Monday 30 September 2024, 7.30pm
A first gig for a new band! The Olie Brice Quartet – featuring Rachel Musson, Alexander Hawkins and Will Glaser – play Brice’s compositions, ranging from melancholy ballads to pulsating free jazz. Following on from the Trio and Octet explorations on his album “Fire Hills”, Brice has put together a new band with three of his favourite collaborators, all of whom are among the most individual voices around and have a wide range of experiences in jazz and improvised music.
“Brice has his own way of applying organisation to music, shaping it in interesting ways without compromising the crucial spontaneity of expression and interaction” – Richard Williams
Olie Brice is a double bassist, improviser and composer. Raised in London and Jerusalem, he now lives by the sea in Hastings.
Olie Brice leads and composes for two groups, a trio (with Tom Challenger & Will Glaser) and an Octet (with Alex Bonney, Kim Macari, Jason Yarde, Rachel Musson, George Crowley, Cath Roberts & Johnny Hunter). Both of these groups were featured on the critically acclaimed double album ‘Fire Hills’. Previously Brice lead a quintet – “one of the most interesting and satisfying bands on the current UK scene” – which released two albums, ‘Immune to Clockwork’ and ‘Day After Day’. He has also composed a piece for improvising string quartet, ‘From the Mouths of Lions’, which will be released in 2024.
Brice is a committed free improviser, who has performed, toured and recorded with many of the leading names in the music. Frequent collaborators include Mark Sanders, Paul Dunmall, Rachel Musson, Tobias Delius, Cath Roberts and Luis Vicente, and he has also appeared with the likes of Evan Parker, Tony Malaby, John Butcher, Ingrid Laubrock, Ken Vandermark, Eddie Prevost and Louis Moholo. He is part of several ongoing improvising ensembles including Somersaults (with Tobias Delius & Mark Sanders) and The Acrylic Rib (with Albert Cirera & Nicolas Field).
Brice is also in demand as a bass player in creative ensembles led by many artists, including Dee Byrne’s Outlines and Out Front (Nick Malcolm’s quintet playing the music of Andrew Hill and Booker Little). He regularly performs at venues and festivals across Europe. Brice has been the recipient of Arts Council England funding multiple times and in 2021 received a composition commission from Jazz South.
“Brice makes the entire body of his bass sing. He has the ability to deliver a fractal line that is as purposeful as any by the great jazz bassists, but to do so within an entirely abstract setting” - Brian Morton, Point of Departure
Rachel Musson is a saxophonist, improviser and composer living in London, UK. She is involved with a variety of improvisation projects, and works regularly with Mark Sanders, Pat Thomas, Hannah Marshall, Julie Kjaer, Corey Mwamba, Olie Brice, Alex Ward, Alex Hawkins amongst others. She features on several releases, including a nonet featuring her composition 'I Went This Way' (577 Records), two with Shifa, feat. Pat Thomas and Mark Sanders, (577 Records), one with Mark Sanders and John Edwards (Two Rivers Records), trio with Liam Noble and Mark Sanders (Babel), and Corey Mwamba (Takuroku).
"A free-improviser sensitive to melody-like narrative and dramatic pacing" – John Fordham, The Guardian
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
Will was born in Worksop, Nottinghamshire. In 2010 he moved to London to study at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
Drawing eclectically on the Jazz tradition, Improvised music, Rock, Noise, Folk, Blues, Experimental and Electronic music - Will leads his own projects and is a highly in demand drummer on the British Jazz and Experimental music scenes.
He is a member of avant-rock bands Snack Family & World Sanguine Report and has performed with a wide range of artists including; James Allsopp, Andrew Plummer, Sly and the Family Drone, Ruth Goller, Alex Bonney, Stef Kett, Tom Challenger, Olie Brice, George Crowley, Dave De Rose, Liam Noble, Soweto Kinch, Dame Cleo Laine, Stan Sulzmann, Kit Downes, Ben Van Gelder, Nikki Iles, Iain Ballamy, Dinosaur, Alex Garnett, Josephine Davies, Yazz Ahmed, Henry Lowther, Babelfish, Rick Simpson, Sam Eastmond & Riley Stone-Lonergan.
In September 2018 Will started teaching on the Guildhall School of Music's Jazz course.
