Monday 18 August 2014, 8pm
Debut London performances from three new ensembles spanning the full range of acoustic-electronic performance and comprised of some of the most exciting musicians currently working in the capital.
For the opening duo, installation artist and improvising musician Stephen Cornford - who works by reconfiguring and re-imagining consumer audio electronics - lines up alongside Dan Bennett on computer and modular synthesiser. German cellist Ute Kanngiesser performs in a new trio alongside Shakuhachi player / multi-instrumentalist Clive Bell, and improvising violinist Jennifer Allum, with whom she's previously released a CD on Matchless Recordings recorded in Hackney's historic bell tower. Rounding off the evening, prolific double bassist Dominic Lash forms another new trio alongside Greek musician and linguist Dimitra Lazaridou-Chatzigoga on zither, and sound artist, composer and improviser Phil Julian on computer and electronics.
Dominic Lash concentrates on the double bass and electric guitar. He works regularly with musicians including John Butcher, Angharad Davies, Emil Karlsen, Mark Sanders, Pat Thomas, and Alex Ward. He has lived and worked in Oxford, New York and Bristol, and is currently based in Cambridge where he and N.O. Moore curate the monthly improvised music series Soundhunt. He also runs the label Spoonhunt.
http://dominiclash.blogspot.co.uk/
Dimitra Lazaridou-Chatzigoga (Thessaloniki, Greece) is a musician and linguist based in London. She is active in experimental and improvised music since 2006. She plays the zither, a string instrument, and uses ebows and objects on its resonance box to produce sustained or granulated sounds. Her approach focuses on the interplay between spontaneity and elaborate techniques.
Recently, Mikroton released ‘Borough’ that documents the singular meeting of ‘The Holy Quintet’ with Johnny Chang, Jamie Drouin, Dominic Lash and David Ryan.
In the last few years she has been performing mainly in and around London, while most recent shows have been in Berlin. At the moment, she is exploring multiple ways to reroute her music.
http://www.strokebystroke.net/
Phil Julian is a UK based composer and improviser active since the late 1990’s principally working with modular electronic devices and computers.
Releases have appeared on labels including Superpang, fancyyyyy, Entr'acte, Harbinger Sound and The Tapeworm.
Ute Kanngießer is a London based cellist and composer from Germany. Over the years, she has carefully deconstructed her classical roots and almost exclusively performs unscripted, improvised music. Much of her work has evolved in relationship with other art forms such as film, poetry, dance and site specific work. She is interested in the vast expressive possibilities of her instrument in relation to body, space, and others, always looking to rediscover or redefine what is musical/lyrical in this moment in time.
Recent releases include Blue Monday - a collaboration with writer Zara Joan Miller - on New York label Reading Group.
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.
Jennifer Allum is a violinist who improvises and plays experimental music.
While she was a post graduate student at Goldsmiths, London she began to attend Eddie Prevost's weekly improvisation workshops where she met musicians like Ross Lambert, Ute Kanngiesser, Dimitra Lazaridou-Chatzigoga and Daichi Yoshikawa. She also began working with composers such as Christian Wolff, Tom Johnson, Michael Pisaro and Michael Parsons around the same time too.
More recently she has played and recorded with The Seen, including performances of John Stevens 'For Sake Of Joy Of Study Of Oneself Together' featuring Stewart Lee as narrator.
She has a number of other recordings available, and her most recent is with John Butcher, Eddie Prevost and Ute Kanngiesser on Ftarri records. Other releases are available from Matchless Recordings.
