Wednesday 25 April 2018, 7.30pm, OTO Project Space
SOLO:DUO:TRIO is a monthly night of improvised performances bringing together a wide variety of musicians and artists. Each show features a solo, a duo, and a trio performance where performers are invited to present something new or play with a person they haven’t played with before in an intimate and open environment.
SOLO: Alexandra Spence
DUO: James L Malone & Otto Willberg
TRIO: Hannah Marshall, Ken Ikeda & Alison Blunt
£7 on the door (£5 members)
Alexandra Spence is a sound artist and musician living on unceded Wangal land in Sydney, Australia. Through her practice Alex attempts to reimagine the intricate relationships between the listener, the object, and the surrounding environment as a kind of communion or conversation. Her aesthetic favours field recordings, analogue technologies and object interventions.
Alex has presented her art and music in Australia, Asia, Europe, and North America including BBC Radio; Ausland, Berlin; Café Oto, London; EMS, Stockholm; Punkt Festival, Kristiansand; Standards Studio, Milan; AB Salon, Brussels; Radiophrenia Festival, Glasgow; Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid; Sound Forms Festival, Hong Kong; MONO, Brisbane; The Substation, Melbourne; Soft Centre, and Liveworks Festival, with Liquid Architecture, Sydney.
She regularly collaborates with MP Hopkins as Banana and has released her music with labels Room40, Longform editions, Mappa, More Mars (Banana) and Canti Magnetici.
(She holds the belief that electricity might actually be magic)
experimental, improvised sound
interference, feedback, extremes
London
- Solo
- Onin (with Joe Wright)
- duo with Phil Maguire
- Frost&Malone (with Reuben Kyriakides)
has also performed with artists such as; Eddie Prévost, John Butcher, Steve Beresford, Phil Durrant, Adam Bohman
Otto Willberg plays various bass instruments and lives in London. Live, Otto performs unashamedly melodic improvisational workouts created almost entirely with heavily filtered bass harmonica and electric bass. Strangely abstracted funk and fusion, a blend of the abstruse and immediate. silky smooth, luxurious, odd and compelling, "like listening to Eberhard Weber through a drainpipe”.
Otto is often heard on acoustic and electric bass with Laurie Tompkins (Yes Indeed) and Charles Hayward (Abstract Concrete//This Heat), as well as the fractured No Wave unit Historically Fucked. His previous solo releases have ranged from extended technique double bass to explorations of the acoustics of a 19th century artillery fort.
He has a solo record called ’The Leisure Principle’ out on Oren Ambarchi's the Black Truffle label. 6 unashamedly melodic & profoundly strange workouts for heavily filtered bass harmonica & electric bass!
Ken Ikeda is a composer and performer, born in Tokyo. He creates unique electric improvisation by a delicate combination of sine waves. After studying at Berklee College of Music, he has exhibited sound art and visual installations around the world. He has released five solo albums and collaborated on albums with David Toop, Eddie Prevost, John Russell, Toshimaru Nakamura, Tetuzi Akiyama, Chihei Hatakeyama and many other improvising musicians; Also he has collaborated with, amongst others, visual artist Mariko Mori, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Tadanori Yokoo, Darren Almond; and composed and recorded for film maker David Lynch. He released CD albums from Touch, Spekk, Baskaru, White Paddy Mountain and Home Normal. Ken Ikeda currently lives and works in London, UK.
Alison Blunt has performed new work using improvisation throughout Europe, Scandinavia, US, Brazil, Australia and New Zealand with a wide array of artists including Avreeayl Ra Amen, Renee Baker, John Edwards, Vinny Golia, Elisabeth Harnik, Tristan Honsinger, Audrey Lauro, Hannah Marshall, Gianni Mimmo, Evan Parker, Ute Wassermann and Trevor Watts. She is a founder member of several ensemble projects including Barrel, Barcode Quartet and Hanam Quintet and occasionally performs as soloist. Amongst broader performance and research activities Alison has collaborated with writers, visual artists, dancers and film makers and leads creative music workshops with children, families, conservatoire students and professional musicians.
"Blunt herself has the same spontaneous attitude for superb control of timbre and sound, while remaining utterly free in her inventiveness". Steff Gijssels, FREE JAZZ BLOG
Hannah Marshall is a cellist who is continuing to extract, invent, and exorcize as many sounds and emotional qualities from her instrument as she can. She has been a regular member of Alexander Hawkins’ Ensembles and has toured in Europe and South America with Luc Ex and Veryan Weston’s ensembles – SOL 6 & 12. She plays with ‘String Terrorists’ - Barrel (a trio with Violinist Alison Blunt & Violist/poet Ivor kallin). And has been invited by Fred Frith and Suichi Chino in their residencies at café Oto. She also plays with Terry Day, Tim Hodgkinson, Roger Turner, Paul May, Kay Grant, and the London Improvisers Orchestra.
