Monday 12 September 2016, 8pm
Istanbul-based free music ensemble, Konstrukt, return to OTO alongside special guests Alexander Hawkins and Alan Wilkinson. Having played with the likes of Joe McPhee, Peter Brötzmann, William Parker, and Marshall Allen, Konstrukt have carved a niche for themselves at the very forefront of Turkish free music.
Korhan Futaci / saxophones, flutes
Umut Çaglar / guitar, organ, synth, flutes, percussion
Barlas Tan Özemek / bass
Ediz Hafizoglu / drums
Alexander Hawkins / piano
Alan Wilkinson / saxophone
Daniel Spicer / wooden reeds & trumpet
“Konstrukt comprises; guitarist Umut Çağlar, saxophonist Korhan Futaci, drummer Cem Tan & Berke Can Özcan and bass player Barlas Tan Özemek. The band has been garnering attention not only at home in Turkey but in European improvised music circles. They have performed with Peter Brötzmann, Joe McPhee, William Parker, Akira Sakata, Marshall Allen, Evan Parker, Michiel Braam's Bik Bent Baam, Alfred Harth, Eugene Chadbourne. To record with these jazz giants is, indeed, a stamp of approval and hopefully their message of liberating music can be heard by a larger audience. Their albums have been released by prestigious labels on LP and CD formats.”
Alexander Hawkins’ work ranges from his acclaimed solo performances (‘intensely intricate…powerful, technically brilliant and melodically inventive’) through to works on a much larger canvas, such as his Togetherness Music ('[a] masterpiece that can stand next to the best works of Mitchell, Braxton or Parker’). He collaborates regularly with all generations of creative musicians, including the likes of Anthony Braxton, Marshall Allen, Evan Parker, John Surman, Joe McPhee, Hamid Drake, Nicole Mitchell, Tomeka Reid, Sofia Jernberg, Shabaka Hutchings, and many others. Further creative associations, with two very different icons of African music, Louis Moholo-Moholo and Mulatu Astatke, stretch back for well over a decade. He has been widely commissioned as a composer, including by the likes of the BBC, Berlin’s Pierre Boulez Saal, and numerous festivals. His performance schedule takes him to club, concert hall, and festival stages worldwide.
"Sounds like all the future jazz you might imagine without ever being able to conceive of the details" – The Guardian
ALAN WILKINSON (alto, baritone saxophones, bass clarinet) has for many years been a leading figure in the British Improvised Music Community. His reputation of a full blast, take no prisoners approach was cast in the Leeds based trio Hession/Wilkinson/Fell. Based in London since 1990 his current groups include a long standing trio with John Edwards and Steve Noble, the quartet The Founder Effect with John Coxon, Pat Thomas and Noble, and many collaborations past and present with among others Derek Bailey, Peter Brötzmann, Thurston Moore, J.Spaceman, Chris Corsano, Konstrukt and Talibam!
"At its highest points, this session unleashes some of the most preposterously powerful energy jazz heard since Peter Brötzmann's Yatagarasu trio with Takeo Moriyama and Masahiko Satoh" - Daniel Spicer, The WIRE
