2. otta - tonsättarcentrum123456789 (18:40)
otta’s performance unfurled like a conversation with the piano, building on motifs and altering the layout of the preparations inside the piano to suit each individual exploration. Preparations that otta utilised include Athen Kardashian & Nina Mhach Durban’s ‘I never held emotion in the palm of my hand’ (a keyring holding locker keys, a plastic surfboard and dolphin and a small Lotto game, used as a rattle and to dangle over and between the strings), Alia Hamaoui’s peachskin velvet I & II (plastic name tags with pewter cast peach pips attached), Natalya Marconi Falconer’s Between Debris and Thing (an aluminium cast of a fennel husk), and one part of Pheobe riley Law’s shape placing (a unique morph of steel and rubber coating, laser cut into interesting flat shapes). Ellis Berwick’s Electreight (a bike bell sat on its own inverted base) is often returned to by otta as a flourish to mark beginnings and ends of different phrases. A large section of the performance involved bringing Joe Moss’ vibrating Loot Box up to one of the stereo microphones hanging above her head to create a consistent buzzing, whilst she continued to improvise on the piano below. The playful performance felt like an evolving improvised dialogue with the materials at hand, with otta adapting to the effects the preparations made to each refrain.
3. Gentle Stranger - just enough dirt (22:18)
Gentle Stranger’s performance differed from the other two in that there were three musicians or “six hands” playing on the piano, with Alex McKenzie taking over the high end melodic section of the piano, Josh Barfoot staying towards the lower end, controlling the majority of the percussive rhythm section of the piece, and Tom Hardwick-Allan using extended piano techniques, singing and moving the preparations around the inside of the piano whilst the other two played the keys. Hardwick-Allan began the performance on a tiny red toy piano (prepared with Olivia Albanell’s Fat Wasp and Ellis Berwick’s Piammer) a metre or so stage left of the grand. The two pianos were connected by a group phone call that echoed and fed back inside the body of the piano, with Barfoot and McKenzie’s phones sat inside Hayett Belarbi-McCarthy’s Dear Obsolescence (antique silk) & Verity Coward’s Wodge (a fake wodge of £20 notes) respectively. The phones were the first of many objects the trio secretly brought to Cafe OTO that broke the rules for Preparations initially laid out by Joseph Bradley Hill. The objects included a megaphone, a metronome, a cassette tape and mini-amplifier, an electronic mouse deterrer and, technically, Hardwick-Allan’s shoes which fell off as Barfoot and McKenzie carried him from one side of the piano to the other, dropping him onto the piano keys in the process. The performance moves through roughly eight stages using these objects and the 23 already inside, with each section a different take on the prepared piano’s possibilities. The performance reaches its end with a wail by Hardwick-Allan into the resonant body of the piano (the sustain held down by a weight placed their earlier), followed by a ‘wedding song’ sung through a megaphone from underneath the piano. Hardwick-Allan’s first touch of a key on the grand piano then became the performance’s last.
Three live performances from the third iteration of Late Works’ prepared piano event, Preparations, that took place at a sold out Cafe OTO on 23rd June 2025. For the event, 23 artists were asked to create a sculpture / ‘preparation’ each for the grand piano (shown on album cover above). Three pianists/groups then had to construct individual live performances with the adaptable unit of preparations. Featuring artist and multi-instrumentalist Stanley Welch, singer and producer otta and experimental ‘post-clown’ trio Gentle Stranger, the playful live album shifts from a vaudevillian theatricality (Welch) to a motif-driven dialogue (otta) to dynamic, rule-bending episodes (Gentle Stranger), together demonstrating the diverse musical range of the prepared piano.
For this third iteration of Preparations, the pianists performed on the grand piano with preparations made by artists/musicians Olivia Albanell, Fan Bangyu, Hayett Belarbi-Mccarthy, Ellis Berwick, Zoe de Caluwé, Patrick Cole, Verity Coward, Mandeep Dillon, Natalya Marconini Falconer, Alia Hamaoui, Ellen Poppy Hill, Joseph Bradley Hill, Louie Isaaman-Jones, Athen Kardashian & Nina Mhach Durban, Pheobe riley Law, Vita Lerche, Joe Moss, Eleni Papazoglou, Alexandra Phillips, Gillies Adamson Semple, Thirza Smith & Dominic Watson.
The concept (by Joseph Bradley Hill) looks to the piano as an exhibition space, inviting the pianists to activate the sculptures as musical instruments/noise objects. The artists were given two main instructions: the preparation must sit comfortably on an open palm and not damage the piano in any way. Other constraints were organised with Cafe OTO based on their piano, which included using non-perishable materials. The pianists were given one hour each with the piano to work out how they would prepare it for the performance, and were encouraged to use as many of the sculptures as possible. The open nature of the event allows the audience to approach the piano in between sets and explore the effects every sculpture had on the piano for themselves.
You can find out more about the rules at www.lateworks.co.uk/preparations
1 - Stanley Welch - Mothers, Dogs and Clowns (27:34)
Stanley Welch’s set opened and closed with a tribute to David Bowie, or more specifically Bowie’s nose, the subject of Dominic Watson’s preparation David Bowie (Market Square, Aylesbury) (a pewter cast of the nose of a David Bowie statue). Welch then continued playing almost non-stop through the nearly 30 minute set, shifting through section after section of percussive, theatrical, almost vaudevillian sounds. Throughout, Welch used Joseph Bradley Hill’s Roller (With Hidden Paolozzi) to dampen the bass strings, and the main preparations that punctuated the performance were the lid of Joe Moss’ Loot Box slamming open and shut, and Vita Lerche’s Piano Bell sliding along the strings. A brief whistling interlude added to one of the more romantic refrains in the centre of the piece, and as Welch rattled towards the end, works by Vita Lerche, Gillies Adamson Semple, Patrick Cole, Eleni Papazoglou and Zoe de Caluwé were shifted onto the bass strings to provide him with a dense padding that converted to a loud thumping noise he used to great effect (and to close his performance).
