Wednesday 14 June 2017, 7.30pm
Cuspeditions presents a series of solo's and duos to celebrate the launch of Clive Bell's Asakusa Follies.
Clive Bell is a musician, composer and writer with a specialist interest in the shakuhachi, khene (Thai mouth organ) and other East Asian wind instruments. He has travelled extensively in Japan (where he studied shakuhachi with the master Kohachiro Miyata), Thailand, Laos and Bali, researching music and meeting local practitioners. He currently tours with UK-based Japanese drumming group Taiko Meantime, and joins koto and shamisen players to perform the Japanese classical repertoire. He toured for over a decade with Jah Wobble, including shows at Ronnie Scott’s and the Glastonbury Festival.
Clive is the shakuhachi player on Karl Jenkins's album Requiem on EMI Classics, the final two Harry Potter movies, and the Hobbit. His shakuhachi playing has been featured live on Radio 3’s Late Junction and In Tune. In 2013 at the BFI, Sylvia Hallett and Clive Bell performed a live soundtrack for Walk Cheerfully, Yasujiro Ozu’s 1930 comedy gangster movie.
Clive Bell has a substantial recording history as both a solo artist (his solo album, Shakuhachi: The Japanese Flute was reissued in 2005 by ARC Records) and as a composer for film, TV and theatrical productions (Complicite, Kazuko Hohki, IOU, Whalley Range Allstars). Jazz pianist Taeko Kunishima, Jaki Liebezeit, David Sylvian, David Toop, Jochen Irmler of Faust and Bill Laswell number among Clive Bell's collaborators. Based in London, he writes regularly for the music monthly The Wire.
Rie Nakajima is a sculptor living in London. She has been working on creating installations and performances by responding to physical characters of spaces using combination of motorised devices and found objects. Fusing sculpture and sound, her artistic practice is open to chance and the influence of others. She has exhibited and performed worldwide. She has collaborated with Ikon Gallery(Birmingham), Museo Vostell Malpartida (Cáceres), Tate Modern (London), Serralves Museum (Porto), ShugoArts (Tokyo), Hara Museum (Tokyo) and many others. Her frequent collaborators includes David Cunningham, Keiko Yamamoto, Pierre Berthet, David Toop, Haruko Nakajima and Akira Sakata.
Sylvia Hallett is a composer and improviser, working with instruments (violin, hurdy-gurdy, saw,) and objects (bowed bicycle wheel, bowed branches etc) alongside simple live sound processing. She has worked extensively with dancers and in theatre, most recently with choreographer Miranda Tufnell on a tour of outdoor site specific venues in Northumberland. Recent albums: Tree Time and Bolt and Latch.
http://www.sylviahallett.co.uk/
David Ross was born in 1967 in East London and lived and worked there until moving to rural Norfolk in 2016. He is a restless and eccentric artist who touches every instrument with his own unpredictable and disorientating sound.
David is a maker of bizarre electronics such as The Davestation, The Drosscilator, and is reportedly the only musician to have composed an album entirely using an analogue synthesizer built into a kettle. Alongside these devises, he also plays more conventional instruments such as Jew's Harp, Drums, Kalimba and Kantele.
He drummed in the 90s cult band Kenny Process Team and is currently a member of Twinkle3.