Upcoming Gigs

Cambridge has suddenly become quite busy with improv activities (compared to normal, anyway). These concerts and events will soon be upon us – mark them in your diaries.

PERFORMANCE 2009 – Saturday 25th April

‘A new group – comprising professionals and established composers, choreographers, film-makers and writers – is being set up this year to collaborate with student performers in all of the following fields: Drama, Music, Film, Dance, Poetry. The aims of the group are to create experimental works in workshops and master classes and to stage these original pieces on April 25th 2009. Using a number of unusual architectural spaces in Robinson College, the stagings will aim to provoke continuing discussion between performers and audience and to lay the foundations for continuing collaboration and experimentation in subsequent years. In the inaugural year, the programme will take its theme from Dante’s Commedia. This poem has always invited artists in other forms to respond to and interpret the original text.’

The audience will move through sections of the college designated as Hell (Inferno), Purgatory, and Paradise, viewing art installations, films, dance pieces, and musical performances. The Cambridge Free Improvisation Society will be performing at the climax of the ‘Inferno’ section, alongside a theatrical piece by Jeremy Hardingham. More details can be found at: http://www.mml.cam.ac.uk/italian/news/Dante%20event%202009.html

THE CONVERGENCE QUARTET – Saturday 2nd May

Churchill College Recital Room, Cambridge University
The Convergence Quartet
Taylor Ho Bynum, cornet, flugelhorn; Alexander Hawkins, p; Dominic Lash, b; Harris Eisenstadt, d, perc

‘Youthful and intense US/European jazz improv quartet featuring cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum, drummer Harris Eisenstadt, pianist Alexander Hawkins and bassist Dominic Lash. Bringing together two opposing but complimentary sides of improvised music – where Cecil Taylor and Anthony Braxton meet Evan Parker and John Butcher – this band take no prisoners in their reach for the outer limits of music.’ (Time Out)

A trans-atlantic group featuring Taylor Ho Bynum, currently one of Anthony Braxton’s right-hand men, drummer Harris Eisenstahdt, and two of the British free improv scene’s most talented young player, bassist Dominic Lash and pianist Alexander Hawkins. Those who caught Hawkins’ Ensemble at the Churchill Recital Rooms last year will know that this is definitely worth catching.

PARALLAX/ STEK – Friday 8th May

Churchill College Recital Room, Cambridge University
Parallax
Stian Omenås, trumpet, percussion; Are Lothe Kolbeinsen, guitar, prepared gitar; Ulrik Ibsen Thorsrud, drums, percussion
Stek
Robert van Stekelenberg – piano
Tim Clark – double bass
Oscar Lomas – reeds
Hubert Spall – reeds

A double-bill presented by CFIS, featuring two recently-formed groups who display influences from jazz and free improvisation. Norwegian-based trio Parallax are on a UK tour, while Stek are coming down from London to perform.

PARALLAX: This Norwegian trio plays attentive and playful improvised music with references as diverse as traditional jazz and Asian music, as well as abstract soundscapes. Rustling, crackling, stealthily winding and melodic, the music moves effortlessly from a mere whisper to intensely suggestive stretches of rhythmic improvising. The music has been compared to haiku poetry; atmospheric, immediate and surprising.

STEK: Drawing on the innovations of Paul Bley, Evan Parker, Peter Brotzmann, Ornette Coleman and early solo Keith Jarrett, STEK are a free improvising group that investigate ways of affecting change in the freely improvised situation without determining pitches. ‘Compositions’ generally involve stipulations as to how the leadership is passed around, changing moods and sequences of combinations of instruments to create different musical environments. The musicians all live in London and play in other contexts, including jazz, blues, metal, contemporary classical and ambient.

MARK ANTHONY WHITEFORD/STUART CHALMERS/CFIS – Saturday 16th May

Venue TBC

Mark Anthony Whiteford on saxophone and miscellaneous percussion/electronics; Stuart Chalmers on guitar, kalimba, and electronics, will be performing as a duo and in various combinations with members  of the Cambridge Free Improvisation Society. Mark has been active on the Bristol improvised music scene since the 1980s, having been involved in the punk movement inspired by the likes of the Pop Group and Rip Rig and Panic; Stuart, who records solo material under the moniker ‘Skarabee’, incorporates elements of ambient music and minimal improv to create unique soundscapes and intense threads of textured quiet and silence.