Friday 24 August 2018, 1pm, OTO Project Space
SCHEDULE
1pm - 3 pm Workshop: Directed free improvisation with Steve Beresford.
Tickets presale £20/ £25 otd ( Limited to 10 participants)
BOOK ONLINE
Steve Beresford will be using Butch Morris’s conduction techniques - developed over twenty years by the London Improvisers Orchestra - to create directed free improvisations.
Participants are asked to bring their instruments.
3pm - 6pm Exhibition opening at OTO Projects
6pm - 7pm Performance Peter Cusack + Blanca Regina. Tickets £5 otd
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.
Peter Cusack is a field recordist, sound artist, and musician with a long interest in the environment. He initiated the Favourite Sounds Project to discover what people find positive about soundscapes where they live and Sounds From Dangerous Places (sonic journalism) to investigate major environmental damage in areas such as the Chernobyl exclusion zone, the Azerbaijan oil fields, brown coal mining in Germany and the Czech Republic and the Bialowieza Forest in Poland.
He produced Vermilion Sounds - the environmental sound programme - for ResonanceFM Radio, and was DAAD artist-in-residence in Berlin 2011/12, starting Berlin Sonic Places that explores relationships between soundscape and urban development.
He is currently working on Aral Sea Stories, about the destruction and subsequent partial restoration of the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan - a much-needed positive example in today’s climate change debate.
Musically he plays guitar and field recordings, improvises, writes tunes, and has worked with Alterations, Kahondo Style, Clive Bell, Nic Collins, Ute Wassermann, Viv Corringham, Michael Thieke, Blanca Regina, and others.
http://favouritesounds.org
http://sounds-from-dangerous-places.org/
Blanca Regina is a dynamic interdisciplinary artist, educator, and independent curator celebrated for her work in multimedia, projection art, experience design, and book arts. She creates captivating audiovisual performances, sound pieces, installations, and films that invite audiences into her imaginative world, using voice, objects, and visuals to craft spontaneous compositions. Blanca specializes in immersive and interactive experiences through multimedia installations and projection mapping, and she has taught many video mapping workshops. Her live performances blend sound, visuals, and spatial performance, making each event a unique experience. In addition to multimedia art, she creates experimental publications in book arts and curates events like the "Unpredictable Series," highlighting diverse voices. Blanca’s collaborations include working with Leafcutter John on "Miga" and producing albums with Steve Beresford, Laetitia Sadier, Matthias Kispert, Benedict Taylor, Peter Cusack, Terry Day, Aneek Thapar and others. Her work has been showcased internationally at venues such as Turner Contemporary, Barbican, and Tate Modern, and she has led engaging workshops at Roundhouse and other creative spaces. Blanca Regina's artistic journey is all about exploration and collaboration.
