projects with Derek Bailey, Phil Durrant, John Butcher, Lasse Marhaug, Rhodri Davies, Simon H. Fell, Burkhard Beins, John Tilbury, Mattin, Tony Conrad, Evan Parker, Tim Barnes, Bernhard Günter, Keith Rowe, John Zorn, Peter Kowald, Joachim Nordwall, Otomo Yoshihide, David Toop, Max Eastley, Hugh Davies, Julie Tippetts, Alan Skidmore, Mike Cooper, Chris Abrahams, Stewart Lee, Clive Bell, Arild Andersen, Jan Bang, Erik Honoré, Maggie Nicols, Will Gaines, Charlotte Keeffe, Thomas Lehn, Thurston Moore and David Sylvian.
During a 50+ year career across the spectrum of music saxophonist Larry Stabbins has worked with most of the important figures at the cutting edge of European Jazz and Improvisation from Mike Westbrook to Keith Tippett and Tony Oxley and Germany’s Peter Brotzmann, as well as with Robert Wyatt and in Jerry Dammers Spatial AKA. Alongside this he played in the seminal pop group Weekend and formed Working Week with guitarist Simon Booth, a project that took a melange of latin, soul and jazz into the world of pop and dance music.
Since then, different projects of his own across the range of his interests have varied from totally improvised small groups and solo performances to “Jazz Rap” ( QRZ?) in the early 1990s, “FreeJazz TechnoFunk” (Game Theory) early 2000s, “Psychedelic Hip Hop” ( Stonephace) and freeish “Spiritual Jazz” (Stonephace Stabbins with Zoe Rahman) around 2010. And currently in a trio "SAROST" with Mark Sanders and 7 string bassist Paul Rogers and the quartet "137"with Adrian Utley and Jim Barr of the cult band "Portishead" and Percussionist Sebastien Rochford
"Larry Stabbins is an under-recognized giant amongst great saxists". – Bruce L Gallenter, Downtown Music Gallery NYC
