Sunday 19 February 2023, 8pm
The Noisy Women’s performances explore collaborations with musicians from various backgrounds, visual artists, and people involved in dance, movement and spoken word. The founder members of the Noisy Women are singer Maggie Nicols, artist Gwendolyn Kassenaar, pianist Marion Treby and multi-instrumentalist and T’ai Chi practitioner Faradena Afifi. On 19th February, in their performance Flying Free, these founder members will be joined by photographer Chris Freeman, trumpeter Charlotte Keefe, vocalist Jo Morrison, singer Nicky Smith, and guitarist Julian Woods, in an open and inclusive celebration of creativity and diversity.
Faradena Afifi: Founder of The Noisy Women Present, and The Noisy People’s Improvising Orchestra, Fara is also an Initiator, Connector and Performer. Faradena is a person with neurodiversity who has mixed Afghan/British heritage. She is a T’ai Chi Chuan practitioner/instructor, folk singer and improvising community musician who plays bowed string instruments, piano and percussion. She also specialises in healing music and T’ai Chi-based exercises for people with learning differences and brain injuries/conditions.
During lockdown 2020, through jamming online with Maggie Nicols, Fara joined the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra (GIO) and the Improvising Ensemble (IE). This led to performing with the London Improvisers Orchestra (LIO), and with Maggie Nicol’s Creative Liberation Orchestra in Stockholm 2021 and various musicians since. She co-leads the International Online Improvising Workshop with Tony Hardie Bick, the online sister of The London Improvising Workshop, originally started by Eddie Prevost.
When not teaching or performing on stage, she is out busking with Cambridge musician Banjo Nick.
https://faradenaafifi.bandcamp.com/releases
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNaedkKjaEKqvLIumjhy0TA
www.grey-heron.com
Chris Freeman: A photographer who has embraced a flamboyant and colourful style. Since retiring and leaving the grey-suited life of the city behind, he has been developing his B&W (and colour) photography and more colourful style. Being dyslexic as well, he looks at the world slightly differently from most people, using this ability to find an interesting take on what he photographs and hopefully produce images with a degree of originality.
Gwendolyn Kassenaar is a London-based, Dutch Visual Artist & Performer. A graduate from Chelsea College of Art, her work is based on rhythm, music and dance, capturing the intangible poetry of the ephemeral moment.
Gwendolyn is an established participant in the improvised music scene, regularly painting live improvised at the Vortex, Café Oto, Iklectik and Hundred Years Gallery. She collaborates with highly regarded musicians including celebrated Chinese percussionist Beibei Wang, Orphy Robinson MBE and legendary improviser Maggie Nicols. She co-founded new collective Noisy Women, whose launch featured in iconic magazine The Wire, and was recently interviewed on Soho Radio.
Gwendolyn’s vivacious artworks are instantly recognisable with her distinct use of colour. Her work featured at the prestigious Menuhin Concert Hall, Toulouse Lautrec, Vortex Jazz Club, album covers and in private art collections in the UK and abroad. She just held her first solo show and launched Limited Edition Prints.
@GwendolynKassenaar
https://www.instagram.com/gwendolynkassenaar/
https://www.facebook.com/gwendolynkassenaar/
https://www.youtube.com/@gwendolynkassenaar
www.gwendolynkassenaar.com
Keeffe’s debut album ‘Right Here, Right Now’ is where you’ll find her exhibiting a passion for vibrant soundscapes rendered in live spaces. Released in 2021, also on Discus Music, she earned critical acclaim carving out a niche on the imprint. She also composes and performs for a number of the roster’s artists, including; Hi Res Heart, Carla Diratz and Julie Tippetts. She also co-leads Anthropology Band with the head of Discus Music, Martin Archer.
To date, her music has been featured significantly on BBC Radio 3, Jazz FM and BBC Radio 6, where she's been described as a 'prolific', 'dynamic' and 'excellent improviser!', by the likes of Corey Mwamba, Stuart Maconie and Jez Nelson. Keeffe is a Serious Artist and part of Serious’ Take Five 2022 cohort. She performed a duet with the mighty City of London as part of world-renowned trumpeter Dave Douglas' Festival of New Trumpet Music 2022.
Harnessing the power of art for social change is a crucial part of Keeffe’s musical identity: she has served as Assistant Musical Director of the London Gay Big Band, champions gender and diversity equality, as part of the Parliamentary award-winning Women in Jazz Media team, and played in Marin Alsop's Taki Concordia Orchestra at the World Economic Forum 2019, in front of world leaders and celebrities including Sir David Attenborough.
From stepping on Glastonbury and Wilderness stages alongside Charlotte Church, Laura Mvula and Kate Nash, to broadcasting to an international audience live from her bathroom during the pandemic, Keeffe understands that embracing individuality and letting go of inhibitions is the surest way to grasp the transformative power of music.
“Keeffe shows notable strength of character as she runs the sonic and emotional gamut..." - Kevin Le Gendre, JAZZWISE
Joanne Morrison: Joanne is an Essex-based improvising vocalist via Groningen Vocal Exploration Choir and Faradena Afifi's Noisy Peoples Orchestra and is now a member of The Noisy Women Present. She has taken part in The Gathering, the LIO and is a regular participant of the London Improvisation Workshop.
Maggie Nicols joined London's legendary Spontaneous Music Ensemble in 1968 as a free improvisation vocalist. She then became active running voice workshops with an involvement in local experimental theatre. She later joined the group Centipede, led by Keith Tippets and in 1977, with musician/composer Lindsay Cooper, formed the remarkable Feminist Improvising Group. She continues performing and recording challenging and beautiful work, in music and theatre, either in collaborations with a range of artists (Irene Schweitzer, Joelle Leandre, Ken Hyder, Caroline Kraabel) as well as solo.
Nicky Smith: Nicky is a singer/songwriter/noisemaker. She has found herself in many different musical constellations including abstract covers, psychedelic rock, rap, choirs and experimental noise bands. Given the chance she will try to make interesting sounds out of anything.
Julian Woods: Julian is a guitarist, bassist and composer based in London, currently studying a postgraduate degree at the Guildhall School of Music. Julian is interested in exploring new and unusual musical colours by making use of microtonality and polystylism in the context of improvised music. A graduate of Oxford University, he was highly active during his time as a student, leading the University Jazz Society house band, and playing in everything from a jazz orchestra to a classical guitar quartet. He has studied with pioneer Philipp Gerschlauer and other microtonal theorists/composers, and is a current student of the Julian Joseph Jazz Academy. Current projects include adapting Arabic and Turkish traditional music and Ives quartertone piano works onto modified guitars, and performing with the London Improvisers Orchestra.
https://linktr.ee/julian_woods
