Friday 25 October 2019, 7.30pm
Resofest is a three day fundraising festival for Resonance FM, "the best radio station in London" (The Guardian). The mind-boggling, anti-algorithmic, international all-star line-up includes the multiple award-winning Eliza Carthy MBE, Professor Nicolas Collins (Handmade Electronic Music), a spanking new collaboration by Atsuko Kamura (Polka Dot Fire Brigade) and Yumi Hara (Lindsay Cooper Songbook), universally acclaimed string duo Fran & Flora, and the first UK solo performance by the legendary Anthony Moore (Slapp Happy/Henry Cow). Plus a host of other world class performers offering a smorgasbord of radical sound and performance. Full details tbc. All proceeds go to support Resonance (London Musicians' Collective, registered charity 290236).
Butcher is well known as a saxophonist who attempts to engage with the uniqueness of time and place. His music ranges through improvisation, his own compositions, multitracked pieces and explorations with feedback and unusual acoustics. Since the early 80s he has collaborated with hundreds of artists – including Derek Bailey, Rhodri Davies, Andy Moor, Phil Minton, Christian Marclay, Eddie Prévost, Magda Mayas, Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Sophie Agnel, Gino Robair, Mark Sanders, John Tilbury, Okkyung Lee, John Edwards, Chris Corsano, Polwechsel and Steve Beresford.
Alongside long term projects he values occasional encounters; from large groups such as the WDR Sinfonieorchester & Butch Morris’ “London Skyscraper”, to duo concerts with Joe McPhee, Fred Frith, Akio Suzuki, Paal Nilssen-Love, Keiji Haino, David Toop, Angharad Davies, Otomo Yoshihide and Matthew Shipp.
Recent compositions include “Penny Wands” for Futurist Intonarumori, three HCMF commissions for his own groups, “Good Liquor Caused my Heart for to Sing” for the London Sinfonietta and “Tarab Cuts”, a response to recordings of early Arabic classical music which was shortlisted for a British Composer’s Award.
“English saxophonist John Butcher may be among the world’s most influential musicians, operating at the cutting-edge of improvisatory practice since the ‘80s. Whenever an acoustic musician starts to sound like a bank of oscillators, a tropical forest, a brook or an insect factory, Butcher’s influence is likely nearby.” – New York City Jazz Record.
Max Eastley is a sound installation artist and a musician. He has been an AHRC Senior Researcher at Oxford Brookes University investigating Aeolian phenomena through practice-lead research; City Sound Artist for Bonn, Germany; a guest of the DAAD, Berlin, exhibiting installations as well as working as musician and performer, and he is an artist with the Cape Farewell Climate Change Project. His most recent Aeolian installation was at Perrotts Folly for the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham.
He has played many solo concerts as well as in combinations with musicians such as David Toop, Evan Parker, Steve Beresford, John Butcher, Ute Wasserman, Phil Minton, Axel Dorner and Al Doyle. He has worked extensively with music and performance including works with dancers and choreographers such as Anna Huber and the Siobhan Davies Company.
His film, “Clocks of the Midnight Hours”, made with director Simon Reynell, has just been re-released by the BFI in their new compilation “Great Noises That Fill the Air”.
Terry Day is a first generation pioneer improviser from the 1960s: an improviser, multi-instrumentalist, lyricist, songwriter, visual artist and poet.
A self-taught musician in a family of musicians, he began improvising on the drums with his brother in 1955. In the early ‘60s he formed the Hardy Holman Day trio, focusing on free improvisation. Later he became part of the band Kilburn & the Highroads, with Ian Dury. Sharing their interest in visual art and painting they both studied at Walthamstow School of Art and later at the Royal College of Art, London. As an art student in the ‘60s he was also a pioneer of free improvisation, free jazz & experimental music.
He formed a duo with guitarist Derek Bailey in the late ´60s and was a regular member of The Continuous Music Ensemble,The People Band and, later on, Alterations with David Toop, Steve Beresford & Peter Cusack.
Terry has collaborated with many musical luminaries, groups, dancers, painters, poets and performed in theatre. He now plays bamboo reed flutes, drums, recorders, balloons & improvises with his lyrics, prose and verse. Since 2000 he has been part of London Improvisers Orchestra. In recent years he has toured twice in both Japan and Brazil, and has performed with improvising orchestras in Malaga, Tokyo and Madrid.
A veteran of the European avant-garde scene since the late 60’s, Anthony Moore has blazed a trail through more genres than a lot of composers have even heard of.
From the baroque pop works of Slapp Happy and the Rock-in-Opposition of Henry Cow to writing lyrics for Pink Floyd and producing records with Kevin Ayers, This Heat and others, Moore is a musical journeyman who carved a musical path entirely his own.
From 1995 until 2015 he was professor at the Academy of Arts Cologne working on the history of sound, noise and music. Along with Slapp Happy he was commissioned to create a TV opera for Channel 4 and has exhibited a number of multi--channel, sound installations.
This performance will see Moore opening another new chapter alongside fellow musicians in the recently formed group, OBTRAM3.
Twenty five years after the release of their debut album, Kenny Process Team have once again reignited and regrouped, with a new line-up and a new vinyl release. Influenced by everything from ragtime to Beefheart to Congolese soukous, this most uplifting of instrumental ensembles has been a sporadic and enigmatic presence on the London gig circuit since the early 1990s, assisted by an ever-shifting cast of supporting characters including Eugene Chadbourne, Mother Earth’s Matt Deighton, guitarist Simon King and performance artist Roney FM. The core of the group, drummer Dave Ross, bassist Matt Armstrong and guitarist Kev Plummer, are a unique trio with a mutual musical understanding that borders on magical; together they create vivid rhythmic, melodic and harmonic colours, ranging from the downright muddy to the completely dazzling. Theirs has been a long and undulating musical journey involving festivals in Warsaw, concerts broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and accidents on canals in Amsterdam. The sudden passing of former member Simon King in 2018 prompted the band to reform, performing at a memorial concert in his honour with King’s parts played by Scritti Politti’s Rhodri Marsden (at whose wedding the band had played back in 1995.) This prompted a new surge of activity, with the vinyl re-release of a 1995 live performance on the Vacilando ’68 label (Travlin’ Light With…) and the assembling of new and old tunes for a series of performances around the UK.
Atsuko Kamura, singer of Kamura Obscura, started her career as vocalist and bassist ofMizutama Shobodan (Polka Dot Fire Brigade), Japanese agit-prop feminist punk pioneerswhose second album was produced by Fred Frith in the 1980s. Her arrival in the UK led to herinvolvement with Frank Chickens. She has long been exploring the field of vocal improvisation,first in Honeymoons (with Tenko) in Japan, then playing with many musicians in UK such asEddie Prevost, Charles Hayward and Sharon Gal. At the same time, as a vocalist, her songsrange from traditional Japanese folk to eco-surrealist chansons. Her recent work is exploringexperimental composition, combining avant-garde vocal electronic and improvisation.
Itako Sisters are Yumi Hara (Lindsay Cooper Songbook, THE WATTS, etc) and Atsuko Kamura (Kamura Obscura, Mizutama Shobodan, etc). Both were members of UK based Japanese conceptual pop group Frank Chickens, but never performed together at the same time until 2019 when Kamura stepped in as a substitute singer for Dagmer Krause when Lindsay Cooper Songbook performed at Cafe OTO to celebrate International Women’s Day. Itako Sisters were booked for Resonance FM fundraising event at Cafe OTO in October 2019. They interweave acoustic and electronic sounds together with treated and untreated voices creating mesmerising rituals.
Yumi Hara’s compositions have been performed by contemporary classical ensembles such as PianoCircus and the BBC Singers, but she has become increasingly well known as an improvisor and performer in the avant rock, Canterbury and RIO scene since releasing CD 'Dune' with Hugh Hopper in 2008. She has formed bands and projects such as The Artaud Beats (with Geoff Leigh, Chris Cutler, John Greaves), you me & us (with Daevid Allen, Chris Cutler), Jump for Joy! (with Jean-Herve Peron, Zappi, Chris Cutler, Geoff Leigh, Geraldine Swayne), THE WATTS (with Tim Hodgkinson and Chris Cutler) and Half the Sky / Lindsay Cooper Songbook. She is senior lecturer in music at University of East London.
