Sunday 5 April 2026, 7.30pm
TROM is a variant on TRIM. TRIM is an improvising quartet brought together by Dominic Lash (guitar) with Phil Durrant on modular synth, Steve Noble on percussion and Rachel Musson on saxophones. For this concert, Lash, Durrant and Noble will be joined by Colin Webster on saxophone instead. Bridging the territory between the acoustic, the amplified, and the electronic, this collection of remarkable improvisers is capable of great intensity as well as minutely balanced delicacy, but always with a sense of drama.
TRIM’s first album (recorded live at Cafe OTO in 2022) is available on the Shrike label.
Dominic Lash concentrates on the double bass and electric guitar. He works regularly with musicians including John Butcher, Angharad Davies, Emil Karlsen, Mark Sanders, Pat Thomas, and Alex Ward. He has lived and worked in Oxford, New York and Bristol, and is currently based in Cambridge where he and N.O. Moore curate the monthly improvised music series Soundhunt. He also runs the label Spoonhunt.
http://dominiclash.blogspot.co.uk/
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.
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).
London based saxophonist Colin Webster is quickly establishing himself on the European avant-garde scene. Collaborating with some of the key figures in improvised and experimental music, Webster is known for working from extreme sonic palettes – from minimal to maximal, constantly pushing boundaries.
“The application of circular breathing techniques are essential to this ritual-ready, sustain-heavy sound, it seems. Fans of an ensemble like Phurpa might get as much out of it as jazz cadets into, say, Peter Brötzmann, and if you happen to be the sort of wildcat who likes both, then Vs Amp is likely your kind of journey into sound.” – Noel Gardner, The Quietus
https://colinwebster.bandcamp.com
