Thursday 20 June 2024, 7.30pm
Unpredictable series presents “Papermaking Music’ conducted by Gino Robair featuring two sets where a small orchestra with Steve Beresford, Poulomi Desai, BeibeiWang, Charlotte Keeffe, Khabat Abbas, Gina Southgate, and Blanca Regina perform Robair’s genuine scores.
Gino Robair’s Radical Divination (2023) explores performance as a form of augury. During the event, two papermakers interact through game-based structures to create graphic scores interpreted by musicians using systems modelled after historical divination practices (which take into account multi-modal sensory input—sight, sound, texture). Interactive concepts embedded in the piece help create feedback paths and foster emergent properties that extend the score and shape the performance in organic, yet unpredictable ways.
In the second set, the musical ensemble will perform Robair’s The Amanuensis (2014), featuring artist Gina Southgate. In this work, specially prepared texts are filtered through the amanuensis, which captures spoken language as visual elements that influence ensemble improvisation.
Gino Robair’s artistic practice examines how systems of human interaction are influenced by perceptions of materiality. His PhD research at the University of California, Davis focuses on papermaking as a form of embodied choreography; a performative process that puts artists in conversation with their tools, materials (plant fiber, water), and ambient environment (air temperature and humidity). The results of this interaction are ephemeral memory objects carrying traces of their materialization that can be used as resources for interpretation within a performance context. As a composer and percussionist, Gino has recorded with Tom Waits, Anthony Braxton, Terry Riley, Lou Harrison, John Butcher, Derek Bailey, Fred Frith, Otomo Yoshihide, and the ROVA Saxophone Quartet. His opera, I, Norton, based on the life of the self-proclaimed Emperor of the United States, has been performed throughout North America and Europe.
https://www.ginorobair.com
Steve Beresford has been a central figure in the British and international spontaneous music scenes for over fifty years, freely improvising on piano, objects, electronics and other things with people like Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, Han Bennink and John Zorn. Long-standing groups have included Alterations (with David Toop, Terry Day and Peter Cusack), The Melody Four (with Lol Coxhill and Tony Coe, both RIP) and London Improvisers Orchestra.
He has written songs, composed for large and small ensembles, and scored short films, feature films, TV shows and commercials. He was part of the editorial teams of ‘Musics’ and ‘Collusion’ magazines, writes about music in various contexts, and was a senior lecturer in music at the University of Westminster.
Steve has worked with Christian Marclay on various Marclay mixed media pieces. He has also worked with The Slits, Najma Akhtar, Stewart Lee, Ivor Cutler, Prince Far-I, Alan Hacker, Tania Chen, Louis Moholo-Moholo, Faradena Afifi, Blanca Regina, Ray Davies, Mandhira De Saram, The Flying Lizards, Zeena Parkins, The Portsmouth Sinfonia, Ilan Volkov, Rachel Musson, Vic Reeves, Lore Lixenberg, Valentina Magaletti and many others.
Beresford has an extensive discography - around 500 releases - as performer, arranger, free-improviser, composer, conductor and producer. He was awarded a Paul Hamlyn award for composers in 2012.
In 2021, Bloomsbury published a book by Andy Hamilton: ‘Pianos, Toys, Music and Noise: Conversations with Steve Beresford’.
In 2022, Siglio published the book ‘Call and Response’, which partnered photographs by Christian Marclay with notated improvisations by Beresford.
Poulomi Desai's unique, modified sitar embraces elements of chance, challenge and subversion - industrial, noise influenced improvised, art performances. Her prepared / bowed sitar is extended with modified cassette decks playing her field recordings, circuit bent toys, optikinetic instruments, kitchen knives, axes and massage tools. It is a conscious response and reaction to the idea of 'authenticity' seeking to break the rules and expectations of how a 'sacred' instrument should be played, the strictures upon the player, the guru-shishya approach, and the assumptions made upon the identity of the player herself. Her sitar is the primary basis for sonic improvisation and exploration; an allegorical antidote to the objectification of the 'South Asian woman's body' in 'Bollywood' cinema / 'popular culture' and, in a broader sense, affirming her idea of 'Noise' as protest. She runs the Usurp Art space in the suburbs and is currently the Curator of the Grunwick strike exhibition.
www.poulomidesai.tumblr.com | www.usurp.org.uk
Genre-defying percussionist Beibei Wang is an acclaimed international virtuoso percussionist with both a Chinese and British musical education background. Beibei has enjoyed a meteoric rise in the classical music world, receiving international praise for her performances. She was listed in the top 50 Chinese musicians in the “Sound of East” project by the Chinese Ministry of Culture, as well as endorsed by the Arts Council, England receiving an Exceptional Talent visa from the British Government. Following a successful world tour, Beibei now leads a traditional Chinese percussion programme at SOAS, University of London. In 2020, Beibei was named Associate of the Royal Academy of Music. Most recently Beibei was appointed as percussion professor of the Crossover Studies Faculty at London Performing Academy of Music. www.beibeimusic.com
Keeffe’s debut album ‘Right Here, Right Now’ is where you’ll find her exhibiting a passion for vibrant soundscapes rendered in live spaces. Released in 2021, also on Discus Music, she earned critical acclaim carving out a niche on the imprint. She also composes and performs for a number of the roster’s artists, including; Hi Res Heart, Carla Diratz and Julie Tippetts. She also co-leads Anthropology Band with the head of Discus Music, Martin Archer.
To date, her music has been featured significantly on BBC Radio 3, Jazz FM and BBC Radio 6, where she's been described as a 'prolific', 'dynamic' and 'excellent improviser!', by the likes of Corey Mwamba, Stuart Maconie and Jez Nelson. Keeffe is a Serious Artist and part of Serious’ Take Five 2022 cohort. She performed a duet with the mighty City of London as part of world-renowned trumpeter Dave Douglas' Festival of New Trumpet Music 2022.
Harnessing the power of art for social change is a crucial part of Keeffe’s musical identity: she has served as Assistant Musical Director of the London Gay Big Band, champions gender and diversity equality, as part of the Parliamentary award-winning Women in Jazz Media team, and played in Marin Alsop's Taki Concordia Orchestra at the World Economic Forum 2019, in front of world leaders and celebrities including Sir David Attenborough.
From stepping on Glastonbury and Wilderness stages alongside Charlotte Church, Laura Mvula and Kate Nash, to broadcasting to an international audience live from her bathroom during the pandemic, Keeffe understands that embracing individuality and letting go of inhibitions is the surest way to grasp the transformative power of music.
“Keeffe shows notable strength of character as she runs the sonic and emotional gamut..." - Kevin Le Gendre, JAZZWISE
Khabat Abas is an experimental cellist, improviser, and composer from Iraqi Kurdistan. She moves freely between artistic discipline and possibilities. Her works are inspired by a broad collection of methods, including noise, improvisation, and narrative storytelling as individual approaches. Therefore, she searches for unheard sounds or undiscovered spaces. Khabat is probably best known for her adapted cello and improvisational work exploring extended techniques, through which she started developing pieces that respond to the objects that are surrounding her or to her childhood memories. In her practice, she raises questions about what is out of bounds, raising the possibilities of sounds that cannot be controlled – in contrast to traditional musical values.
Blanca Regina is an interdisciplinary artist, independent curator, and educator based in London currently involved in creating audio-visual performances, sound works, installations, films, and book arts. She is co-founder of Unpredictable Series focused on spontaneous music and experimentation, visual arts, and archives. With Steve Beresford, she has produced three albums, mixed and mastered by Dave Hunt in London. ‘What Blue’ (2020) Duets with Beresford; ‘Duets with Blanca Regina, Spontaneous Music’ featuring duets with Leafcutter John, Jack Goldstein, John Butcher, Benedict Taylor, Matthias Kispert, Aneek Thapar, Steve Beresford, Sharon Gal, and Hyelim Kim and ‘Art of Improvisers’ (2017) a collection album with several artists concentrating on women improvisers. With long-time collaborator and artist Leafcutter John capturing their live performances in 2017, they created ‘Miga’ limited-edition pen drive and digital release. Other collaborations include performances and projects with Matthias Kispert, David Toop, Matt Black (Coldcut), Art Terry, and Peter Cusack.
She is currently working on Terry Day's archives and finishing a documentary film about him.
Gina Southgate is primarily a live painter, best known on the international jazz scene where she produces spectacular, qualitative, real-time paintings. For over three decades she's painted at gigs and festivals capturing the vitality and nuance in her unique portraits of world-class musicians.
She also performs creating real-time audio/visual interactive artworks with improvising musicians. Coming up through the world of freely improvised music and spontaneous site-specific performance happenings on the avant-garde fringe in the 90's Southgate was encouraged by the inclusivity of that scene to perform herself. In this role, she creates and manipulates site-specific artworks with paint, props and objects. These are chosen for their absurdist qualities as well as for their visual and sculptural potential and their sonic abilities. She explores in performance the futility and irony of domesticity and labour. Southgate's degree training in metalwork and its necessary long-winded skills served as a springboard and a catalyst to a world where art is made in and of the moment, fuelled by and aligned with the musicians she interacts with.
She currently performs in duos with Maggie Nicols and Charles Hayward and had a longstanding duo with the late John Russell.
