Friday 27 April 2018, 7.30pm
ALEXANDER HAWKINS/EVAN PARKER DUO
Alexander Hawkins first played in one of Evan Parker’s groups around a decade ago. More recently, they have performed as a duo, documented on the 2016 Clean Feed album ‘Leaps in Leicester’.
‘There may be nearly forty years in age between them, but they read each other so well…there was no deference shown or allowances made on either part, and no let-up in the energy and invention’ - London Jazz News
ALEXANDER HAWKINS / EVAN PARKER / BLACK TOP (ORPHY ROBINSON / PAT THOMAS) / MATTHEW WRIGHT
Evan Parker / saxophone
Orphy Robinson / various/electronics
Pat Thomas / electronics
Matthew Wright / turntables
Alexander Hawkins / piano
The collaboration between Evan Parker and Black Top is documented on the Babel album ‘Black Top #2’; and that between Parker and Matthew Wright on the ‘mesmerizingly beautiful’ Psi album ‘Trance Map’.
Hawkins and Wright are relatively recent musical acquaintances; but as soon as the former heard the latter’s contributions to ‘Trance Map’, invited him to join for the session which was to become the ‘Unit[e]’ album.
Black Top and Hawkins have appeared together only once, in the context of an Evan Parker large ensemble. Robinson featured in the first incarnation of Hawkins’ ensemble a decade ago, in the context of which, the two appeared on the albums ‘No Now is So’ and ‘All There, Ever Out’. Both Oxford born and bred, Pat Thomas was a formative influence and key mentor to Hawkins.
This performance first presents the Parker/Hawkins duo; then a quintet - criss-crossed by existing relationships, but performing together for the very first time - which augments this acoustic duo with the turntable wizardry of Wright, and the unique electronica of Black Top.
Alexander Hawkins’ work ranges from his acclaimed solo performances (‘intensely intricate…powerful, technically brilliant and melodically inventive’) through to works on a much larger canvas, such as his Togetherness Music ('[a] masterpiece that can stand next to the best works of Mitchell, Braxton or Parker’). He collaborates regularly with all generations of creative musicians, including the likes of Anthony Braxton, Marshall Allen, Evan Parker, John Surman, Joe McPhee, Hamid Drake, Nicole Mitchell, Tomeka Reid, Sofia Jernberg, Shabaka Hutchings, and many others. Further creative associations, with two very different icons of African music, Louis Moholo-Moholo and Mulatu Astatke, stretch back for well over a decade. He has been widely commissioned as a composer, including by the likes of the BBC, Berlin’s Pierre Boulez Saal, and numerous festivals. His performance schedule takes him to club, concert hall, and festival stages worldwide.
"Sounds like all the future jazz you might imagine without ever being able to conceive of the details" – The Guardian
"If you've ever been tempted by free improvisation, Parker is your gateway drug." - Stewart Lee
Evan Parker has been a consistently innovative presence in British free music since the 1960s. Parker played with John Stevens in the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, experimenting with new kinds of group improvisation and held a long-standing partnership with guitarist Derek Bailey. The two formed the Music Improvisation Company and later Incus Records. He also has tight associations with European free improvisations - playing on Peter Brötzmann's legendary 'Machine Gun' session (1968), with Alexander Von Schlippenbach and Paul Lovens (A trio that continues to this day), Globe Unity Orchestra, Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath, and Barry Guy's London Jazz Composers Orchestra (LJCO).
Though he has worked extensively in both large and small ensembles, Parker is perhaps best known for his solo soprano saxophone music, a singular body of work that in recent years has centred around his continuing exploration of techniques such as circular breathing, split tonguing, overblowing, multiphonics and cross-pattern fingering. These are technical devices, yet Parker's use of them is, he says, less analytical than intuitive; he has likened performing his solo work to entering a kind of trance-state. The resulting music is certainly hypnotic, an uninterrupted flow of snaky, densely-textured sound that Parker has described as "the illusion of polyphony". Many listeners have indeed found it hard to credit that one man can create such intricate, complex music in real time.
Orphy Robinson is an award-winning multi- Instrumentalist, One of the few UK musicians to have been signed to the legendary USA Jazz label “Blue Note”.
Robinson has performed on over 100 recordings with numerous internationally acclaimed artists across many genres of music.
These include artists as diverse as Lawrence Butch Morris, Hugh Masekela, Don Cherry, Robert Plant, Thurston Moore, Robert Wyatt, The Jazz Warriors, Cleveland Watkiss, Wadada Leo Smith, Lionel Loueke, Henry Grimes, William Parker, Hamid Drake, Jean-Paul Bourelly, Jean Luc Ponty, Marshall Allen, Sun Ra Arkestra to name a few.
Throughout his 40-year career, he has constantly been nominated or won numerous prestigious industry awards. These include 2022 Paul Hamlyn Award, 2 Jazz Fm awards 2017 Live Experience of the Year” & 2020 Gold Award. Nominated for the 2022 ‘Best Jazz Ensemble’ at the Parliamentary Jazz Awards.
2017 – 2019 Orphy held the position of Artist in residence at the Gibraltar World music Festival.
2018 Artistic director at the Gibraltar World music Festival.
Orphy sits on various industry Boards Such as the Ivor’s Academy where he is both Deputy Chair and the Chair of the Jazz + Genre Committee.
ECSA (European Composers & Songwriters Alliance) Trustee & Chair of the ECF - Art & Contemporary music Committee.
Vice Chair for the UK Promoters organization “Jazz Promotion Network”.
Orphy has also written articles for various industry music magazines such as Wire Magazine, Jazzwise & Online platform JAZZED.
Orphy has also presented Guest radio programmes on:
BBC Radio 3, Jazz Fm, Resonance Fm, Worldwide FM, Solar Radio.
Since 2016 Robinson has presented a weekly show on internet Radio station - Delite Radio. www.deliteradio.com
Pat Thomas studied classical piano from aged 8 and started playing Jazz from the age of 16. He has since gone on to develop an utterly unique style - embracing improvisation, jazz and new music. He has played with Derek Bailey in Company Week (1990/91) and in the trio AND (with Noble) – with Tony Oxley’s Quartet and Celebration Orchestra and in Duo with Lol Coxhill.
"Sartorially shabby as Thomas may be, and on first impression even rather stolid, he has a somewhat imperious charisma that’s immediately amplified when he starts to play. Unlike other pianists whose virtuosity seems to be racing ahead of their thought processes Thomas always seems supremely in command of his gift, and his playing, no matter how free and ready to tangle with abstraction, always carries a charge of authoritative exactitude." - The Jazzmann
Matt Wright works as a composer, improviser and sound artist at the edges of concert and club culture, working closely with Evan Parker in their shared Trance Map project. He has presented work at venues such as the Sydney Opera House, Le Poisson Rouge (New York), the Muziekcentrum an ‘t IJ (Amsterdam), The Kim Ma Theatre (Vietnam) and Abbey Road Studios, Tate Britain and Tate Modern (London). He has been commissioned by organisations such as hcmf//, Transit Festival (Belgium) and MATA Festival (New York), with broadcasts on TV across Europe, and globally on radio, including a two-hour focus on his work on the ABC Network in Australia. Reviews of his projects have appeared in the New York Times, the Sydney Morning Herald, Vietnam Today and the Financial Times. In 2014, he remixed Robert Wyatt's Cuckooland album into a concert-length collaboration with Elaine Mitchener, Tony Hymas and the Brodsky Quartet and in 2015 Totem for Den Haag (available on Music at the Edge of Collapse with Ensemble Klang) was one of three pieces selected by hcmf// to represent UK new music in the UK/Mexico dual year. His music is released on Ensemble Klang records, psi, Migro and Extra Normal. Matt studied in Huddersfield, The Hague and at Goldsmiths and is Professor of Composition and Sonic Art at Canterbury Christ Church University in the UK.
