Have you become a bit of an expert at avoiding thinking about the future of our planet? This innovative collaboration between Free Range and Extinction Rebellion approaches the topic of climate anxiety through music, words and collaborative creativity. Last year’s XR/FR event ended in a joyous collective action as everyone in the space worked together to build a model of an ideal society. With a similar spirit of playfulness, this event aims to tap the creativity and community in the room to develop the resilience and radical joy that will sustain us.
Sophie Sirota is a viola player and electronic musician. With a background in classical music and film soundtracks Sophie has embraced real time audio processing in her recent compositions and is currently involved in the Coastal Electronauts synth open mic.
Maya Homburger is a violinist specialising in Baroque and New Music, having played for many years with groups conducted by John Eliot Gardiner, Trevor Pinnock and Christopher Hogwood she now concentrates on her work with smaller ensembles and the Homburger / Guy Duo.
Barry Guy also started in classical music, holding principal bass positions in major London orchestras before starting the London Jazz Composers Orchestra, the Barry Guy New Orchestra and more recently the “Blue Shroud Band” and embarking on a high-profile career as an improviser and composer.
When the two met in 1988 they began playing as a duo, juxtaposing baroque music with free improvisation and newly-commissioned pieces. In this performance you’ll hear movements from Bach’s solo violin works alongside works by Kurtág; stunning bass improvisations from Guy and his composition ”Quindecim” with texts by Samuel Beckett.
The Goodwin Sands Radiogram is an award-winning documentary podcast about the lives of people on the south east coast of Britain, presented as a pirate broadcast from an imagined ship cast aground on the infamous Goodwin Sands near Deal in Kent. This live version of the podcast focuses on stories of the sea, touching on themes of ecology, political protest, psychogeography and the shipping forecast.
Pre-recorded interviews are framed by old-school radio presentation and live improvised sound and music. Expect intimate, surprising, funny and moving insights into life by the sea.
The poet Sam Simmons and sound artist Ben Horner are turning 33 and 45 this year. Reflecting on both birthdays, this performance grew from their shared love of 33 and 45 rpm vinyl records and Bill Drummond’s book 45 (Drummond was co-founder of avant-garde pop band KLF).
Ruth Goller is a bassist, vocalist, composer, environmentalist and one of the most in-demand musicians at the moment, performing bass alongside Alabaster DePlume, Shabaka Hutchings, Bex Burch, and Damon Albarn. Though it is with her personal project SKYLLA that experience, technique, and ambition merge into her defiantly unclassifiable new album SKYLLUMINA. Open your ears and heart to the bliss of de-tuned bass alongside a trio of interweaving virtuosic vocal lines and dizzying defiant drum patterns. Join us for far-out sibilant ice-age siren songs that haunt like something conjured in a fever dream - powerful and raw - prepare to be smitten!
The opening set features & Karybdis. Skylla’s pop-up warm up act.
You are between a rock and a hard place. Between speech & song.
Now on the other path are two cliffs, one of which reaches with its sharp peak tothe broad heaven, and a dark cloud surrounds it. This never melts away, nor does clear sky ever surround that peak in summer or in harvest time. Nomortal man could scale it or set foot upon the top, not though he had twentyhands and feet; for the rock is smooth, as if it were polished. And in themidst of the cliff is a dim cave, turned to the West, toward Erebus, even whereyou shall steer your hollow ship - The Odyssey, Book XII
& Karybdis is between a band and duet between Alexis Deese-Smith and Kat Peddie.
Oren Marshall is a pioneering player of acoustic & electric tuba who has collaborated with Derek Bailey, Charlie Haden, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Moondog, Radiohead, Hermeto Pascoal, The Pan-African Orchestra & the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
For Trio Pertubando he’s joined by two giants of the Brazilian music scene, Alua Nascimento (percussion) & Jansen Santana (percussion) to play new original compositions & arrangements drawing on influences from Afro-Brazilian culture, North African rhythms & jazz.
The opening set features experimental folk cellist Francesca Ter-Berg playing new solo material for the first time.
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Through music, movement, satire, slapstick & film, ‘Lady, Garden’ explores the natural & unnatural habitats of the Lady Gardener in an immersive, improvised performance which takes its inspiration from the 'happenings' of the 1970s.
Free Women is currently a seven-strong ensemble which includes tutors & alumni of the Margate School, the University of Kent & Christ Church Canterbury & local independent artists. Between them they specialise in movement, spoken word, music & theatre. They are a diverse group of experienced performers interested in creating eclectic, thought-provoking & humorous experiences which examine the world through the female gaze.
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A vibrant, disorientating collage of projected animations, short films, live drawing, poetry, live music & sound.
Students from the Visual Communication course at the University for the Creative Arts & the Free Range Orchestra curate a teeming happening of simultaneous performances. Previous events have involved dancers, multiple projections onto moving props, rock bands, specially designed costumes, a children’s book transformed into an installation & improvised cat voiceovers.
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An aslant tour of art practices, curation, and ways in which we are encouraged to audience or might audience differently. Descend with your docent, Kat Peddie, for an event that combines elements of poetry, experimental and immersive theatre, music and visual art and art-making.
This production is brought to you by Kat Peddie (poet and text performer), in collaboration with Kate’s Bush. Kate’s Bush is a loose troupe of travelling players in the traditions of Poet’s Theatre, Peter Quince’s ‘rude mechanicals’, and folk traditions of mummers plays and pantomime.
Dr FrankenSTEIM’s monsters play crackleboxes: open circuits connected by the very flesh of the living, rendered into sound by Tim Fletcher, Peter Coyte & Sean Williams.
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Two duets featuring four generations of the UK’s best experimental & improvised creative practice.
Saxophonist & composer Rachel Musson is a vital presence on the London free improvisation scene, playing regularly at Cafe Oto with Mark Sanders, Pat Thomas, Hannah Marshall, Julie Kjaer, Corey Mwamba, Olie Brice, Alex Ward & Alex Hawkins. Described as ‘a free-improviser sensitive to melody-like narrative & dramatic pacing’ (The Guardian).
Vocal experimenter Phil Minton has been performing for 50 years, appearing on over 100 recordings. His music uses all that the human voice is capable of. ‘This is the freest of free improvisation out there…hilarious, irritating, engaging, provocative, & utterly mind-blowing. From throat singing to burping, from duck calls to indescribable vocal acrobatics…Minton's art is not only profound—it's fun, full of humour & unpretentious glee’ (All Music)
Amy Cutler is a cultural polymath working with images, film, video, texts, sounds, speech, geography, design & music. She is also a producer, lecturer, academic & museum tour guide.
Sylvia Hallet is a solo improviser who performs internationally. In 1980 she was a founding member of Contradictions, one of several all-women improvising groups inspired by the subversive Feminist Improvising Group. She sings & plays violin, viola, accordion, electronics, folk harp, hurdy gurdy, bicycle wheel & saw.
The opening set features electronic instrument maker, sound artist & performer, Cutlasses. ‘Gorgeous, personal music with a raw aesthetic’ (Create Digital Music)
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Rachel Musson
Sylvia Hallet
Cutlasses
Composer, producer, harpist & electronic musician, Bethany Ley uses the evocative space & sonic detail of granular synthesis to create environments for Kath Robert’s solo violin to breathe amongst influences as diverse as birdsong, musique concrète & Indonesian Gamelan. Taking inspiration from iconic British electronic music pioneers such as Daphne Oram & Delia Derbyshire, these pieces were made by extracting fragments from a single note’s harmonic series & unfolding them to create ‘atmospheres’ that contrast with the emotive, melodic presence of the solo violin.
Bethany Ley (piano, synth, electronics, samples), Kath Roberts (violin), Hamish Mitchinson (modular synthesis, samples)
The opening set features the noise-makers Shastik Cret Menagerie with a chaotic musical character study.
Kit Slawson (drums), Toby Slawson (saxophone), Tim Long (objects), William Burroughs (bass frequencies).
Photo credit Birte Carelse
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