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Fete Quaqua NIGHT ONE

Three nights of cutting edge improvised music directed by guitarist and Mopomoso founder John Russell.

Each night will begin and end with a short ensemble piece with all of the musicians, with a changing programme of smaller combinations throughout. Rest assured no two nights will be the same.

The Musicians

JJ Duerinckx (saxophone) Belgium

Alice Eldridge (cello) UK

Carl Ludwig Hubsch (tuba) Germany

Ken Ikeda (electronics) Japan

Adam Linson (bass/electronics) Canada

Edward Lucas (trombone) UK

Rachel Musson (saxophone) UK

John Russell (guitar) UK

Paul G Smyth (piano) Ireland

Ståle Liavik Solberg (drums/percussion) Norway

Alex Ward (clarinet) UK

Ute Wassermann (voice) Germany

 

JJ Duerinckx (saxophone) Belgium

Following an initial inspiration from Steve Lacy and meetings with Lol Coxhill

and Michel Doneda JJ Duerinckx decided to specialise on using the

sopranino saxophone in freely improvised music. He is an instigating member

of the concept One Moment Free Improv… a set of events around free

improvisation in Brussels and is also a sound artist mainly influenced by

Murray Schaffer. He also plays the baritone saxophone in alternative/

experimental and free jazz bands. Examples of his work can be found here:

 

Alice Eldridge (cello) UK

Depending upon who is asking, Alice Eldridge is an improvising cellist,

producer or researcher in biologically-inspired systems and sound. She has a

PhD in cybernetically-inspired software for improvisation from University of

Sussex, where she lectures in Generative Creativity. Following a few years

performing with her solo cello-laptop AV duo Alice and her Self-Karaoke

Machines, she presently favours improvising with humans: as one quarter of

PRSF Women Make Music awardees Collectress, as one half of Duot with

bass player Seth Bennett and as a vibrant member of Brighton’s Safehouse

Collective. She has just returned from an ecological research project

exploring soundscape as a proxy for habitat status in the Ecuadorian Cloud

Forest.

 

Carl Ludwig Hubsch (tuba) Germany

“My playing is focused on music as a structure in time. All focus is on the

genesis of the moment. While emphasis and plot are fragmented and given

the freedom of a new point of departure, utmost care is given to awareness of

musical flow and continuity of the play.

Through the use of avant-garde and self-invented performance techniques,

the tuba acquires completely new characteristics as a brass instrument. An

innovative array of unexpected sounds is heard, the instrument is seen from

a fresh perspective, and the audience is confronted with a novel way of

perceiving time.”

 

Ken Ikeda (electronics) Japan

Ken Ikeda is a video artist and composer born in Tokyo (1964). He has

exhibited sound art and visual installations around the world and has

collaborated with, amongst others, painter Tadanoori Yokoo, artist Mariko

Mori and composed and recorded for film maker David Lynch. He featured as

part of Sonic Boom, at the Hayward Gallery, London in 2000 and as part of

the Royal Academy’s ‘Apocalypse’ exhibition in 2001.

 

Adam Linson (bass/electronics) Canada

Adam Linson is a double bassist, improvisor, and composer, who also

designs, develops, and peforms with real-time interactive computer

music systems. He performs regularly on the double bass, acoustically

and with live electronics, as a soloist and in a wide variety of

ensembles. Born in Los Angeles, he has been active on the double bass

and with information technology since age 11. He studied music under

George Lewis and Bertram Turetzky at the University of California, San

Diego, where he performed jazz, improvised, and twentieth-century

orchestral music, and completed a BA in philosophy. From 1999-2009 he

was based in Berlin, Germany, where he began working in diverse

improvising ensembles in Europe and North America, and also began his

sustained involvement with interactive computer music. He has composed

music for international contemporary dance productions, and had two

residencies at STEIM, Amsterdam. Since 2010 he divides his time

between Canada and the UK.

 

Edward Lucas (trombone) UK

I have known the trombone since my school days, but I came to improvisation

later in life as a way of getting back into playing after a substantial break. It is

now almost exclusively what I do, and I can thank the numerous musicians I

have had the opportunity to play with. This has included groupings together

with Tom Wheatley, Daniel Thompson, Eddie Prévost, Roland Ramanan, and

James OʼSullivan, among many others. I also have a long running duo with

Slovakian analogue synthesist Daniel Kordik. Our collaboration together

extends to running the Earshots concert series and label, which we have

been developing over the past year.

 

Rachel Musson (saxophone) UK

Involved with a variety of improvisation- based projects, including a trio with

Liam Noble and Mark Sanders. Also a trio with Danish saxophonist Julie

Kjaer and cellist Hannah Marshall, and a duo with bassist Olie Brice. She is a

member of clarinetist Alex Ward’s new quintet and Eddie Prevost’s

Atmospheric Disturbance She has also written for and recorded with her own

band, Skein, which released a highly acclaimed album on F-IRE Records at

the end of 2010. She was picked by BBC Jazz on Three to perform at

Cheltenham Jazz Festival last year and has performed with a.o Alcyona Mick,

Han Bennink, Liam Noble, Gail Brand, Eddie Prevost, Olie Brice, Federico

Ughi, Mary Halvorson, John Russell, Adam Linson, Seb Rochford.

 

John Russell (guitar) UK

John Russell got his first guitar in 1965 while living in Kent and  began to play

in and around London from 1971 onwards. An early  involvement with the

emerging free improvisation scene (from 1972)  followed, seeing him play in

such places as The Little Theatre Club,  Ronnie Scottʼs, The Institute of

Contemporary Arts, The Musiciansʼ Co-Op and the London Musiciansʼ

Collective. From 1974 his work extended  into teaching, broadcasts (radio

and television) and touring in the  United Kingdom and, ever extensively, in

other countries around the world . He has played with many of the worldʼs

leading improvisers and his work can be heard on over 50 CDs. In 1981, he

founded QUAQUA, a large bank of  improvisers put together in different

combinations for specific  projects and, in 1991, he started MOPOMOSO

which has become the UKʼs  longest running concert series featuring mainly

improvised music.

 

Paul G Smyth (piano) Ireland

Paul G. Smyth (b.1976) is a musician, artist and designer, based in Dublin. A

member of 9-piece band The Jimmy Cake (described by Leagues OʼToole in

the Irish Times as “the most powerful musical force in Ireland”), Smyth is also

Irelandʼs foremost free-improvising pianist. After studying fine-art painting in

the National College of Art and Design, Smyth toured with New York free-jazz

veteran Charles Gayle, and since then has played with such luminaries as

Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, Keiji Haino, Barry Guy, John Russell and Damo

Suzuki, been a featured composer in the National Concert Hall, written music

for theatre, and performed in 17 countries. He was a founding member of the

artist-run collective The Whispering Gallery, which was set up for the

promotion of new music from both Ireland and abroad.

Other activity has included an exhibition of works on paper in Roundstone,

Connemara, and the premiere of electroacoustic work, ʻThe Dry Landʼ, at the

Sligo New Music Festival 2006 and as a member of synth trio Boys Of

Summer (“the sound of John Carpenter being buried alive” – Le Cool

Magazine)

 

Ståle Liavik Solberg (drums/percussion) Norway

Drummer and percussionist Ståle Liavik Solberg has established himself as

strong voice in the field of improvised music. The duo Motsol and other

collaborations with vocalist Stine Janvin Motland are important, but he also

works regularly with musicians like Frode Gjerstad, Joe Williamson, Fred

Lonberg-Holm, Steve Beresford, David Stackenäs, John Russell, Nils Henrik

Asheim, Per Zanussi and Martin Küchen to name a few.

He has a masters degree in improvisation from the Norwegian Academy of

Music and has a passionate interest in the combination of improvised music

in relation to other art forms, which includes being in Inbal Pinto & Avshalom

Pollak Dance Company’s “Trout”. Solberg is one of the driving forces behind

the concert series Blow Out! in Oslo, and he curates the festival of the same

name together with Paal Nilssen-Love.

 

Alex Ward (clarinet) UK

Born in 1974, composer, improviser, and performing musician Alex Wardʼs primary

instruments are clarinet and guitar.

His involvement in free improvisation dates back to 1986, when he met the

guitarist Derek Bailey. As an improviser, he was initially principally a

clarinettist, but since 2000 he has also been active as an improvising

guitarist. On both instruments, hIs longest-standing collaborations in this field

have been with the drummer Steve Noble.

From 1993 to 2001, most of his activity as a composer took place in

collaboration with Benjamin Hervé, mainly in the context of the rock band

Camp Blackfoot. From 2002-2005, his writing was mostly solitary, and

primarily focused on songs. Since 2006, he has been heavily involved in both

solo and collaborative composition, predominantly of instrumental music.

Much of his writing and performing during this time has been done with Dead

Days Beyond Help, a duo with drummer Jem Doulton. He also currently leads

a number of bands including Predicate, Forebrace, The Alex Ward Quintet /

Sextet and Alex Ward and The Dead Ends.

 

Ute Wassermann (voice) Germany

Ute Wassermann is a composer/performer, improviser and interpreter of

contemporary music. She studied at the Hamburg Academy of Fine Arts with

a,o Henning Christiansen, specialising in sound installation / vocal

performance, and studied classical singing w. Carol Plantamura (San Diego)

and Arnold van Mill (Hamburg). Since 1984 she has developed many

multivoiced vocal techniques, catalogued by register, timbre and articulational

sequences, which may be deconstructed and/or superimposed and used to

explore spatial resonance phenomena. She has also worked extensively with

various extensions of the voice including live electronics and the use of gongs

and metal coils as vocal resonators. She has given many performances of

her own solo work and works regularly with many improvising musicians, in

venues ranging from international festivals (Japan, Australia, Hongkong,

Buenos Aires) to lofts.

 

 

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