Sunday 17 July 2022, 8pm
The Noisy Women are singer Maggie Nicols, artist Gwendolyn Kassenaar, pianist Marion Treby and multi-instrumentalist and T’ai Chi practitioner Faradena Afifi. Our concert series is an open and inclusive celebration of creativity and diversity. Performances explore collaborations with musicians from various backgrounds, visual artists, and people involved in dance, movement and spoken word.
Saxophonist. Born in 1996, in Athens. Graduand from Ionian University with Integrated Master’s degree in jazz saxophone. She is an active member of the Greek Jazz and Free Improvisation music scene. She has collaborated with artists as Maggie Nicols, Markus Stockhausen, Christer Bothén, Martin Küchen, Bram De Looze, Giorgos Kontrafouris etc. She has recorded with various artists around Europe. This year she will be part of three album releases.
Faradena Afifi: Founder of The Noisy Women Present, and The Noisy People’s Improvising Orchestra, Fara is also an Initiator, Connector and Performer. Faradena is a person with neurodiversity who has mixed Afghan/British heritage. She is a T’ai Chi Chuan practitioner/instructor, folk singer and improvising community musician who plays bowed string instruments, piano and percussion. She also specialises in healing music and T’ai Chi-based exercises for people with learning differences and brain injuries/conditions.
During lockdown 2020, through jamming online with Maggie Nicols, Fara joined the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra (GIO) and the Improvising Ensemble (IE). This led to performing with the London Improvisers Orchestra (LIO), and with Maggie Nicol’s Creative Liberation Orchestra in Stockholm 2021 and various musicians since. She co-leads the International Online Improvising Workshop with Tony Hardie Bick, the online sister of The London Improvising Workshop, originally started by Eddie Prevost.
When not teaching or performing on stage, she is out busking with Cambridge musician Banjo Nick.
https://www.faradenamusic.co.uk/
https://faradenaafifi.bandcamp.com/
https://www.youtube.com/@FaradenaAfifi
https://www.noisywomenpresent.co.uk/
https://www.youtube.com/@noisywomenpresent7427
‘In Afghanistan no women or girls have access to education. By playing music I am playing for the people who can't’
Gwendolyn Kassenaar is a London-based, Dutch Visual Artist & Performer. A graduate from Chelsea College of Art, her work is based on rhythm, music and dance, capturing the intangible poetry of the ephemeral moment.
Gwendolyn is an established participant in the improvised music scene, regularly painting live improvised at the Vortex, Café Oto, Iklectik and Hundred Years Gallery. She collaborates with highly regarded musicians including celebrated Chinese percussionist Beibei Wang, Orphy Robinson MBE and legendary improviser Maggie Nicols. She co-founded new collective Noisy Women, whose launch featured in iconic magazine The Wire, and was recently interviewed on Soho Radio.
Gwendolyn’s vivacious artworks are instantly recognisable with her distinct use of colour. Her work featured at the prestigious Menuhin Concert Hall, Toulouse Lautrec, Vortex Jazz Club, album covers and in private art collections in the UK and abroad. She just held her first solo show and launched Limited Edition Prints.
@GwendolynKassenaar
https://www.instagram.com/gwendolynkassenaar/
https://www.facebook.com/gwendolynkassenaar/
https://www.youtube.com/@gwendolynkassenaar
www.gwendolynkassenaar.com
Emily Suzanne Shapiro is a bass clarinettist and clarinettist dedicated to exploring and creating new music. Originally from Canada, Emily pursued her studies at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver Academy of Music, Concordia University and the Domaine Forget academy. Emily has a special love for the sound and scope of bass instruments and constantly pushes the limits of what she can do on bass clarinet.
Alongside performing contemporary music on bass clarinet, Emily is involved in many other musical endeavours. Composing and improvising are central to her career, and she has been an active performer of Balinese gamelan for 10 years and has also explored jazz, klezmer, rock and electroacoustics. She is always seeking out new artistic experiences to enrich and motivate her work.
Maggie Nicols joined London's legendary Spontaneous Music Ensemble in 1968 as a free improvisation vocalist. She then became active running voice workshops with an involvement in local experimental theatre. She later joined the group Centipede, led by Keith Tippets and in 1977, with musician/composer Lindsay Cooper, formed the remarkable Feminist Improvising Group. She continues performing and recording challenging and beautiful work, in music and theatre, either in collaborations with a range of artists (Irene Schweitzer, Joelle Leandre, Ken Hyder, Caroline Kraabel) as well as solo.
HYELIM KIM is a composer and daegeum (Korean flute) soloist, renowned for her innovative intercultural and interdisciplinary approaches rooted in Korean traditional music. As a daegeum virtuoso, she has been recognized as an ‘emerging artist’ by the Korean Arts Council and a Kumho Young Artist. Kim has performed with Nils Frahm on BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction and premiered a daegeum concertino with the Orchestre de chambre de Paris. Her accolades include the Gold Medal at the Korean National Daegeum Competition and 1st prize at the Korean National Chongro Music Competition. She has graced prestigious festivals worldwide, such as the London Jazz Festival, Melbourne Women’s Festival, and China International Bamboo Flute Festival. In 2023, she was awarded the Paul Hamlyn Award for composers in London, UK, cementing her position as a leading figure in contemporary and traditional music circles.
