Sunday 6 October 2024, 7.30pm
Xenia Pestova Bennett – solo piano
Andrew Poppy – voice & electronics
Fred DeFaye – sound
Julia Bardsley – videos
Gerry White – additional video
Atonal Kat is a sporadic series of sonic soirees curated by Xenia Pestova and Ed Bennett. Join us for intense listening as we walk with our ears - and don’t forget to wear your favourite cat t-shirt.
This special edition of sonic kat kibble celebrates maverick composer Andrew Poppy in his 70th year. Xenia Pestova Bennett plays selections from Poppy’s monumental, meditative and transformative piano cycle “Avalanche Thoughts”. Andrew Poppy performs his dark and beguiling avant-pop songs intertwined with intricate visuals by Julia Barnsley.
"...The ecstatic moment is delivered, confirming a composer who clearly spent his early years listening to Resurrection Symphony and The Rite of Spring as much as he did Cream... Blues, jazz, classical, minimal are all tightly bunched in the work... and you keep finding such accidental hybrids or more accurately whole islands of fauna, for Poppy’s music is like Madagascar - you dis- cover species there you didn’t find anywhere else." – Brian Morton, The WIRE
Andrew Poppy is a composer, musician, vocalist and record producer with a unique body of eclectic work mixing acoustic and electronic sounds with language, visual images and perfor- mance. In the mid 1980s he was signed to Trevor Horn’s Zang Tumb Tumm label as a contemporary composer and artist. The albums The Beating of Wings and Alphabed include works for large ensembles, piano and electric piano, as well as vocal and electronic pieces.
He continues to write, record, and perform solo and with his own ensmble. In 2017 he contributed a solo vocal performance to A New History of Song programme at the London Contemporary Music Festival. Recent performances have been at Outsiders Festival, Turin, Ars Musica Festival, Belgium and Raft, Iklectik and Coronet Theatre, London.
Ark Hive of A Live, a book with 4 CDs of archive recordings covering four decades of work, with writing by Paul Morley, Leah Kardos, Rose English and Nik Bartsch, was published in January 2023. His most recent album is JELLY, a solo vocal and electronic piece in five parts.
Described as “a powerhouse of contemporary keyboard repertoire” (Tempo), pianist and composer Xenia Pestova Bennett has earned an international reputation as a leading proponent of uncompromising music. Her work spans a wide range of sound worlds, styles and genres from classical to contemporary art music, free improvisation, experimental electronica and avant-pop.
Xenia has performed at large festivals, for live broadcast, in major concert halls, and countless weird and wonderful venues and spaces. She has commissioned and recorded dozens of new works, collaborating with major innovators in contemporary music and exploring classical music boundaries with electronics, toy pianos, synthesizers and the Magnetic Resonator Piano.
https://xeniapestovabennett.com
