26–27 April 2025
Reading Group is a New York-based record label operated by Derek Baron and Emily Martin. Beginning in 2016 with runs of 20 CD-rs of James Krivchenia’s Taylor Swift-inspired computer music and Cop Tears’s attempt at reading through John Cage’s Thirteen Harmonies, the label has since released over 30 albums ranging from the archival cassette tape diaries of David Wojnarowicz to the incendiary improvising trio of Fred Moten, Brandon Lopez, and Gerald Cleaver.
This two-day residency represents the label’s longstanding relationship to creative music in London in general and Cafe OTO in particular. (Derek’s first record release concert, and 26th birthday, were at OTO in 2015). Both nights are headlined by Moten and Lopez in duo formation in their first performance at OTO in two years, supported on both nights by Reading Group artists of the past and present. On Saturday, they are joined by the London-based duo of poet and filmmaker Zara Joan Miller and cellist Ute Kanngießer as well as X-Ray Hex Tet (featuring Seymour Wright, Crystabel Riley, Edward George, Pat Thomas, Paul Abbott, and Billy Steiger). Sunday will also feature performances by writer/artist Imani Mason Jordan as well as Cop Tears (Baron, John Andrew Wilhite, Cameron Kapoor, and John Welsh).
Fred Moten (born 1962) is an American cultural theorist, poet, and scholar whose work explores critical theory, black studies, and performance studies. Moten is Professor of Performance Studies at New York University and Distinguished Professor Emeritus at University of California, Riverside; he previously taught at Duke University, and the University of Iowa. His scholarly texts include The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study which was co-authored with Stefano Harney, In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition, and The Universal Machine (Duke University Press, 2018). He has published numerous poetry collections, including The Little Edges, The Feel Trio, B Jenkins, and Hughson's Tavern.
Brandon Lopez is a bassist and composer living in New York City. His work deals with improvisation, finding new sonic possibilities on the double bass.
Collaborations with the likes Fred Moten, Gerald Cleaver, John Zorn, The Mat Maneri Quartet, Nate Wooley’s “knknighgh”, Satoko Fuji, Zeena Parkins, Ingrid Laubrock and Tom Rainey, Standing On The Corner, Cecilia Lopez, Ash Fure, Joe Morris, Tyshawn Sorey, and many others.
Playing with the New York Philharmonic 2019 season as a featured soloist with the New York Philharmonic in the premier of Ashley Fure’s “Filament” under the baton of Jaap Van Zweden. His solo work has been featured at the Met Museum in a live collaboration with silent films by directors Stan Brakhage and Germaine Dulac. His collaborative work with Fred Moten and Gerald Cleaver was critically acclaimed by publications of note and won Best of Jazz 2022 in the NYTimes. His most recent solo recording won best of 2023 in the NYC Jazz record. He’s been awarded the Van Lier Fellowship (2018) and Jerome Artist in Residence (2020) at Roulette Intermedium, The Artist in Residence at Issue Project Room (2018), commissions from the Robert D. Bielecki Foundation for the recording of SUN BURNS OUT YOUR EYES (2022), 2023 NYSCA grant for the multimedia piece NADA SAGRADA premiered at the Vision Festival, and an award in 2020 from the Doris Duke Charitable Trust.
He is currently a instructor of improvisation and double bass at the New School for Jazz.
X-Ray Hex Tet
is an on-going collaboration between:
Billy Steiger – celeste and violin
Crystabel Riley – drums
Edward George – words and music
Pat Thomas – piano and electronics
Paul Abbott – drums and synthetic sounds
Seymour Wright – alto saxophone (actual and potential)
Together they explore the edge, and nexus, of sound and word.
Zara Joan Miller is an artist working across poetry, performance and film. Her work often plays with movement and sound as a way of reimagining a body’s rhythm. She is the author of BLUE MONDAY (JOAN Publishing, 2022), which was also released as a duo LP with cellist Ute Kanngießer on Reading Group in 2023.
Her work has recently been presented at Barbican Centre, Muse Gallery, Horse Hospital, In Vitro, Default Den Haag and and has appeared in Fieldnotes journal, Hotel, MAP, Another Gaze and Worms Magazine.
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.
Imani Mason Jordan (b. 1992, London) is an interdisciplinary writer, artist, editor and curator interested in poetics and performance.
Imani has written numerous articles, reviews, essays, poems, plays and love letters, some of which they have published. Since 2016, they have developed a keen interest in poetics, oration, experimentation and practices of reading aloud, from which they have synthesised a performance practice that centres writing and collaboration as well as using the speaking voice as an instrument. After completing their MA in Forensic Architecture at Goldsmiths in 2019, their pamphlet OBJECTS WHO TESTIFY was published by Taylor Le Melle at PSS.
Imani is currently working on their debut poetry collection, THE BOOK OF SLASH POEMS and their solo performance work TREAD/MILL. Recent performance/audio projects include: EARTHLY ACCOMPLICE (2023) with Felix Taylor at MACBA, Barcelona & Crosness Pumping Station, London; ATLANTIC RAILTON: LIVE (2021) with Ain Bailey at Serpentine Pavilion, London & WELCOME NOTE IN A WELCOME SPEECH (2019) with Libita Sibungu at Gasworks, London & Spike Island, Bristol.
Imani is Director of PAPERFLESH PUBLISHING, a multi-genre small press and editing studio for the intellectually rigorous, politically minded black writer. Imani has curated various exhibitions and public programmes alongside Rabz Lansiquot as Languid Hands (2019-) and SYFU (2018).
Cop Tears is an amateur chamber ensemble formed in New York City in 2014, featuring Derek Baron (flute), John Andrew Wilhite (double bass), Cameron Kapoor (guitar), and John Welsh (guitar). Their first album, an interpretation of John Cage’s Thirteen Harmonies, was released by Reading Group in 2016 and re-released by Recital Program sometime thereafter. Their second album, also on Reading Group, presented chamber music arrangements of a number of piano works by Theodor Adorno. Their third album, Our Favorite Music, will be released soon.
