"In the eight years leading to this concert performance at London's Freedom of the City Festival in 2003, IST had matured into one of contemporary music's most formidable units. Hundreds of gigs and rehearsals had hardened the group's collective language into a tongue none other was speaking at the time. External influences had been battered into an altogether different mode of operation, unique only to the three members of IST. Spectacularly authentic and innovative. The music captured on that May afternoon and presented here for the first time in its complete form, showcases aptly how far sonically IST had travelled since it's inception in 1995. Forging ahead with a true-self representation of art is never an easy task but IST were never ones to comply to expected form."
"This Conway Hall appearance was the last performance undertaken by IST. Not through design, just a series of events. No small part was my decision soon after this concert to stop playing cello publicly. During the same period Simon was hatching plans to move to France, something he achieved in 2005."
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Rhodri Davies / harp
Simon H. Fell / double bass
Mark Wastell / violoncello
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Dedicated to Martin Davidson, Evan Parker & Eddie Prévost. Recorded Live at Freedom of the City festival Conway Hall, London, 5th May 2003.
Available as 320k MP3 or 16bit FLAC
Tracklisting:
1. Dyneiddiwr - 22:55
Rhodri Davies is immersed in the worlds of improvisation, musical experimentation, composition and contemporary classical performance. He plays harp, electric harp, live-electronics and builds wind, water, ice, dry ice and fire harp installations and has released six solo albums. His regular groups include: HEN OGLEDD, Cranc, Common Objects and a duo with John Butcher. He has worked with the following artists: David Sylvian, Jenny Hval, Derek Bailey, Sofia Jernberg, Lina Lapelyte, Pat Thomas, Simon H Fell and Will Gaines.
For the last ten years Davies has been closely associated with the pioneering composer Eliane Radigue performing seventeen of her pieces. She composed OCCAM I for Davies in 2011, the first in an ongoing series of solo and ensemble pieces for individual instrumentalists in which a performer’s personal performance technique and particular relationship to their instrument function as the compositional material of the piece. New pieces for solo harp have also been composed for him by: Christian Wolff, Carole Finer, Philip Corner, Phill Niblock, Ben Patterson, Alison Knowles, Mieko Shiomi and Yasunao Tone.
In 2008 he collaborated with the visual artist Gustav Metzger on ‘Self-cancellation’, a large-scale audio-visual collaboration in London and Glasgow. In 2012 he was the recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Grants to Artists Award, he was a Chapter Associate Artist (2016-19) and in 2017 he received a Creative Wales Award. He is a co-organiser of the NAWR concert series in Swansea.
Mark Wastell is a versatile improvising musician who has played a central role in the British improvised music scene for over a quarter of a century. He has performed and recorded extensively and his varied resume includes projects with Derek Bailey, Phil Durrant, John Butcher, Lasse Marhaug, Rhodri Davies, Simon H. Fell, Burkhard Beins, John Tilbury, Mattin, Mark Sanders, Tony Conrad, Evan Parker, Tim Barnes, Bernhard Günter, Keith Rowe, John Zorn, Peter Kowald, Joachim Nordwall, Otomo Yoshihide, Paul Dunmall, David Toop, Alan Wilkinson, Max Eastley, Hugh Davies, Julie Tippetts, Alan Skidmore, Mike Cooper, Chris Abrahams, Stewart Lee, Clive Bell, Arild Andersen, Jan Bang, Maggie Nicols, Thurston Moore and David Sylvian.
Simon Fell has spent much of the past 20 years trying to refine various syntheses of composition, improvisation and jazz. In 1989, he was awarded an Arts Council Jazz Bursary to complete the composition Compilation II for 9 musicians and electronics; a recording was released in 1990. Fell was awarded a composer's research and development bursary by the Arts Council in 1993 to compose Compilation III, a large-scale work for concert pianist, free jazz trio, rock guitarist, jazz orchestra, electronics and tape; a recording of a revised version for 42 musicians appeared in 1998. He has also received commissions from, among others, Eastern Arts, The Termite Club, Leeds University, Haverhill Town Council and Yorkshire & Humberside Arts. His compositions for London Improvisers Orchestra include Papers, Happy Families, Köln Klang, Ellington 100 (Strayhorn 85) and Three Mondrians; recent works for SFQ include Thirteen Rectangles, Six Bells Pieces and ...the old style...
