Spaces Unfolding & Pierre Alexandre Tremblay

The trio of Neil Metcalfe, Philipp Wachsmann and Emil Karlsen has been working together as Spaces Unfolding since 2021. Created initially as a vehicle for acoustic exploration, the trio’s debut album ‘The Way We Speak’ was recorded in the acoustics of London’s St Mary’s Old Church. This time the trio is joined by Pierre Alexandre Tremblay (electronics), a practitioner offering multiple dialogues between instruments and electronics. Expanding on the initial idea of acoustic influence, the trio is now situated within an electronic environment in what is a reflection on our relationship with technology.

Philipp Wachsmann - violin
Neil Metcalfe - flute
Emil Karlsen - drums
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Pierre Alexandre Tremblay - electronics

Phil Minton

For a long time now Phil Minton has been working as a improvising singer, solo and in groups and situations at various locations all over the place, deserts, quarries, concert halls, pubs, holes, dodgy clubs, containers, up trees, in prisons, on mountains, in churches, under bridges and cafe oto etc.

Phil Minton comes from Torquay. He played trumpet and sang with the Mike Westbrook Band in the early 60s - Then in dance and rock bands in Europe for the later of part of the decade. He returned to England in 1971, rejoining Westbrook and was involved in many of his projects until the mid 1980′s.

For most of the last forty years, Minton has been working as an improvising singer in lots of groups, orchestras, and situations. Numerous composers have written music especially for his extended vocal techniques. He has a quartet with Veryan Weston, Roger Turner and John Butcher, and ongoing duos, trios and quartets with above and many other musicians, including tours with American singer Audrey Chen - with whom he has sang far and wide in the last ten years.

Since the eighties, His Feral Choir, where he voice-conducts workshops and concerts for anyone who wants to sing, has performed in over twenty countries.

Martin Hackett

Martin Hackett, a member of Oxford Improvisers and the Muzzix collective in Lille, France, has been playing improvised music of one sort or another for as long as he can remember.

Philipp Wachsmann

Philipp Wachsmann, who came from a classical background in violin and in contemporary composition, has been occupied with the development of music and improvisation since 1970. For many years he ran workshops at the West Square Music studio that impacted on many young musicians.

He worked with others including significant groups of the time, Chamberpot, Balance and String Thing (with Ian Brighton and also with Marcio Mattos and Trevor Taylor in the latter), and Company. He was asked to join the Musician’s Co-operative (then in its last years), and was in the London Musicians Collective from its start.

He is an active participant in the Bead Record Label (started by Peter Cusack and Simon Mayo), which is still producing new music over 40 years later, managed by him and Mathew Hutchinson.

Regarded by many as an outstanding improviser of great invention, he has always been able to create new approaches within improvised music utilising acoustic and electronic sources. He considers himself to be “fortunate to have toured with Derek Bailey, Christine Jeffries, and Frank Perry in the 70’s, and more recently with Evan Parker’s Electro-acoustic Ensemble”. He can be heard on over 100 LP’s & CD’s - groups including, King Ubu, the LJCO, Iskra 1903, Stellari String Quartet, Duos with Paul Lytton (ECM and Bead), Lawrence Casserley, Matthew Hutchinson and Roger Turner. Most recently he has been working in the group RSIK with Michael Bunce (electronics and sound taken from painting by artist, Catherine Hope-Jones).

Currently he states that:-

“I am concerned with innovation, the violin and what it might do, with intent, perception and memory, with construction defining space, issues of continuity, whether communication needs to be prescriptive, the potential for the roles of listeners to be more active and nonetheless the multitudinal ways individuals hear and listen including the spontaneous non-intellectual.”

Emil Karlsen

Emil Karlsen is a Norwegian improvising drummer currently based in the UK. Described as a “significant addition to the UK free jazz scene” and an “exceptional improv drummer”, he’s establishing himself on the improvised music circuit working the span from free improvisation to free jazz. Occupied with the exploring timbral possibilities of the drum kit, he performs with Philipp Wachsmann, John Butcher, Phil Durrant and Maggie Nicols to mention some. Apart from being an active performer he’s central in the revitalisation of the historic Bead Records. 

Neil Metcalfe

Free improvising flutist Neil Metcalfe is ubiquitous on the London music scene. He has recorded and performed with Evan Parker Octet, London Improvisers Orchestra, Paul Rogers Freedom Orchestra, The Dedication Orchestra, The Intuitive Art Ensemble, The Paul Dunmall Nonet, Transatlantic Art Ensemble and many other groups and formations.

Pierre Alexandre Tremblay

Pierre Alexandre Tremblay (Montréal, 1975) is a composer and performer on bass guitar and electronic devices, in solo and group settings, between electroacoustic music, contemporary jazz, mixed music and improvised music. He also worked in popular music, and practises creative coding. His music is available on empreintes DIGITALes.
He is currently Professor of Composition and Improvisation at the University of Huddersfield (England, UK). He likes spending time with his family, reading prose, and going on long walks. As a founding member of the no-tv collective, he does not own a working television set.

Hannah Marshall

Hannah Marshall is a cellist who is continuing to extract, invent, and exorcize as many sounds and emotional qualities from her instrument as she can. She has been a regular member of Alexander Hawkins’ Ensembles and has toured in Europe and South America with Luc Ex and Veryan Weston’s ensembles – SOL 6 & 12. She plays with ‘String Terrorists’ - Barrel (a trio with Violinist Alison Blunt & Violist/poet Ivor kallin). And has been invited by Fred Frith and Suichi Chino in their residencies at café Oto. She also plays with Terry Day, Tim Hodgkinson, Roger Turner, Paul May, Kay Grant, and the London Improvisers Orchestra.

Steve Beresford

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.