Sunday 30 September 2018, 7.30pm
As multi instrumentalist, multi-media artist and improviser Dirar Kalash explores open concepts, collective improvisation and open software. Not bound by genres or style, he displays an impressive musical knowledge in which he dissappears as an ever morphing chameleon. For this very special show he is joined by the great pianist and improviser, John Tilbury, with whom he released, Seaside - the landmark 100th release on the Another Timbre label alongside John Lely and Christian Wolff.
"Dirar Kalash is a multi-instrumentalist and composer from Palestine, currently based in Berlin. I first came across him when John Tilbury recommended Dirar for a recording session at his house in the seaside town of Deal, Kent. I wanted to record John playing his clavichord, an extremely quiet precursor of the harpsichord, which he had recently acquired. We ended up recording a great trio of clavichord, electronics (John Lely) and Dirar playing oud - the first ever outing for that particular combination of instruments, I believe. The trio was accompanied by seagulls and various other environmental sounds peculiar to Deal. We managed to record a whole CD of material in a single day, and the resulting album – Seaside - was released on Another Timbre in 2016. Its unusual soundworld generated several excellent reviews, and the disc has nearly sold out. As well as oud, Dirar plays electronics and piano, both extremely well, and I look forward to hearing his work on electronics in this new performance with John Tilbury, who will be back at the piano on this occasion as his clavichord never leaves Deal." – Simon Reynell
dirar kalash (b. 1982) is a musician and sound artist whose work spans a wide range of musical and sonic practices within a variety of instrumental, compositional and improvisational contexts. kalash also extends his practice into inter-disciplinary theoretical research. he has produced several solo and collaborative musical albums and is active as touring musician, in addition to that he also created several sound installations, live audio-visual performances, field recordings and soundscape compositions series under the title of Sonic Front.
John Tilbury is renowned for his peerless interpretation of the piano music of Morton Feldman, John Cage, Christian Wolff and Howard Skempton. In addition to the performances and seminal recordings that he has made of these composers’ works, he has been an eloquent advocate of their music in his writing and speaking about them. The same is true of the attention he has paid to the music and ideas of Cornelius Cardew, the subject of his authoritative biography published in 2008, and with whom he played in the legendary improvisation groups the Scratch Orchestra and AMM. In the last ten years John Tilbury has performed a range of plays and prose pieces by Samuel Beckett.
Video by Helen Petts
