Ute Kanngiesser’s first solo release will come out on Earshots! this month. There will be a special release event at the Cafe Oto Project Space (one of the recording locations) on the 27th September at 5:30pm.
£4 on the door, with special price on the release and other Earshots tapes.
There will be a solo set from Ute Kanngiesser, and a duet with Guillaume Viltard (whose solo recordings gave us the very first Earshots release).
Available to buy soon at the Earshots Recording shop
Join us at the Hundred Years Gallery for a special launch of the next release on Earshots Recordings: John Edwards and Tom Wheatley : Yoke
Also playing will be a trio comprising the trombone/synth duo Edward Lucas and Daniel Kordik with percussionist Eddie Prévost.
Doors 7:30pm, music starts at 8pm
Hundred Years Gallery, 13 Pearson Street E2 8JD
The Earshots Concert series returns on Saturday the 7th February, at the Hundred Years Gallery!
13 Pearson Street, London E2 8JD
http://www.hundredyearsgallery.com/
Facebook event: http://tinyurl.com/kqcqu7d
Doors at 7:15pm for an 8pm start
Entry by donation suggested at £6
For this sixth installment, we are pleased to present:
Daniel Kordik / Ken Ikeda : Synthesiser Duet
Ute Kanngiesser : Cello Solo
Tom Wallace : Field Recording Works
Preview Mix:
Ute Kanngiesser : Cello
Ute has played cello since early childhood: church and chamber music, theatre and film music. Over the last 10 years, since moving from Berlin to London, she has played unscripted / improvised music almost exclusively, and developed a voice that (she feels) has few direct / external references. Currently, she works most regularly with Seymour Wright and Paul Abbott and reads and writes for the IIInIII (nommit) language experiment.
“intense exploration of the timbral possibilities of the cello and her immaculate sense of placement, and a strong, if at times oblique, rhythmic sensibility that has vivified many musical situations, from AMM to the LIO.” – Muddy Ditch
“…moves with the grain of her instrument. But she hijacks that grain …” – Philip Clark, The Wire
Ken Ikeda : synthesiser
Ken is a video artist, improvising musician, and composer, born in Tokyo . He has worked with John Russell, Paul G. Smyth, and many other improvising musicians; and has exhibited sound art and visual installations around the world. He has collaborated with, amongst others, painter Tadanoori Yokoo, artist Mariko Mori, Hiroshi Sugimoto; and composed and recorded for film maker David Lynch. He featured as part of Sonic Boom, at the Hayward Gallery, London in 2000 and as part of the Royal Academy’s ‘Apocalypse’ exhibition in 2001.
http://www.last.fm/music/Ken+Ikeda
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbRKf5d-hxo
Daniel Kordik : Synthesiser
Daniel is a musician and performer, born in Slovakia and based in London.
Weaving a thread around electronic and improvised music, kordik works mainly as an improviser, music collaborator, field recordist and a regular member of the duo Jamka.
He plays regularly in an improvised duo with the trombonist Edward Lucas.
Tom Wallace : Sound Artist
We welcome back Tom Wallace after a fascinating field recording presentation at out first Earshots event in 2013.: His work is primarily in the acousmatic & radio mediums. He will present rain forest recordings made during recent trips to the Far East.
Working with the London Musician’s Collective Tom helped set up Resonance104.4FM the UK’s first radio art station in 2002. He has contributed various shows seeking to redefine radio and incorporate other wireless technologies with the radio show ‘London Wireless Soundscape Project.’
We are pleased to bring you the next Earshots installment on Saturday the 4th October. This time we are going a bit more (but not completely) electronic, with a duet from Anat Ben David and Atsuko Kamura (both using vocals and electronics); a solo set from David O’Connor (with some electrifying baritone sax sounds); and field recordings from Graham Dunning (with a special dub plate set).
It will take place as usual at the Hundred Years Gallery in Pearson Street E2, and the music will begin precisely at 8:00pm (doors at 7:15)
Entry is by donation, suggested £6
Atsuko Kamura
voice/electronics
Singer Atsuko Kamura began her career by juggling roles as karaoke bar hostess and punk chanteuse in Tokyo, performing with the agit-fem Polkadot Fire Brigade and The Honeymoons. Her arrival in London led to a spell with the situationist pranksters Frank Chickens, duetting with Kazuko Hohki. In parallel she has explored improvisation with masters of the art like Tenko, Fred Frith and John Zorn, and in London alongside Charles Hayward and Lol Coxhill.
Anat Ben-David
voice/electronics
Anat Ben-David is a London Based Israeli born artist, whose work combines music, sound, video and performance. She is currently undertaking a PHD Program at Kingston University, where she is researching strategies and implications of the musical composition entering “Visual Arts”. Since 2003 she has been a member and collaborator of both Chicks On Speed and Art pop performance group with Douglas Gordon ‘Art Rules Crew’ 2006-2008. Anat is an accomplished improvising vocalist, employing her trademark engagement between the voice/body and digital processes. She has worked with many London based musicians, taking the element of composition to its improvisational mode of spontaneity.
http://www.yippieyeah.co.uk/anat/
David O’Connor
baritone sax
David O’Connor plays saxophones and the flute, and has every intention of continuing to do so. On this occasion he will soak the brick walls of the Hundred years gallery’s resonant basement; not with a flute, but with approximately 66-988Hz of liquid noise.
Graham Dunning
field recordings
As an artist I make things in lots of different formats, but generally to do with either Sound or Found Objects in some way.
My background is in experimental music and this continues into the art I make and how I go about it. I use experimentation and play as a main part of my making process. I also like to set myself restrictions for my projects similarly to the way scientific experiments are conducted. Noise – as unwanted sound like record crackle or tape hiss – often features in my work, and a visual equivalent in dirt, dust or decay. I often try and repeat a visual process with audio, and vice versa.
I like to think about Time as a concept and its implications on our everyday lives: How people store their memories, in personal archives – photographs, audio journals, post-it notes – and what becomes of those archives. I find discarded objects interesting in themselves, for the stories that they suggest or that can be read into them. Collecting things has always held a fascination for me, both to do myself and to look at the way others do it.
Ross Lambert + John Russell (guitar duet); Sarah Gail Brand (trombone Solo); Ian Rawes (field recording works)
Saturday 7th June, 7:15pm at the Hundred Years Gallery, 13 Pearson Street, London E2 8JD
http://www.hundredyearsgallery.com/earshots/
Entry by donation (suggested £6)
For event updates, join us here:
https://www.facebook.com/events/282186528623555
Ian Rawes
The London Sound Survey (www.soundsurvey.org.uk) is a web-based field recording project begun as a hobby five years ago by Ian Rawes, who was then working as a storeman in the British Library’s sound archive. Since then, it has grown to around 1,500 recordings made by Ian and other contributors, including wildlife recordists Richard Beard and Stuart Fisher, and musician Andre Louis. The London Sound Survey has been featured on local and national television and radio, and on the Daily Mail website, prompting one comment which compared it to watching paint dry. At Earshots Ian will talking about and playing a selection of modern-day and early 20th-century London recordings.
Ross Lambert
Northern Irish (and London-based) guitarist and ‘magnetic and vibrating sources’ player Ross Lambert, has in his own words, the following fundamental and simultaneous approaches to live performance: to play as though it was both the first time and also the last; and to able to differentiate between what is good and worth conserving and what is not. Ross has been involved in, initiated and been a connector between a very wide variety of improvisatory music since his first exposure and (immediate) commitment to it, in Sheffield via Derek Bailey during the mid-1980s. Although under-recorded (he claims ‘by choice’), Ross has worked with a huge number of musicians from around the world, including Tetuzi Akiyama, Ami Yoshida, Jean-Luc Guionnet, Paul Hession, Rhodri Davies, John Butcher and Evan Parker, as well as his close friends Eddie Prevost, Seymour Wright, and Sebastian Lexer.
Sarah Gail Brand
Described as “the most exciting trombone player for years” (The Wire), Gail has recorded and performed on the international jazz and improvising scene since the early 1990s with Mark Sanders, John Edwards, Billy Jenkins, Elton Dean, Evan Parker, Phil Minton, Lol Coxhill, Martin Hathaway, Alexander Hawkins, Maggie Nicols, Wadada Leo Smith, Jason Yarde and countless others. Gail has composed music for short films, including an original score for Charlie Chaplin’s ‘Easy Street’, performed live to film at the Barbican Cinema, London and has music projects in development for theatre. Recent work includes: work with comedian Stewart Lee and appearing in ‘Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle’ (BBC TV) (series one; series two): duo with US improvising vocalist Morgan Guberman; long standing duo with drummer Mark Sanders; Gail Brand Sextet performing her pieces with edgy improvisation at the heart of the music. Gail is an occasional interviewer on BBC Radio 3’s Jazz on 3 programme.
Sarah Gail Brand has worked as a qualified Music Therapist since 2001 and is also a professor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, teaching on the Music Therapy MA and Jazz Studies Programmes.
“One of the most passionate and dynamic musicians alive.” Time Out
John Russell
John began playing the guitar in 1965, playing free improvisation in and around London from 1972 onwards.
From 1974 his work extended into teaching, recording, broadcasts (radio and television) and touring in the UK and abroad both as a soloist, and in collaboration with many fine musicians and groups.
In 1981 he founded ʻQuaquaʼ, a bank of improvisers put together in different permutations for specific events. Since then no two of these groups have ever been the same. Each group comes together for the duration of a specific project, and always features some of the most creative and individual improvisers around in previously unheard permutations.
In 1990 he inaugurated and is the driving force behind ʻMopomosoʼ, which has become the UKʼs longest running concert series dedicated to free improvisation and related musics. An audio, video and photographic archive of past events is currently being built. Video clips of most events began in 2008 and can be found by following this link to the past concerts page on the Mopomoso website http://www.mopomoso.com/category/concerts/
Apart from solo work and heading Quaqua, he is presently involved in a number of regular groups including a trio with Evan Parker and John Edwards, duos with Stale Liavik Solberg, Stefan Keune, Phil Wachsmann, Pascal Marzan, Thurston Moore and Phil Minton, trios with Michel Doneda and Roger Turner (The Cigar that Talks), with Maggie Nicols and Mia Zabelka (Trio Blurb) with Mats Gustafsson and Raymond Strid (Birds) and with Henry Lowther and Satoko Fukuda, The European Contemporary Improvisation Orchestra and various projects with master percussionist Sabu Toyozumi and trombonist/ cellist/film maker Gunter Christmann.
Earshots Recordings is a new label from London focusing on improvised music and beyond, where deep listening is involved.
As the sounds themselves are shaped by real environment circumstances our releases should be as well; brushed ‘n’ crushed by the media they are engraved in.
Our first release, Guillaume Viltard’s Lost Tracks at Dawn, is released on a cassette alongside a digital download reflecting on the current shift in listening habits.
Guilaume Viltard’s double bass solo set was recorded live at the Hundred Years Gallery, London, 13th July 2013 as part of the the Earshots concert series.
Daniel Kordik / Edward Lucas
Hundred Years Gallery, 13 Pearson Street, London E2 8JD
http://www.hundredyearsgallery.com/
Tom Wheatley and John Edwards (double bass duet), Steve Noble (percussion solo), and field recording works from Visa Kuoppala
Entry by donation (suggested up to £5)
Doors 7:15 (the first performance will be at 8:00 pm sharp)
For this concert we are very pleased to present:
Steve Noble is London’s leading drummer, a fearless and constantly inventive improviser whose super-precise, ultra-propulsive and hyper-detailed playing has galvanized encounters with Peter Brötzmann, Derek Bailey, Matthew Shipp, Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith
, Stephen O’Malley, Joe McPhee, Alex Ward, Rhodri Davies and many, many more.
In the early eighties, Noble played with the Nigerian master drummer Elkan Ogunde, Rip Rig and Panic, Brion Gysin and the Bow Gamelan Ensemble, before going on to work with the pianist Alex Maguire and with Derek Bailey (including Company Weeks 1987, 89 and 90). He was featured in the Bailey’s excellent TV series on Improvisation for Channel 4 based on his book ‘Improvisation; its nature and practise’. He has toured and performed throughout Europe, Africa and America and currently leads the groups N.E.W (with John Edwards and Alex Ward) and DECOY (with John Edwards and Alexander Hawkins).
John Edwards is a true virtuoso whose staggering range of techniques and boundless musical imagination have redefined the possibility of the double bass and dramatically expanded its role, whether playing solo or with others. Perpetually in demand, he has played with Evan Parker, Sunny Murray, Derek Bailey, Joe McPhee, Lol Coxhill, Peter Brötzmann, Mulatu Astatke and many others.
Tom Wheatley “Despite being born into a musical family I did not aspire to play an instrument until the age of fifteen. I think it was necessary for them to give up on sparking a musical interest in me for one to develop. After attempts at a few instruments, I took up the double bass about six years ago. I play it regularly with Eddie Prévost, Daniel Thompson, Seymour Wright, Rachel Musson and Guillaume Viltard, amongst others, and also by myself.”
Visa Kuoppala is a Finnish composer, field recordist and improviser living in London. He is particularly active in the areas of acousmatic composition and electroacoustic improvisation, where he is fascinated with the poetic potential of enigmatic or ambiguous sounds. In his phonography practice he is interested in attaining unusual vantage points to sounds with extreme proximity or by using contact or lavalier microphones on nearby materials, allowing their resonant properties to colour the recordings. For his improvisation practice he has developed a granular synthesis and feedback -based instrument called Malegra, which he plays both solo and in groups.
At present he is working on a PhD in electroacoustic composition at the University of Birmingham under the supervision of Jonty Harrison, towards which he has received funding from the AHRC and the university. He has performed or his works have been performed in Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Russia, England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, USA, China and Italy.
This is the second concert in our Earshots series which brings together field recording based work and improvised music, exploring the sonic qualities of both our natural surroundings and sound making devices. Once again, the concert begins with the presentation of a field recording based composition, followed by the solo, and then duo improv sets.
For this concert we are very pleased to present:
Seymour Wright and Alan Wilkinson (alto sax duet)
Pat Thomas (keyboard/electronics solo)
and a special field recording work from Will Montgomery
Will Montgomery makes electronic music, sound art and field recordings. His CDs include Legend (with Brian Marley, Entr’Acte, 2009) and non-collaboration (with Heribert Friedl, nvo, 2008). A split 12″ (with Robert Curgenven) was released in 2012 on Winds Measure.
He has published widely on poetry and music as a journalist and academic.
Pat Thomas studied classical piano from aged 8 and started playing Jazz from the age of 16. He has since gone on to develop an utterly unique style – embracing improvisation, jazz and new music. He has played with Derek Bailey in Company Week (1990/91); in the trio AND (with Noble); with Tony Oxley’s Quartet and Celebration Orchestra; and in Duo with Lol Coxhill.
“Sartorially shabby as Thomas may be, and on first impression even rather stolid, he has a somewhat imperious charisma that’s immediately amplified when he starts to play. Unlike other pianists whose virtuosity seems to be racing ahead of their thought processes Thomas always seems supremely in command of his gift, and his playing, no matter how free and ready to tangle with abstraction, always carries a charge of authoritative exactitude.” The Jazzmann
Alan Wilkinson (b. London 1954) first made his presence felt as part of the burgeoning Leeds music scene of the 80s, founding the Termite Club and forming long-standing liasons with Hession and Fell amongst others, while developing a highly personal, vocalized and energetic approach to the saxophone. Re-locating to London in 1990 he currently works in trios with John Edwards and Steve Noble, James Dunn and John Bisset, as well as collaborations with Chris Corsano, Spiritualized, NY duo Talibam! and Spanish group Laxula; he also and runs the flimflam improvisation club in London. Other collaborations have included Derek Bailey, Peter Brotzmann, Willi Kellers, Alex Maguire’s Cat o’Nine Tails, Sunny Murray, Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo, Eddie Prevost, Stefan Jaworzyn, Steve Hubback and Spring Heel Jack. He has appeared at many national and international festivals and is featured on numerous recordings.
Saxophonist Seymour Wright has emerged as the most important saxophonist of his generation. He shows a command of the saxophone which in contrast to most ‘non-idiomatic’ playing – cynically translated as ‘make your saxophone sound like anything other than a saxophone’ – has deep roots in a tradition of playing that goes back to Frankie Trumbauer, Coleman Hawkins and Willie Smith. – Brian Morton
Photos taken by Andrej Chudy.
For more photos click here
For videos and additional photos click here
Photos by Andrej Chudy, For more photos click here
For videos and additional photos click here
This was the beginning of a series of concerts bringing together improvising musicians and sound artists, laying bare the sonic qualities of both our natural surroundings and sound making devices. Each concert will begin with the presentation of a field recording work or acousmatic composition. This will be followed by live performances from improvisers in duo or solo form, grouping players of similar types of instrument while exploring their differences.
For this first concert we are very pleased to present
Eddie Prevost + Paul Abbott (percussion Duo)
Field Recording works from Tom Wallace
Guillaume Viltard (double bass solo)
Entry by donation (suggested up to £5)
Doors 7:30 (8:15 start)
Eddie Prevost: percussion
Eddie Prévost plays with immense fire, grace and invention. Founder of the essential AMM, collaborator of the greatest improvisers internationally, since the 60s he has kept a continuous contact with the scene and always manages to invent anew his contribution to “meta-music”.
“Prévost’s playing confirmed that he remains one of the subtlest and most intelligent of free drummers.” The Guardian (UK)
Paul Abbott: percussion
Paul Abbott has been a quietly innovative presence in London’s improvised music scene for the last few years working with electronics and self-built instruments before more recently dedicating a good part of his energy to the radical potential of an unadorned drumset, notably as one third of lll人 with Seymour Wright and Daichi Yoshikawa – a trio that recaptures free jazz’s original ability to simultaneously shock, confound and delight.
Guillame Viltard: double bass
“Born in 1975 in the North of Ivory Coast, I grew up in a wild countryside with almost no music. Back in France ten years later, I felt much better roaming through woodlands than attending school. Nonetheless I did my best, but a double-bass finally came to me in the mid 90s. It is almost like a tree. I have been working hard to play properly for another ten years or so. I hate exams and any kind of competition but I survived classical training and even jazz playing. I like the idea that I could give up with music and do something completely different but it may be wrong. Nice also to think about aesthetics, choices or freedom and being only an experiment in the musical life of one’s very instrument.”
Tom Wallace, Sound artist
( Resonance FM / Vinyl Pleasures)Tom Wallace’s work is primarily in the acousmatic & radio mediums. Multimedia work has included sound design for the architects Foster and Partners. From 1998 he has collaborated with director Peter Reder on ‘City of Dreams,’ a theatre piece staged in London, Singapore, Brisbane & Bremen & more recently for Vancouver’s PuSH festival in 2011. Working with the London Musician’s Collective he helped set up Resonance104.4FM the UK’s first radio art station in 2002. He has contributed various shows seeking to redefine radio and incorporate other wireless technologies with the radio show ‘London Wireless Soundscape Project.’ As ‘DJ Wrongspeed’ he produced the controversial FM speed-reading ‘Pirate Flava’ show. As a DJ he ran the long running ‘Vinyl Pleasures’ night at London’s Foundry bar.
