Wednesday 10 May 2023, 8pm
"This May, will be my 60th year on this mortal world, out-of-balance planet. I want to share, and celebrate this at the Cafe Oto, among people who have inspired and excites me with their music and sound experiments
Being in an electric wheelchair has its limitations. However it can produce some alternative sound experimentations, such as the wheelchair buzzer.
I am always out with my mobile phone recording London Street sounds. I love just taking a sound and then sampling this into a completely new sound such old coke bottles. These bottles can produce very rich, and haunting beats. Iron saucepans can also be used as cymbals, again producing very exciting sounds. Marbles in a frying pan lid can also be used as musical instruments.
I am very pleased to have Otto Wilberg, Robyn Steward, Steve Beresford and Fara joining me for this celebration evening."
Otto Willberg plays various bass instruments and lives in London. Live, Otto performs unashamedly melodic improvisational workouts created almost entirely with heavily filtered bass harmonica and electric bass. Strangely abstracted funk and fusion, a blend of the abstruse and immediate. silky smooth, luxurious, odd and compelling, "like listening to Eberhard Weber through a drainpipe”.
Otto is often heard on acoustic and electric bass with Laurie Tompkins (Yes Indeed) and Charles Hayward (Abstract Concrete//This Heat), as well as the fractured No Wave unit Historically Fucked. His previous solo releases have ranged from extended technique double bass to explorations of the acoustics of a 19th century artillery fort.
He has a solo record called ’The Leisure Principle’ out on Oren Ambarchi's the Black Truffle label. 6 unashamedly melodic & profoundly strange workouts for heavily filtered bass harmonica & electric bass!
Robyn Rocket : "Hi I'm Robyn Rocket I play space trumpet which is trumpet through guitar pedals. I am supported by arts Organisation Heart N Soul who believe in the power and talents of people with Learning Disabilities and Autistic people. I love making visual art too and make comics/zines and also enjoy making radio. I have a radio show on resonance fm called Robyn Rocket's Zoom Zoom and podcast series Robyn Rocket Zoom Zoom . I like playing with other people and making it up as we go along , because I think its a really honest way to make music your just responding to each other in the moment , rather then trying to play something perfectly , I am disabled and my disabilities inform my practice, both in the way I play , I have a very short , short term memory so cant really learn tunes by ear , but I can use a loop pedal to be like a extension of my memory But also I can use my creative practice to include more people firstly informed by my own experiences of feeling unwelcome in a space and then trying to change things to address the barriers I faced and then by actively trying to welcome people in who may not normally feel welcome in a space, and ask for their feedback on how to be more welcoming and try to do the feedback. I now provide access consultancy for promoters, venues and festivals. You can hear my music at https://robynrocket.bandcamp.com/"
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.
Faradena Afifi: Founder of The Noisy Women Present, and The Noisy People’s Improvising Orchestra, Fara is also an Initiator, Connector and Performer. Faradena is a person with neurodiversity who has mixed Afghan/British heritage. She is a T’ai Chi Chuan practitioner/instructor, folk singer and improvising community musician who plays bowed string instruments, piano and percussion. She also specialises in healing music and T’ai Chi-based exercises for people with learning differences and brain injuries/conditions.
During lockdown 2020, through jamming online with Maggie Nicols, Fara joined the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra (GIO) and the Improvising Ensemble (IE). This led to performing with the London Improvisers Orchestra (LIO), and with Maggie Nicol’s Creative Liberation Orchestra in Stockholm 2021 and various musicians since. She co-leads the International Online Improvising Workshop with Tony Hardie Bick, the online sister of The London Improvising Workshop, originally started by Eddie Prevost.
When not teaching or performing on stage, she is out busking with Cambridge musician Banjo Nick.
https://faradenaafifi.bandcamp.com/releases
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNaedkKjaEKqvLIumjhy0TA
www.grey-heron.com
