14–15 June 2022
Delighted to present a very special residency with cellist and composer, Lucy Railton, performing with collaborators old and new across two nights.
"Lucy Railton is one of the days most spellbinding cellists, and her prolific string of releases throughout the past few years is ample evidence to convince any newcomer. Her work is mesmerizingly sculptural: there is a tactile violence to every stroke and pluck but her every motion is in service of a vision for the overarching shape and mood of the resulting piece.” - Wire
Day one sees a new grouping consisting of Lucy alongside Sharon Gal, Caroline Kraabel, and Sophie Fetokaki, followed by a performance of Morton Feldman's monumental 1981 work, Patterns in a Chromatic Field, with Joseph Houston on piano.
"Written in 1981, Patterns in a Chromatic Field is one of US composer Morton Feldman’s lengthy ‘late’ works in which, as he famously explained, ideas of form give way to a sense of scale. Running to more than 90 minutes, it’s a succession of seemingly disconnected patterns, with cello and piano mulling over a few chosen pitches, chords and articulations, maybe moving in and out of sync with each other, before simply moving on to something else. The cumulative effect is almost like experiencing the compositional process unfold before your very ears; and despite the apparent objectivity and detachment of the music, there’s intense subjectivity, too, in Feldman’s minute alterations to his patterns, and his often witty, telling choices as to how they succeed each other." – The Strad
For the second night of the residency, Lucy and US composer and violist, Catherine Lamb perform a work in progress for cello, viola and voice? based on Catherine's piece The Additive Arrow (2021) (originally written for Conrad Tao and Jay Campbell). In recent years the pair have played together in various configurations that focus on rational intonation, and regularly collaborate within the framework of the Berlin based Harmonic Space Orchestra. Alongside this, the night includes a moment of audio and video collaboration between Lucy and video artist Rebecca Salvadori, and for the final part of the night Lucy joins the established duo of Steve Noble (drums) and Farida Amadou (bass) for an improvised set.
PROGRAMME
14 JUNE
- Group Piece: Sharon Gal, Caroline Kraabel, Sophie Fetokaki, Lucy Railton.
- Patterns in a Chromatic Field (1981) - Morton Feldman
Lucy Railton - cello, Joseph Houston - Piano.
15 JUNE
- Catherine Lamb / Lucy Railton
- Rebecca Salvadori / Lucy Railton
- Farida Amadou / Steve Noble / Lucy Railton
LUCY RAILTON is a cellist based in Berlin who works in composition, improvisation and electronic music, releasing her own work on Modern Love, Editions Mego - GRM Portraits, PAN (with Peter Zinovieff), Takuroku and SN Variations (with Kit Downes). She has recently performed with Rebecca Salvadori, Farida Amadou, Catherine Lamb, Kali Malone, Khyam Allami and Stephen O’Malley and Max Eilbacher. She is also involved in the presentation of works by Maryanne Amacher, Iannis Xenakis and Morton Feldman and music using Just Intonation; her engagement with this repertoire has occasioned extensive explorations of resonance, rational intonation and psychoacoustics, preoccupations that are ever present in her own work. Lucy established the Kammer Klang series at Cafe OTO, which ran for 10 years, and co-founded and co-directed the London Contemporary Music Festival from 2013-2016.
Sharon Gal is an interdisciplinary artist, performer, vocalist and composer, specialising in free improvisation, experimental music and collaborative, participatory large group compositions. She works with voice, electronics, extended techniques, field recordings, found audio, video and collage; exploring presence, listening, embodiment, and the relationship between people, sound and space. Sharon performs solo and in collaborations with: David Toop, Steve Beresford, Phil Minton, Charles Hayward, John Butcher, Andie Brown, Yoni Silver, Sue Lynch, Anat Ben David and Lina Lapelyte.
Since 2007 she has directed a series of site specific, large group compositions, inviting musicians and non-musicians to take part. She curates music concerts, including the series Sound Matter, at Café OTO, and concerts at Iklectik arts lab. Her music is released by many labels, including five solo albums and various collaborations.
Past performances include The V&A, ICA, The Whitechapel Gallery, Tate Modern & Tate Britain, MACBA, and Colour Out Of Space, Borealis, Supernormal, Supersonic, TUSK, and Tectonics festivals. Her experimental work, Etudes by Sharon Gal, a collection of text & colour scores, presented as a deck of 78 cards, was supported by Sound and Music and published in 2021.
https://www.sharon-gal.com/
https://sharongal.bandcamp.com
Caroline Kraabel is a London-based improviser.
In 2022 Kraabel brought together a large improvising group made up of all sorts of women, non-binary, and transgender improvisers: ONe_Orchestra New.
https://oneorchestranew.com/
Other active groups include:
Transitions Trio (with Charlotte Hug and Maggie Nicols); Fit To Burst, a song-based trio with Sarah Washington and John Edwards (https://carolinekraabel.bandcamp.com/album/fit-to-burst); a duo with Pat Thomas (on piano); the Poetry Quintet with Rowland Sutherland, John Edwards and Sofia Vaisman-Maturana, which incorporates live poetry from guest poets, including Moor Mother.
Kraabel has performed and recorded with many other excellent improvisers, including Robert Wyatt, Louis Moholo, Cleveland Watkiss, Hyelim Kim, Susan Alcorn, Veryan Weston, Mariá Portugal, Neil Metcalfe, Mark Sanders, Shima Kobayashi, and Chris Corsano.
Kraabel’s solo saxophone improvisations while walking in London and elsewhere with her infant child/ren in their pushcair were broadcast weekly 2002-2006 on Resonance 104.4 FM as Taking a Life for a Walk and more recently (without children) as Going Outside. Other radio work includes a series of interviews with improvisers in many media (music, dance, visual art, politics, activism), Why is Improvising Important.
Improvisers and Improvisation, made with John Edwards, is a 22-hour radio piece including music, noise, electronics, live performance and new interviews with improvisers; broadcast as part of 2022’s Radio Art Zone: https://radioart.zone/saturday-10-september
Some Kraabel compositions:
Performances for Large Saxophone Ensemble 1, 2, 3 and 4, for 21-piece spatial saxophone/voice ensemble; Get Used To Balancing, a suite of pieces for alto sax, percussion and two flutes; Now We Are One Two, a 45-minute solo performance; Recording The Other, for soprano, cello, flute, piano and four recording devices; LAST 1, 2 and 3 for pre-recorded voice (Robert Wyatt) and large ensemble; many songs; numerous pieces for large improvising ensembles in London and around the world, including Une note n’écoutant qu’elle-même and Missing.
Kraabel’s 40-minute soundfilm about lockdown London (London 26 and 28 March 2020: imitation: inversion, https://vimeo.com/505430655) received its avant-première at Café Oto in 2021, is available on the Jazzed app, and won the 2021 Ivor Novello Award for Sound Art Composer.
Kraabel conducted, devised pieces for, and played with the London Improvisers Orchestra (LIO) from 1998-2022, and organised their 20th anniversary celebrations, which featured celebrated LIO members from throughout the group’s history.
http://www.masskraabel.com/
https://carolinekraabel.bandcamp.com/
https://oneorchestranew.com/
https://oneorchestranew.bandcamp.com/releases
https://lonelyimpulsecollective.bandcamp.com/
https://jazzed.com/
Joseph Houston is a British pianist whose wide-ranging curiosity has led to activity in a variety of fields, particularly contemporary and experimental music. He is based in Berlin, and his playing has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4, BBC Radio 6 Music, Radio Cemat Rome, and Albanian national television. Collaboration with composers makes up a large part of Joseph’s work, and he has given first performances of works by, among others, Christian Wolff, Simon Holt, Colin Matthews, Michael Zev Gordon, Antonia Barnett-McIntosh, Louis D’Heudieres, Martin Suckling, Charlotte Bray, Catherine Lamb, Stephen Crowe, Nomi Epstein, and Christian Mason.
In recent years Joseph has performed all over Europe and in China at venues and festivals such as the Berlin Biennale, Lille Piano(s) Festival, Ухо Festival (Kiev, Ukraine), the BBC Proms, Suture Soven Festival, Wigmore Hall, Cheltenham Music Festival, Kammer Klang (Cafe Oto), Pharos Contemporary Music Festival (Cyprus), Unerhörte Music (Berlin), Ryedale Festival, Occupy the Pianos Festival (London), Music Week Festival (Beijing Normal University), Piano Salon Christophori (Berlin), Pianodrom Festival (Albania), KM28 (Berlin), Pirelli HangarBiccoca (Milan), and Summartonar Festival (Faroe Islands). He is also the pianist for the Octandre Ensemble, a London-based ensemble focusing on music written since 1945.
Catherine Lamb (b. 1982, Olympia, Wa, U.S.), is a composer exploring the interaction of elemental tonal material and the variations in presence between shades and beings in a room. She has been studying and composing music since a young age. In 2003 she turned away from the conservatory in an attempt to understand the structures and intonations within Hindustani Classical Music, later finding Mani Kaul in 2006 who was directly connected to Zia Mohiuddin Dagar and whose philosophical approach to sound became important to her. She studied (experimental) composition at the California Institute of the Arts (2004-2006) under James Tenney and Michael Pisaro, who were both integral influences. It was there also that she began her work into the area of Just Intonation, which became a clear way to investigate the interaction of tones and ever-fluctuating shades, where these interactions in and of them-selves became structural elements in her work. Since then she has written various ensemble pieces (at times with liminal electronic portions) and continues to go further into elemental territories, through various kinds of research, collaboration, and practice (herself as a violist). She received her MFA from the Milton Avery School of Fine Arts at Bard College in 2012 and is currently residing in Berlin, Germany.
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 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).
FARIDA AMADOU is a self-taught bass player based in Brussels, Belgium. The electric bass has been her main instrument since 2011. In 2013, she has started to play a lot of different musical genres, including blues, jazz and hip-hop; soon she started to dive into improvised music, and was rapidly identified by local collectives and musicians. After a year (2017) as bass player in Belgian punk band Cocaine Piss, Farida decided to focus on her solo improvisation practice and collaborations with musicians such as Steve Noble, Thurston Moore, Peter Brötzmann, Terrie Ex, Lukas Koening, Pat Thomas and Julien Desprez, among others, occasionally also featuring with groups such as Jerusalem in My Heart and Moor Mother.
London-based video artist with a long experience of filming environments following a non-hierarchical/chronological layering and sequencing of audio to footage. Her film work, including ambiguous short documentaries, artists’ portraits, music videos and AV sets, is both highly personal and wilfully elusive. Throughout the years, Salvadori has accumulated an extensive video archive from which she creates assemblages. This acts as the basis for filmic portraits of moments, people and environments. Her work has been shown at venues and festivals including Videodrome Paris (FR), III Point Festival Miami (US), Club to Club (IT), Macro Museum of Contemporary Art (IT), Barbican Art Center (UK), Festival of Film and Animation Olomouc (CZ), Festival IMAGES (CH), Crosstalk Video Art Festival (HU), David Lynch’s Silencio (FR), SCHNUCK Glaspalais (NL), Sophiensaele Theatre (DE).
