Wednesday 1 June 2022, 8pm
Unpredictable Series presents an evening with 3 sets:
- Terry Day, Blanca Regina, Art Terry and visuals by Pierre Bouvier Patron ( drums, voice and electronics, voice and piano)
- Xenada - Rosey Chan & Gregg Wilson ( piano, guitar, electronics and visuals )
- Steve Beresford and Wade Matthews ( piano, electronics and laptop )
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.
Blanca Regina is an interdisciplinary artist, tutor, and independent curator who works with spontaneous composition systems creating multimedia landscapes using voice, objects, electronics, and visuals. She is also looking at book arts, immersive media, and design. She has produced three albums with Beresford, mixed and mastered by Dave Hunt in London, ‘What Blue’ (2020) Duets with Steve Beresford; ‘Duets with Blanca Regina, Spontaneous Music’ featuring duets with Leafcutter John, Jack Goldstein, John Butcher, Benedict Taylor, Matthias Kispert, Aneek Thapar, Steve Beresford, Sharon Gal, and Hyelim Kim; ‘Art of Improvisers’ (2017) a collection album with several artists concentrating in women improvisers. With longtime collaborator and artist Leafcutter John capturing their live performances in 2017 they created ‘Miga’ a limited edition Pendrive and digital release. Other collaborations include performances with Laetitia Sadier & Marie Merlet ( ISIDORA) Matthias Kispert, DFuse, Peter Cusack, Matt Black, Wade Matthews, Terry Day, Adriana Camacho, and David Toop.
Art Terry is a songwriter/musician from Los Angeles. His songs explore sexuality, black politics and religion, through a lyrical fusion of psychedelic folk music and orchestrated funk. A singer and pianist, Art underpins deeply personal lyrics with dense melodic textures.
He presents 'Is Black Music' on Resonance FM: an alternative music radio show featuring Black folk, country and avant garde classical music.
Brought up in the gospel tradition – from which he was ejected for singing wild salacious songs – Art evokes the figure of the robed and commanding preacher in his live performances. Whether playing solo or with his collective of musicians, the Black Bohemians, his live performances are theatrical and compelling.
Art collaborates with the artist Stew, who created the musical Passing Strange, exploring his and Art’s youthful experiences on the seamy streets of downtown Los Angeles and in Europe, living in squats and art collectives and surviving on a diet of shoplifted food, hashish and freaky music. Passing Strange was made into a film by Spike Lee.
'Art Terry has a vivid element of meta-theatre as well as a broad sound palette, and he remains a genre of his own.' - Kevin LeGendre, BBC Radio 3
'An amazing album, jaw-dropping for its deceptive simplicity' - review of Art Terry's Sex Madness album in THE WIRE
www.artterry.co.uk
isblackmusic.com
Pierre Bouvier Patron is a visual artist based in London. He is currently working with different media, such as digital video and film, exploring the boundaries between them and creating moving image works, performances and installations. He has developed various practices and skills in experimental film, documentary films, music videos, etc.
He is involved in video screenings and video performances, solo or in collaboration. His work has been shown in France, Spain, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Germany, etc.
XENADA is a collaboration between pianist/ composer Rosey Chan and filmmaker / electronic musician Gregg Wilson. Weaving together classical instrumentation with lush ambient sound design, their immersive soundscapes transport you to epic cinematic otherworlds.
The Classical-Electronic Duo will premiere a new Sound Installation at Apple Music, Milan, in collaboration with Piano City Milano and to celebrate World Meditation Day (21 May)
http://platoon.lnk.to/XENADA
Rosey Chan is a multimedia artist based in London. Her creative output combines a wide range of practices, from music and design to dance, fashion, and architecture. A virtuoso musician who studied piano and composition at the Royal College of Music, Rosey’s solo concerts incorporate cinematic visuals and cutting-edge audio technologies. Her music is an amalgamation of her own compositions, musical improvisations, and selected classical repertoire along with electronic and genre-bending sonic influences.
Early on in her own self-isolation experience, Rosey began Mindful Piano Music, a playlist, including new piano compositions, designed to audibly stimulate creativity, work, and study while confined in the home or studio. Initially created for family and friends, the playlist is now available to the public.
Gregg Wilson is an electronic musician, composer, and film producer. He first met Rosey when they were Juniors at the Royal Academy of Music where he studied Classical Guitar. He went on to study physics and music composition at Stanford before embarking on a career in the film industry. He worked as a composer’s assistant and independent sound designer for films and videogames before focusing on producing. Most recently, he was Associate Producer on the James Bond film No Time to Die. As an electronic musician he is most known for his video performances on large and elaborate modular synths in his studio. Recently he has been creating AI-assisted art and interactive visuals for live performances.
San Sebastián Aquarium Performance from Gregg Wilson on Vimeo.
Steve Beresford has been a central figure in the British and international spontaneous music scenes for over fifty years, freely improvising on piano, objects, electronics and other things with people like Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, Han Bennink and John Zorn. Long-standing groups have included Alterations (with David Toop, Terry Day and Peter Cusack), The Melody Four (with Lol Coxhill and Tony Coe, both RIP) and London Improvisers Orchestra.
He has written songs, composed for large and small ensembles, and scored short films, feature films, TV shows and commercials. He was part of the editorial teams of ‘Musics’ and ‘Collusion’ magazines, writes about music in various contexts, and was a senior lecturer in music at the University of Westminster.
Steve has worked with Christian Marclay on various Marclay mixed media pieces. He has also worked with The Slits, Najma Akhtar, Stewart Lee, Ivor Cutler, Prince Far-I, Alan Hacker, Tania Chen, Louis Moholo-Moholo, Faradena Afifi, Blanca Regina, Ray Davies, Mandhira De Saram, The Flying Lizards, Zeena Parkins, The Portsmouth Sinfonia, Ilan Volkov, Rachel Musson, Vic Reeves, Lore Lixenberg, Valentina Magaletti and many others.
Beresford has an extensive discography - around 500 releases - as performer, arranger, free-improviser, composer, conductor and producer. He was awarded a Paul Hamlyn award for composers in 2012.
In 2021, Bloomsbury published a book by Andy Hamilton: ‘Pianos, Toys, Music and Noise: Conversations with Steve Beresford’.
In 2022, Siglio published the book ‘Call and Response’, which partnered photographs by Christian Marclay with notated improvisations by Beresford.
After studying woodwinds (flute, clarinet, saxophone) at the New England Conservatory in Boston, Wade Matthewsobtained his doctorate in composition at Columbia University, where he studied electronic synthesis at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center with Mario Davidovsky. Since then, Matthews has been active on five continents as an improviser, presenting his music in spaces such as the Experimental Intermedia Foundation, Issue Projects Room, Symphony Space and Museum of Modern Art (NYC), The National Center for the Arts (Mexico), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Santiago de Chile), the Reina Sofía Museum (Madrid), Fylkingen (Stockholm), etc. He has also taught workshops and masterclasses in France, Spain, Lebanon, Argentina, Mexico, Chile and Uruguay, including a three-day masterclass at the Conservatoire de Paris. He is the author of Improvisando. La libre creación Musical(Turner, 2012), eleven volumes of the Historia de la Música Deutsche Grammophon, and numerous essays. Besides his own CDs, he has recorded for the Atelier de Création Radiophonique of Radio France, RTVE in Spain, the BBC, SODRE, etc. As a musical creator, he has received commissions including a Commande d'Étatfrom the French Government, a Meet the Composer Grant from the New York State Council on the Arts, and touring grants from the United States Department of State, the Spanish Cervantes Institute and the Fundación Autor. www.wadematthews.info
