Thursday 4 July 2024, 7.30pm
Anthony Moore's Obtrama3 – Olie Brice (dbl bass), Anthony Moore (noise), Tullis Rennie (trombone & electronics) – are joined by John Butcher (saxophones), and Matthias Muche (trombone) for a 90 minute set in two parts. Expect improvised music, noise, text and more.
A veteran of the European avant-garde scene since the late 60’s, Anthony Moore has blazed a trail through more genres than a lot of composers have even heard of.
From the baroque pop works of Slapp Happy and the Rock-in-Opposition of Henry Cow to writing lyrics for Pink Floyd and producing records with Kevin Ayers, This Heat and others, Moore is a musical journeyman who carved a musical path entirely his own.
From 1995 until 2015 he was professor at the Academy of Arts Cologne working on the history of sound, noise and music. Along with Slapp Happy he was commissioned to create a TV opera for Channel 4 and has exhibited a number of multi--channel, sound installations.
This performance will see Moore opening another new chapter alongside fellow musicians in the recently formed group, OBTRAM3.
Olie Brice is a double bassist, improviser and composer. Raised in London and Jerusalem, he now lives by the sea in Hastings.
Olie Brice leads and composes for two groups, a trio (with Tom Challenger & Will Glaser) and an Octet (with Alex Bonney, Kim Macari, Jason Yarde, Rachel Musson, George Crowley, Cath Roberts & Johnny Hunter). Both of these groups were featured on the critically acclaimed double album ‘Fire Hills’. Previously Brice lead a quintet – “one of the most interesting and satisfying bands on the current UK scene” – which released two albums, ‘Immune to Clockwork’ and ‘Day After Day’. He has also composed a piece for improvising string quartet, ‘From the Mouths of Lions’, which will be released in 2024.
Brice is a committed free improviser, who has performed, toured and recorded with many of the leading names in the music. Frequent collaborators include Mark Sanders, Paul Dunmall, Rachel Musson, Tobias Delius, Cath Roberts and Luis Vicente, and he has also appeared with the likes of Evan Parker, Tony Malaby, John Butcher, Ingrid Laubrock, Ken Vandermark, Eddie Prevost and Louis Moholo. He is part of several ongoing improvising ensembles including Somersaults (with Tobias Delius & Mark Sanders) and The Acrylic Rib (with Albert Cirera & Nicolas Field).
Brice is also in demand as a bass player in creative ensembles led by many artists, including Dee Byrne’s Outlines and Out Front (Nick Malcolm’s quintet playing the music of Andrew Hill and Booker Little). He regularly performs at venues and festivals across Europe. Brice has been the recipient of Arts Council England funding multiple times and in 2021 received a composition commission from Jazz South.
“Brice makes the entire body of his bass sing. He has the ability to deliver a fractal line that is as purposeful as any by the great jazz bassists, but to do so within an entirely abstract setting” - Brian Morton, Point of Departure
Tullis Rennie is a composer, electronic musician, improvising trombonist, and field recordist. He has appeared in collaboration through performance and recording with an array of artists including Claudia Molitor, John Butcher, Cath Roberts, Olie Brice, Kate Carr and many others. Tullis’s varied career to date has touched upon many different conceptual approaches, examining the impact of listening with jazz musicians Matthew Bourne and Graham South on vinyl-only release Muscle Memory ("...Rennie foregrounds the act of listening as an active component in the creation of musical experience” -– The Wire Magazine), and investigating the hidden process of performance preparation with Manchester-based Vonnegut Collective on 48 Hours (Moving Furniture Records). His recent studio work Fixed Freedoms, released on Matthew Herbert's Accidental Jnr label, is "a mutated set of electronic experiments that bends recognizable formulae (trance, dub techno, electro) into abstract landscapes" — Boomkat. He is co-founder of Walls On Walls with visual artist Laurie Nouchka, and a member of the Insectotròpics audio-visual collective, based in Barcelona.
Butcher is well known as a saxophonist who attempts to engage with the uniqueness of time and place. His music ranges through improvisation, his own compositions, multitracked pieces and explorations with feedback and unusual acoustics. Since the early 80s he has collaborated with hundreds of artists – including Derek Bailey, Rhodri Davies, Andy Moor, Phil Minton, Christian Marclay, Eddie Prévost, Magda Mayas, Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Sophie Agnel, Gino Robair, Mark Sanders, John Tilbury, Okkyung Lee, John Edwards, Chris Corsano, Polwechsel and Steve Beresford.
Alongside long term projects he values occasional encounters; from large groups such as the WDR Sinfonieorchester & Butch Morris’ “London Skyscraper”, to duo concerts with Joe McPhee, Fred Frith, Akio Suzuki, Paal Nilssen-Love, Keiji Haino, David Toop, Angharad Davies, Otomo Yoshihide and Matthew Shipp.
Recent compositions include “Penny Wands” for Futurist Intonarumori, three HCMF commissions for his own groups, “Good Liquor Caused my Heart for to Sing” for the London Sinfonietta and “Tarab Cuts”, a response to recordings of early Arabic classical music which was shortlisted for a British Composer’s Award.
“English saxophonist John Butcher may be among the world’s most influential musicians, operating at the cutting-edge of improvisatory practice since the ‘80s. Whenever an acoustic musician starts to sound like a bank of oscillators, a tropical forest, a brook or an insect factory, Butcher’s influence is likely nearby.” – New York City Jazz Record.
Matthias Muche is a Cologne-based trombone player and composer. He stands for a generation of composer-performers for whom the distinction between jazz, improvised music and contemporary music no longer applies. He confidently draws on the diverse heritage of the avantgardes of the 20th and 21st centuries as a composer as well as a virtuoso improviser and interpreter.
The focus of his work includes interdisciplinary projects in music, theatre, dance and video art with which he has performed in over 50 countries.
After studying music at the Conservatorium Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Cologne, he completed a postgraduate degree at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne and initiated the Frischzelle Festival for Intermedia Performance and Zeitkunst e.V.
In his Performance he uses a wide variety of playing setups: feeds of speech and soundscapes into the trombone, spatial expansion using external bells, interactive computer graphics as synaesthetic perception, or simply the pure, naked trombone.
https://linktr.ee/matthiasmuche
