Sunday 30 October 2016, 8pm
This year is the twentieth anniversary of Confront Recordings, the label I started way back in 1996 when I was just a little boy. There is plenty of celebratory activity planned including two seperate festival nights arranged at Cafe Oto. (Mark Wastell www.confrontrecordings.com)
*PLEASE NOTE, DAVID SYLVIAN IS NOT APPEARING IN PERSON.
Tom Jackson / clarinet
Ashley-John Long / double bass
Benedict Taylor / viola
Keith Tippett / piano
Tom Jackson and Keith Tippett met at Tippett’s educational sessions on free improvisation in 2001. When Ashley-John Long joined those classes in 2004 he and Tom immediately formed a duo, performing at OTO in 2009. After moving to London later that year Tom and Benedict Taylor began playing together regularly and together they organise CRAM records and CRAM festival. The formation of this quartet thus serves to unite several histories. Their release on Confront Recordings was recorded in July 2014 and this concert is the groups World Premiere. This concert is a welcome return to Cafe Oto for Keith Tippett who played a stunning solo evening to a packed audience in 2013.
FEATURING AN EXCLUSIVELY COMMISSIONED PRE-RECORDED READING OF THE TEXT BY DAVID SYLVIAN*
Rhodri Davies / electric harp with bass amplifier
Mark Wastell / tam-tam, tubular bells, chimes, floor tom
Text excerpt read and recorded by David Sylvian, September 2016
During the early months of 1996, Rhodri Davies and Mark Wastell received a commission from the Trivial Theatre Company to produce and record an original score for the World and English language premiere of “In the Solitude of the Cotton Fields” by French playwright Bernard-Marie Koltes. Performances of the play took place later that year in London and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Twenty years have passed and what better time and occasion to revisit the piece? The music scheduled for performance tonight is a brand new interpretation, drawing on elements of the original soundtrack and text and encompassing freshly scored material.
Rhodri Davies and Mark Wastell, two musicians who have radically redefined the possibilities of their chosen instruments. Since their initial meeting in 1995 they have continued to captivate, enthral, dismay and infuriate audiences in equal measure. They have numerous releases on Confront Recordings, notably with THE SEALED KNOT and IST.
In recent years, David Sylvian has sort the musical company of, and worked ever more frequently with, musicians readily associated within the Cafe OTO orbit; John Butcher, Keith Rowe, Evan Parker, Sachiko M, Otomo Yoshihide, John Tilbury and Eddie Prevost to name but a few. His distinct voice, a captivating instrument in it’s own right, will be an enthralling addition to tonight’s performance. David’s EP length CD on Confront,‘Playing the Schoolhouse’, has enjoyed two issues in differing formats, both of which sold out almost immediately upon release.
*PLEASE NOTE, DAVID SYLVIAN IS NOT APPEARING IN PERSON.
