Dau is the new ambient drone project from UK musician Phil Self. Known locally for his work with Smugglers Festival, the Isolation Choir and bands like Cocos Lovers, Will Varley and Montrose Composers Club, Phil is joined here by cellist James Gow. Dau’s debut release on Phantom Limb’s Spiritual imprint, entitled 'Zed Zed', was created entirely from acoustic instrumentation and real-time performances and has been described as ‘serenely crafted quietude [that] ripples and breathes with life, every creak of its bowed guitar as audible as the seagulls flying above Self’s flat’ (Phantom Limb).
Phil and James were joined for this performances by Chase Coley (see FR#252), playing walkie talkies, TV static and a waterphone, and Samuel D Loveless (trumpet).
Opening the evening is Tony Westcliff: famous rock star, intellectual giant of the manosphere and freelance sex therapist.
‘Tony is dry, silly, camp, sober and terrific, all at once ... He inhabits the stage with a throwaway charisma, and we're never sure if things are going to plan’ (Steven Todd)
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Dau
Dau website
👂 Zed Zed on Bandcamp
👂 The Drift by JOW (James Gow & Pete Judge) on Bandcamp
Tony Westcliff
Help Me Fake My Death on bandcamp
In advance of Earth Day (22nd April) Free Range has teamed up with Extinction Rebellion Canterbury for an experiment in art activism. Local environmental groups have been invited to work with artists from the Free Range community to try new ways of communicating their messages and values.
Award winning podcaster Ben Horner, has been working with artist and Friends of the Earth activist Amanda Thesiger on a series of interviews with environmental campaigners about their visions of a better world. This will be performed with live sound design at Free Range and the Lovely World event in Faversham on 24-25th June.
Puppeteer, theatre maker, part-time shepherdess and Feldenkrais practitioner, Kristin Fredricksson, has been working with Canterbury Repair Cafe to create puppets and theatre from objects that have come through the cafe.
Opening the evening we will hear from Esme Bone and Anna Presilia, an artist duo currently in their second year of the Fine Art Masters, 'Art, Society, Nature', at The Margate School. They work with natural materials to produce sustainable work which explores growth, decay and time.
This is a celebration of local environmental activism and adventurous culture.
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Extinction Rebellion Canterbury
website
'The Table of Consciousness' is the realisation of a recurring vision for Tom Delahunt, a nurse, poet and teacher. This is an experiment in improvisation, theatre and psychology in which five actors and two musicians gather around a table framed by representations of trust, trauma and love. With elements of music, lighting, visual art and improvised dialogue this piece speaks to the healing, pain and joy that is part of all of our lives.
Performers include Megan Garrett-Jones, Kristin Fredricksson, Ciaran Barata-Hynes , Kat Peddie, Hannah Marshall (cello) and Sam Bailey (piano).
Trust, trauma and love are central themes in Tom’s work as a nurse, teacher, author and academic. In 2019 Tom was awarded Most Innovative Teacher of the Year (Times Higher Education Awards) and in 2022 he published his first children’s book ‘The Wandering Lamb’.
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Tom Delahunt on Twitter
Megan Garrett-Jones on Instagram
Kristin Fredricksson website
Kat Peddie at Free Range
Hannah Marshall website
Sam Bailey website
The 2020 album ‘Whereness’ featured Paul Cheneour (flutes), Ansuman Biswas (tabla, percussion, waterphone, strings & flutes), Maureen Wolloshin (oboe, cor anglais) and Alistair Zaldua (violin & electronics). This album inspired the artist/filmmaker Annie Catford to make 14 quirky, playful and celebratory short films that are shown here interwoven with live improvised music and poetry from Paul Cheneour.
The first half of this evening is the debut performance of pianist Sam Bailey with drummer Corrie Dick. Sam’s creative practice spans free improvisation, music for theatre, classical music and jazz alongside site-specific work such as the year-long Piano in the Woods project.
‘Bailey’s fondness for splicing busy clusters of notes into rhythmic spaces that seem too tight for them often drove the group to a cliffhanging intensity’ The Guardian
The Mercury nominated drummer/composer/bandleader Corrie Dick has been described as,
“the perfect drummer/percussionist… colouring each piece with precision, complex rhythms/techniques and visible enjoyment” (London Jazz News).
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Whereness
Paul Cheneour website
Annie Catford Instagram
👂 Whereness on Spotify
👁 These words on YouTube
Alistair Zaldua is a composer, violinist and improviser. Alwynne Pritchard is a composer, vocalist, actor and writer. They began improvising together in Bergen while Alistair was at a residency at Alwynne’s music-theatre company Neither Nor. The restless invention and rapid musical reaction of Alistair’s amplified violin provides a counterpoint to Alwynne’s astonishing range of vocal techniques that can flit from playful to confrontational in a heartbeat.
‘a delivery between that of a rock-music diva and a verbal and physical contortionist’ (All About Jazz)
‘Pritchard explored a wide spectrum of vocal timbres through vowel shaping, varied vibrato speeds, tongue clicks, and vocal fry, all with incredible control of technique’
(I Care If You Listen)
Fresh from their London debut (at Iklectik), the quartet patternbook will play the opening set this evening. Maureen Wolloshin (oboe, cor anglais), Frances Knight (piano, accordion) Heledd Francis-Wright (flutes) and Nadia Tewfik-Bailey (violin) play improvised music with delicacy, poise and a generosity of listening.
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Alistair Zaldua
Website
👂 Postcard #2 from album remote music
👂 Postcard #1 with Trio CZW (Canterbury)
Let Spin are a post-jazz quartet who’ve been making waves in the UK and European jazz scenes since they formed in 2012. Their new release, 'Thick As Thieves', sees their fiery energy find a more organic feeling of growth and reflection through collective improvisation.
Let Spin are: guitarist Moss Freed (Union Division, Spike Orchestra), saxophonist Chris Williams (Led Bib, Sarathy Korwar), bassist Ruth Goller (Skylla, Melt Yourself Down) & drummer Finlay Panter (Beats & Pieces Big Band).
‘British Punk Jazz with a wiry electrical crackle’ Uncut
‘I'm absolutely loving this album! It's a full listening journey’ Corey Mwamba, Freeness BBC Radio 3
‘An album of energy and synergy, Let Spin again show their absolute muscle and charm’ ★★★★ Liverpool Sound and Vision
The poet David Herd will read from his recent collection 'Walk Song'. Voted a book of the year by the Australian Book Review, this work grew from the Refugee Tales project and speaks of the need for activism, solidarity and a language of welcome.
‘passionately engaged, moving towards real change, charged with the vivid strength of a collective commons’ (Blackbox Manifold magazine)
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Let Spin
Let Spin website
👂 Let Spin - Waveform Guru on Bandcamp
👁 Let Spin - Thick as Thieves trailer on YouTube
David Herd
David Herd - Walk Song
👁 David Herd reading 'Prologue' on YouTube
BL!NDMAN percussion quartet (playing Maureen Wolloshin, Sophie Stone, Joe Inkpen, Jan Foote), Patternbook, Els Van Riel & Stevie Wishart, Magz Hall & the Free Range Orchestra
Canterbury is warmed from its midwinter chill by striking presentations and performances by local, national and international sound makers, focusing on the newest of new music and sound.
and dynamic artists from the across the EU, including the Blindman percussion quartet from Brussels. An event open to all with an interest in new music and sound.
3.30pm-6.30pm
Daphne Oram building
3.30pm onwards: Student films, sound works and installations.
5pm: CCU Student Electronic Performances
5.30pm-6.30pm: The annual Daphne Oram lecture, Dr Magz Hall (room DO 0.14)
7pm-8pm
Anselm Studio 1
BL!NDMAN Percussion Quartet premiere new works by
Maureen Wolloshin, Sophie Stone, Joe Inkpen and Jan Foote.
8.15pm-10pm
St Gregory's Centre for Music
8.15pm-8.35pm: patternbook; Maureen Wolloshin, Heledd Francis-Wright, Nadia Tewfik-Bailey and Frances Knight.
8.35pm-9.30pm: Els Van Riel live projection, Stevie Wishart (hurdy gurdy)
9.30pm: Free Range Orchestra
Free entry, booking essential (see below)
Email: artsandculture@canterbury.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0) 1227 922994
A collaboration between the Gulbenkian Arts Centre and Free Range
The singer Maggie Nicols was a founding member of the Feminist Improvising Group in 1977 as well as being a key member of John Stevens' Spontaneous Music Ensemble and Keith Tippett's ambitious jazz-rock group, Centipede. For over 30 years she has run regular improvisation meetings called The Gatherings.
The Free Range Orchestra grew out of our series of events. They are a collective of musicians, dancers and poets with a shared love of improvisation and experimentation. Their performances combine the uncompromisingly anarchic with a celebration of creativity and community.
For this, the final show of our tenth anniversary year, Maggie Nicols will lead the orchestra in a series of adventurous and playful group improvisations.
Information about tickets
You are invited to pay what you decide for this performance at the Gulbenkian.
Click here to book
Links:
Maggie Nicols & the Feminist Improvising Group
Maggie Nicols singing Stormy Weather
Free Range cordially invites you to celebrate the birthday of Kat Peddie. In honour of the occasion, Kat has been writing, rewriting and performing a birthday play ever since she hit the same age as Christ. In this, her 37th year, she brings the show to Free Range.
Performed by Kate’s Bush, an experimental Poets’ Theatre company comprising Kat Peddie, Ibi Reichl & other more rotational members (including Harry the Beagle) The Birthday Party is a Pinter rip-off like no other, exploring the intricacies, meanings and ambivalences of gift economies, love languages and, of course, birthdays.
The Playtime will be supported by Give Me Merci. Give Me Merci know that learning a new language is hard but, with their radical new phrase book,they are here to help…
Party bags pending an AHRC grant application.
About Kat Peddie
‘Unsettling, vibrant and seriously moreish’ (Gareth Prior)
Kat Peddie is a poet who writes plays. Her performance work is inventive and laugh-out-loud funny, taking a satirical look at modern poetry and gender politics through a wry absurdist lens.
Kat is one half of the band Kate’s Bush. She works closely with the Free Range Orchestra and co-hosts the Range Free Variety Show & Open Mic.
Kat is also a lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Kent. Her publications include Spaces for Sappho (Oystercatcher 2016), the digital opera The Octopus (composed by Lauren Redhead, Pan y Rosas Discos 2020) and poems and photographs published in Tears in the Fence, Shearsman Magazine, Snow, Tentacular, Datableed, Golden Handcuffs Review, Litmus, Molly Bloom and Junction Box, among others.
‘[Her] poems leave spaces on the page and only the clearest of words are left as stone markers, memorials … [they are] hard-edged and personal; they are full of meetings’ (Ian Brinton)
Links:
Excerpt from Spaces for Sappho (2016)
Digital opera The Octopus (2020)
Bohemian Rhapsody by the Free Range Orchestra (2019)
A vibrant, disorientating collage of projected animations, short films, live drawing, poetry, live music and sound.
Students from the Visual Communication course at the University for the Creative Arts curate a teeming happening of simultaneous performances. Previous events have involved rock bands, specially designed costumes, members of the Free Range Orchestra, a children’s book transformed into an installation, bespoke voice overs and multiple projections.