Sunday 20 November 2022, 8pm
Historically informed violin player, prize-winning street musician, new age experimentalist, chamber ensemble performer and conservatoire deviant. The career of Valentina Goncharova (b. Kyiv 1953) shares parallels with those associated with the broader new music movement of the 20th century and the dissemination of home recording technologies. Valentina’s was a youth spent immersed in the world of classical music study under soviet rule, first in Kyiv and later in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) from the age of 16. With the supervision of professors M. Vayman and B. Gutnikov she learned concert violin and developed alternate playing styles alongside skilled pianists.
A student of the Leningrad conservatoire during the years 1969 through to 1983, her repertoire included music for violin and later expanded to contemporary music composition. The improvisatory nature of free jazz and then budding experimental rock circles also intrigued Valentina during this period in Leningrad. Departing from the rules of the conservatoire, she briefly performed in underground rock clubs alongside future members of the industrial group Pop-Mechanika (Popular Mechanics).
"Valentina Goncharova’s luminous output offers a window into a lesser-known Soviet history of experimental music, drawing from classical, jazz, and new age electronic sounds behind the iron curtain... It is music made for personal pleasure; as exploration, and therein lies its magnetism." – Jennifer Lucy Allan, The Guardian
Rebecca Mahay is an artist and performer born in Birmingham and now residing in Leeds. Mahay is of Indian-Punjabi descent.
Playing as Wild Rani, Mahay had a release on OTO’s TakuRoku label, Ruminations Until All Done, which The Wire noted “explores the music within digital noise, modulating hum, sirens and overlaid classic synth slides and whorls, threaded together with Mahay’s distorted, distant spoken word reflections on self, delivered as poetic, rhythmical snatches of vivid lockdown reality”.
Mahay’s audiovisual work in MIRROR II RORRIM added another dimension to Heath Moerland’s Sick Llama noise project with releases on Moerland’s now defunct Fag Tapes label, with one Womensware released by All Gone (Chris Durham/Church Shuttle).
“A glitchy, fragmented mess of vocals, samples, electronics, and feedback, the tape is characteristic of Moreland and Fag Tapes in general, though in some ways a little lighter and more inviting than most of the rest of their output.” Joe Bucciero, AdHoc on MIRROR II RORRIM
“A vocal ritualistic atmosphere is created by Becky Mahay bringing to mind Vox Populi "half dead ganja music" or the earliest coil live outings” - Chris Durham, All Gone Records.
Mahay’s sound and video work has featured in British Art Show’s ‘Offsite 9’, Eastside Projects Gallery, Sluice Art Fair, Vivid Projects, and Rhizome DC. Performances include Colour Out of Space, Voice of the Valley (VoV), International Noise Conference (INC) Miami, and supporting Body/Head, Wolf Eyes, and Aaron Dilloway.
Think melancholic vocal synth noise jams meets cut up life drama with a heavy seasoning of black comedy.
