Saturday 29 October 2016, 8pm
The annual Match&Fuse London festival brings together the most compelling bands emerging across Europe in a 2-day event with 22 different acts from 14 countries. Borderless and genre-less, it is all about European exchange – something particularly poignant at present.
Cafe Oto and Oto's Project Space host Saturday night with invited collaborations between free jazz practitioners. A highlight is the first UK appearance of Susana Santos Silva from Portugal on trumpet with Evan Parker on saxophone playing a completely improvised set. Combining force with sensitivity, harpist Julie Campiche (CH) will work with UK bassist Pete Marsh and Paul May on drums (Woven Entity, Fourth Page).
There are two sax/guitar duets with Julie Kjaer, an in-demand improviser working with the soaring guitar of Chris Sharkey (Shiver), and Ripsaw Catfish (UK) - the established and respected team of Cath Roberts and Anton Hunter. Fusing the music styles, Match&Fuse throw the harsh sounds of Skrap (NO) and the narratives of jazz trio, Mario Rom's Interzone (AT) into the mix. Match&Fuse is less about established acts, and more about energy and engaging artistry.
About Match&Fuse
Match&Fuse is a pan-European festival and touring network for innovative and high quality underground music. The idea is simple – give bands the chance to play and network outside their homeland and everyone the opportunity to hear the most engaging instrumental and vocal music from Europe. It is about matching bands from different countries and then having them 'fuse' (play) together to create new works. Run by a genuine network of supportive partners (such as Les Productions du Vendredi in Toulouse), Match&Fuse is building a reputation for imaginative curation in contexts with a difference.
"If you've ever been tempted by free improvisation, Parker is your gateway drug." - Stewart Lee
Evan Parker has been a consistently innovative presence in British free music since the 1960s. Parker played with John Stevens in the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, experimenting with new kinds of group improvisation and held a long-standing partnership with guitarist Derek Bailey. The two formed the Music Improvisation Company and later Incus Records. He also has tight associations with European free improvisations - playing on Peter Brötzmann's legendary 'Machine Gun' session (1968), with Alexander Von Schlippenbach and Paul Lovens (A trio that continues to this day), Globe Unity Orchestra, Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath, and Barry Guy's London Jazz Composers Orchestra (LJCO).
Though he has worked extensively in both large and small ensembles, Parker is perhaps best known for his solo soprano saxophone music, a singular body of work that in recent years has centred around his continuing exploration of techniques such as circular breathing, split tonguing, overblowing, multiphonics and cross-pattern fingering. These are technical devices, yet Parker's use of them is, he says, less analytical than intuitive; he has likened performing his solo work to entering a kind of trance-state. The resulting music is certainly hypnotic, an uninterrupted flow of snaky, densely-textured sound that Parker has described as "the illusion of polyphony". Many listeners have indeed found it hard to credit that one man can create such intricate, complex music in real time.
Julie Kjær's edgy and thoughtful playing and ‘dark, otherworldly imagery’ (Jazzwise) has become increasingly evident around Europe, inhabiting ground between composition and free improv. Experimenting with extended techniques, sound and rhythm she pushes her instruments to their limits. She tours internationally with Norwegian drummer Paal Nilssen-Love and his Large Unit and she has toured internationally and recorded with Django Bates and StoRMChaser. Currently her main focus is on her trio, Julie Kjær 3, with bass player John Edwards and drummer Steve Noble. They’ve just released their debut album on 14th March '16 on Clean Feed. Julie also plays with London Improvisers Orchestra and is a leader and side woman of several other English and Danish ensembles. In 2014 she was chosen to be a Sound and Music “New Voice” Artist and was chosen as a featured composer by the British Music Collection.
