Thursday 15 June 2017, 7.30pm
Art of Improvisers (15th to 22nd June 2017) presents a festival curated by Blanca Regina and Steve Beresford and affirms the importance of women in free improvisation and arts.
It presents, in a variety of ways, both the back history and the current state of women in free improvisation. It also looks at free improvisation’s strong, but rarely noted, connection to visual work.
Art of Improvisers is supported by Arts Council England,Cafe Oto,The British Music Collection,Sound and Music,Art+Feminism and is in association with the Wire 400.
More information at www.unpredictable.info
In association with The Wire 400
Mandhira is happiest bringing her playful energy and creativity to a breadth of projects across the less trodden paths of contemporary music, working with the likes of Anna Meredith, Elaine Mitchener, Elliot Galvin, Laura Jurd and Shabaka Hutchings, and now increasingly as a solo artist.
Having left the Ligeti Quartet (Songbooks Vol. 1, 2021 and Nuc, 2023) - the plucky band of musical buccaneers who explore the outer reaches of chamber repertoire - Mandhira’s recent creative ventures include commissions by the Ligeti Quartet, a collaboration with the cross-cultural Australian Art Orchestra (debuting in Melbourne and HCMF) and working with Jasmin Kent Rodgman on the soundtrack to the feature film Bawa’s Garden. She has also been commissioned by the Barbican’s Sound Unbound Festival and Musicity.
Equally at home leading orchestras in the world’s most prestigious concert venues, recording film soundtracks at Abbey Road and improvising at Café Oto, her other projects include improvising duos with Steve Beresford and Benoit Delbecq (Spinneret, 2019) and regular appearances with Riot Ensemble and London Contemporary Orchestra.
She currently plays a 1735 Sanctus Seraphin violin kindly loaned to her by Derek Clements-Croome.
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.
Helen Frosi is a holobiont whose art practice pivots around ecological thought, poetics, and the environmental, creative, social, and political enmeshment of sound, hearing and listening. Her practice embodies epistemic pluralism, is facilitatory, and necessitates collaborative, cross-disciplinary work, communal projects and collective activities.
Helen is co-ordinator and co-curator of auralpluralities, a project that troubles accepted norms in audio technology, sound culture and Western epistemologies, questioning the extent of human perception, our relation in and through the vibratory world, and whether hearing is ever an individual act, and is curator of EnCOUnTERs, an interdisciplinary project that encompasses art, ecology and the sonic imagination.
Other long-term projects include: SoundFjord, a nomadic curatorial platform focused on sound-related research and practice (2010-present); Visible Near Midnight Recordings, for works that fall between the genre gaps (2012-present); Longplayer Day (2017-22). She is a workshop facilitator at the British Library, and Honorary Research Fellow at Goldsmiths, University of London (Dept of Music).
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. 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; ‘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 include performances with Laetitia Sadier & Marie Merlet ( ISIDORA) Matthias Kispert, DFuse, Peter Cusack, Matt Black, Wade Matthews, Terry Day, Adriana Camacho, and David Toop.
Julie Kjær's edgy and thoughtful playing and ‘dark, otherworldly imagery’ (Jazzwise) has become increasingly evident around Europe, inhabiting ground between composition and free improv. Experimenting with extended techniques, sound and rhythm she pushes her instruments to their limits. She tours internationally with Norwegian drummer Paal Nilssen-Love and his Large Unit and she has toured internationally and recorded with Django Bates and StoRMChaser. Currently her main focus is on her trio, Julie Kjær 3, with bass player John Edwards and drummer Steve Noble. They’ve just released their debut album on 14th March '16 on Clean Feed. Julie also plays with London Improvisers Orchestra and is a leader and side woman of several other English and Danish ensembles. In 2014 she was chosen to be a Sound and Music “New Voice” Artist and was chosen as a featured composer by the British Music Collection.
Poulomi Desai's unique, modified sitar embraces elements of chance, challenge and subversion - industrial, noise influenced improvised, art performances. Her prepared / bowed sitar is extended with modified cassette decks playing her field recordings, circuit bent toys, optikinetic instruments, kitchen knives, axes and massage tools. It is a conscious response and reaction to the idea of 'authenticity' seeking to break the rules and expectations of how a 'sacred' instrument should be played, the strictures upon the player, the guru-shishya approach, and the assumptions made upon the identity of the player herself. Her sitar is the primary basis for sonic improvisation and exploration; an allegorical antidote to the objectification of the 'South Asian woman's body' in 'Bollywood' cinema / 'popular culture' and, in a broader sense, affirming her idea of 'Noise' as protest. She runs the Usurp Art space in the suburbs and is currently the Curator of the Grunwick strike exhibition.
www.poulomidesai.tumblr.com | www.usurp.org.uk
Sharon Gal is an interdisciplinary artist, performer, vocalist and composer, specialising in free improvisation, experimental music and collaborative, participatory large group compositions. She works with voice, electronics, extended techniques, field recordings, found audio, video and collage; exploring presence, listening, embodiment, and the relationship between people, sound and space. Sharon performs solo and in collaborations with: David Toop, John Butcher, John Edwards, Sue Lynch, Andie Brown, Yoni Silver, Steve Beresford, Phil Minton, Charles Hayward, Anat Ben David and Lina Lapelyte.
Since 2007 she has directed a series of site specific, large group compositions, inviting musicians and non-musicians to take part. She curated music concerts, including the series Sound Matter, at Café OTO, and concerts at Iklectik arts lab. Her music was released by many labels, including five solo albums and various collaborations.
Past performances include The V&A, ICA, The Whitechapel Gallery, Tate Modern & Tate Britain, MACBA, and Colour Out Of Space, Borealis, Supernormal, Supersonic, TUSK and Tectonics festivals.
Etudes by Sharon Gal, a collection of text & colour scores, presented as a deck of 78 cards, was supported by Sound and Music and published in 2021. Her project, Healing Choir, ran @ the Kilburn Tin Tabernacle between August-October 2024.
https://www.sharon-gal.com/
https://sharongal.bandcamp.com
Andie Brown is a musician, artist, maker and researcher who began her music career as a bass player during her teens. In 2007 Andie began performing and recording as a solo artist under the name These Feathers Have Plumes which saw her begin an experimentation with glass and electronics.
In 2016 Andie began to work with sound installation which is now the focus of her practice. In 2019 Andie was one of six recipients of the annual PRSF Oram Awards. Since 2017 Andie has been working on a practiced based PhD at the CeReNeM, University of Huddersfield.
