Monday 12 December 2016, 8pm
In their own singular ways, saxophonists Antoine Chessex and Seymour Wright have positioned themselves as radical musicians in the field of adventurous music, and respectively blown the saxophone into the 21st century.
After twice presenting work as a composer at Cafe OTO (with Apartment House and Jérôme Noetinger) Chessex returns for the premiere of an all acoustic trio with two giants of the free music scene: John Edwards and Steve Noble.
Chessex's saxophone works are mostly known for their intense textural qualities, and his playing through distorting stacks of guitar amplifiers to create monolithic walls of noise. Tonight, the music will be completely acoustic - an attempt to deconstruct the ‘classic’ formula of the tenor sax, bass and drums.
Antoine Chessex / tenor saxophone
John Edwards / bass
Steve Noble / drums
Wright performs solo - slicing into work on his on-going two-part third solo album - Is This Wright? - exploring the saxophone as rhythm, shadow and text.
Seymour Wright / alto saxophone
With support from:
Antoine Chessex is a composer, saxophonist and sound artist whose works assume a wide diversity of forms, crossing the boundaries between noise, modern composition, improvisation and electronic music. His live performances are characterized by textural density and microtonal tensions often resulting in sound masses exploring the physical dimensions of spaces. Chessex presents his works worldwide and has collaborated extensively with Zbigniew Karkowski, Valerio Tricoli, Apartment House and Jérôme Noetinger among others. He is a founding member of the noise band Monno.
www.soundimplant.com/achessex
www.soundcloud.com/antoine-chessex
John Edwards grew up in London and started experimenting with the bass guitar before he switched in his twenties to play double bass. He is deeply rooted in the creative free jazz and improvisation genre. Since the 80ties he is as soloist and in many groups and ensembles in Europe active and became one of the most renowned bass players. He played/plays regular for example with Peter Brötzmann, Joe Mc Phee, Phil Minton, Maggie Nichols, Evan Parker, Roscoe Michtell, Louis Moholo-Moholo, Mark Sanders, Caroline Kraabel, John Butcher, Pat Thomas, Irène Schweizer, Hans Koch, Florian Stoffner, Gabriele Mitelli, John Dikeman.
"I think John Edwards is absolutely remarkable: there’s never been anything like him before, anywhere in jazz." - Richard Williams, The Blue Moment
Steve Noble is London's leading drummer, a fearless and constantly inventive improviser whose super-precise, ultra-propulsive and hyper-detailed playing has galvanized encounters with Derek Bailey, Matthew Shipp, Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith, Stephen O'Malley, Joe McPhee, Alex Ward, Rhodri Davies and many, many more.
In the early eighties, Noble played with the Nigerian master drummer Elkan Ogunde, Rip Rig and Panic, Brion Gysin and the Bow Gamelan Ensemble, before going on to work with the pianist Alex Maguire and with Derek Bailey (including Company Weeks 1987, 89 and 90). He was featured in the Bailey's excellent TV series on Improvisation for Channel 4 based on his book ‘Improvisation; its nature and practise’. He has toured and performed throughout Europe, Africa and America and currently leads the groups N.E.W (with John Edwards and Alex Ward) and DECOY (with John Edwards and Alexander Hawkins).
Seymour Wright is a saxophonist. His work is about the creative, situated friction of learning, ideas, people and the saxophone – music, history and technique – actual and potential.
Seymour's solo music is documented on three widely-acclaimed collections - Seymour Wright of Derby (2008), Seymour Writes Back (2015) and Is This Right? (2017).
Current projects include: @xcrswx with Crystabel Riley; abaria with Ute Kanngiesser; [Ahmed] with Antonin Gerbal, Joel Grip and Pat Thomas; GUO with Daniel Blumberg; XT with Paul Abbott; The Creaking Breeze Ensemble; a trans-atlantic duet with Andy Guthrie, and, with Jean-luc Guionnet a project addressing an imaginary lacunae in Aby Warburg's Atlas Mnemosyne.
@xcrswx
