Wednesday 30 June 2021, 7.30pm
Dramatic soprano, composer and improvising vocalist Alya Al-Sultani joins experimental turntablist and composer Mariam Rezaei for their debut duo performance at Cafe Oto. Eschewing stereotypes, they will warp and weave elements of opera, hiphop, noise and free improv together. Both Al-Sultani and Rezaei will playing with Middle Eastern poetry, vocal improv and instrumental samples in a free-form collaboration that will push at the boundaries of two turntables and one microphone.
Award-winning experimental composer Cassandra Miller is known for her large-scale orchestral works with the likes of Charles Curtis, Plus-Minus and BBC SSO. In this rare live performance, Miller will improvise solo, moving between vocals and instruments. This special performance will be luminous and promises to unveil more of the profoundly beautiful music that we love from Miller.
Experimental composer, performer and visual artist Amy Cutler will perform across musical mediums. Her delicate mixture of reductionism, experimental electronics, found sounds and ethereal vocals make up her gorgeously unique sound palette. Fresh from the release of her new album ’the ends (also end) of (the)earth and variants’, Cutler will perform live with multiple instruments and experimental vocals.
Alya Al-Sultani is a vocalist and composer based in London, UK. Her first musical experiences were Iraqi folk songs sung by her great grandmother and radio broadcasts of Um Kolthum, Abdel-Halim and Fairouz which she listened to with her family while drinking sweet black tea infused with cardamom. After leaving Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, her family settled in Tottenham, North London where she began to discover the incredible new sounds of the 80s and music from the Caribbean.
Her musical education was entirely classically-focussed, on piano and voice. She learned the importance of technique, tradition, theory, respecting fellow musicians and respecting the music. But she did not learn freedom and it is this she has sought for the last decade. The pursuit of freedom in music is driven by her aesthetic, her immigrant experience and her Eastern feminism.
Apart from working on her own projects, Alya enjoys debuting new music for contemporary composers and experimenting with opera, including the integration of improvisation techniques, microtonal ideas and Eastern influences.
Mariam Rezaei is a multi-award winning composer, turntablist and performer. She previously led experimental arts project TOPH, TUSK FRINGE and TUSK NORTH, and in November 2022, received the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Awards For Artists in recognition of her contribution to music composition. Her music has recently been described as ‘genuinely ground-breaking’ (London Jazz News 2022) and ‘high-velocity sonic surrealism’ (4* The Guardian 2022). Recent releases include ‘BOWN’ on Heat Crimes, 'SADTITZZ' and ‘SKEEN'. Recent performances include Turntable Trio with Evicshen and Maria Chávez at Counterflows/ REWIRE 2023, and as soloist and co-composer of ‘6 Scenes for Turntables and Orchestra’ with Matt Shlomowitz for ICTUS/Frankfurt Radio Orchestra, for the final concert at IM Darmstadt 2023.
Recent collaborations include Joan La Barbara, Evicshen, Maria Chavez, Maggie Nicols, Black Top (Pat Thomas & Orphy Robinson), Lasse Marhaug, Rhodri Davies, Angharad Davies, Alya Al Sultani, Mette Rasmussen, Audrey Chen, Elaine Mitchener, Will Guthrie, Lukas Koenig, Julien Deprez, Kenosist, Gwilly Edmondez and Elvin Brandhi.
Upcoming performances include ‘Azadi/Freedom’ with London Sinfonietta at HCMF 2023; Tehran Contemporary Sound, Berlin; Another Sky, London; 6 Scenes for Turntables & Orchestra with Brussels Philharmonic/ICTUS Ensemble, Brussels, Antwerp & Glasgow; GIOFest 2023, Glasgow; Taipei Biennial 2023, Taiwan.
CASSANDRA MILLER is a Canadian composer living in London. Her notated compositions often explore transcription as a creative process, through which the expressive vocal qualities of pre-existing music are both magnified and transfigured. Other compositions sometimes take the form of collaborations and that combine automatic singing and mimicry to create vulnerable and hospitable spaces for deep listening.
Amy is an artist, cultural geographer, and live cinema artist who works with ideas of geography and nonhuman others. In her career in the GeoHumanities she has completed a PhD, a post-doc, and an ECR fellowship, and she has exhibited her work or run live events with organisations including Somerset House, Sheffield Doc Fest, the Natural History Museum, and Kew Gardens. Her geography training impacts her work as a musician, performer, and designer, and she works frequently on the production of immersive and live cinema and exhibition events provoking and changing the public conversation around ideas of space, geography, and nature-cultures. She is also a cross-disciplinary lecturer and teaches more publicly too, often developing unusual live sessions and field-trips for museums, festivals, and galleries.
