Sunday 22 September 2019, 7.30pm
Sture Ericson / saxophones
Pat Thomas / piano
Raymond Strid / drums
“everything’s there, everything’s to be played”
Three improvisers crossing their paths. Experiences from countless hours, minutes, moments of creation through improvisation in the past are merged in the present. Experiences not as remembrances, but as preparation for not being prepared.
This trio counts members of past and present groups such as the Derek Bailey-Tony Oxley Quartet, Gush, Strid-Gustafsson-Guy, and The Electrics – plus innumerable ad-hoc encounters with other improvisers, well-known as well as unknown to most people.
With their collective backgrounds in improv, jazz, free jazz the musical perspective is wide open. keep your ears and minds equally open - a trip could be about to start. As Picasso once said:
“I do not search, I find.”
The Jadid Series ("new" in Arabic) is a new series of concerts curated by Pat Thomas featuring groups that have never played together or very rarely play together.
Pat Thomas studied classical piano from aged 8 and started playing Jazz from the age of 16. He has since gone on to develop an utterly unique style - embracing improvisation, jazz and new music. He has played with Derek Bailey in Company Week (1990/91) and in the trio AND (with Noble) – with Tony Oxley’s Quartet and Celebration Orchestra and in Duo with Lol Coxhill.
"Sartorially shabby as Thomas may be, and on first impression even rather stolid, he has a somewhat imperious charisma that’s immediately amplified when he starts to play. Unlike other pianists whose virtuosity seems to be racing ahead of their thought processes Thomas always seems supremely in command of his gift, and his playing, no matter how free and ready to tangle with abstraction, always carries a charge of authoritative exactitude." - The Jazzmann
After having spent a number of years as part of the internationally aknowledged swedish ensemble Position Alpha, and after numerous ad hoc anventures with musicians like Rhodri Davies, Chris Burn, Derek Bailey and Fred Lohnberg Holm, one of his preferred contexts is The Electrics. “I only know of reedsman, Sture Ericson, from the other Electrics disc, yet he is outstanding througout” (Downtown Music Gallery – Bruce Lee Gallanter).
Raymond Strid was discovered by the world in the nineties as a member of the group Gush, along with Mats Gustafsson and Sten Sandell. A musician with big ears and an exceptional sense of group improvisation Strid has later in other trio adventures.One was formed with Mats and UK bass wizard Barry Guy, and another with pianoplayer Marilyn Crispell and Anders Jormin on bass. He is also a member of Barry Guy New Orchestra.
