Steve Beresford

Steve Beresford has been a central figure in the British and international spontaneous music scenes for over forty years, freely improvising on the piano, electronics, and other things with people like Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, Han Bennink, John Zorn, and Alterations (with David Toop, Terry Day and Peter Cusack).

He has written songs, written 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. With Blanca Regina, he is part of Unpredictable Series, which produces events and sound and video recordings of experimental music and art.

Steve has worked with Christian Marclay on numerous Marclay mixed media pieces. He has also worked with The Slits, Najma Akhtar, Stewart Lee, Ivor Cutler, Prince Far-I, Alan Hacker, Tania Chen, Ray Davies, Mandhira De Saram, The Flying Lizards, Zeena Parkins, The Portsmouth Sinfonia, Ilan Volkov, Rachel Musson, Vic Reeves, Lore Lixenberg and many others.

Beresford has an extensive discography as performer, arranger, free-improviser, composer and producer, and 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’.

http://www.efi.group.shef.ac.uk/mberes.html

Peter Cusack

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

Blanca Regina is an interdisciplinary artist, tutor, and independent curator who works with spontaneous composition systems creating multimedia landscapes using voice, objects, electronics, and visuals. She is also looking at book arts, immersive media, and design. Between London and Madrid together with Steve Beresford, she founded the Unpredictable Series, which focused on spontaneous music and experimentation in visual arts following her first collective Mademotion founded in Madrid. She has produced three albums with Beresford, mixed and mastered by Dave Hunt in London, ‘What Blue’ (2020) Duets with Steve 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 and ‘Art of Improvisers’ (2017) a collection album with several artists concentrating in women improvisers. With longtime collaborator and artist Leafcutter John capturing their live performances in 2017 they created ‘Miga’ a limited edition Pendrive and digital release. Other collaborations in music and audiovisual performances include duos with Matthias Kispert, Peter Cusack, Matt Black, Sr Arribas, Terry Day Sharon Gal, Adriana Camacho, and David Toop...She has produced exhibitions, performances and workshops internationally with presentations in London - Cafe Oto, Turner Contemporary, Barbican, Tate Modern - in Madrid - PhotoEspaña, La Casa Encendida, Cruce - in Mexico - Fundación Pedro Meyer, Biblioteca Henestrosa, in Berlin - HKW, Sowieso .- She has provided guest lectures and workshops in the UK and internationally including at the University of the Arts London, Goldsmiths University, Guildhall, Ravensbourne University…Her work has been supported by Arts Council England, Sound & Music, BMC, Amexcid, Photo-España, and Garage Cube.

www.blancaregina.com / www.unpredictable.info