Treeline is a creative musical project connecting communities across Europe to their environments, trees and forests. Composer Graham Fitkin is cycling 2500 miles, working with communities to collect data and record trees from old growth forests from Carpathian Mountains to Epping Forest.

In this performance Graham will play some excerpts from the piece, explain the technology and talk about how he records trees and uses their sounds within the music.

This is a co-promotion with the The Gulbenkian.

Treeline will take place from 6-7pm at Fruitworks, CT1 2NP on Monday 20th July. Entry is free but booking is essential via: 🎫thegulbenkian.co.uk/events/treeline/

There is an introduction to the project: 🎥 youtube.com/watch?v=ZZDIHpmXcPk&t=51s

A cult 70’s sci-fi novel set in a post-apocalyptic East Kent is used to bring together hoddening, puppetry, foraging and primitive music. This unique event is part of an exploration of the possibility of a stage adaptation of Russell Hoban's novel, Riddley Walker. The theatre maker Greg McClaren is collaborating with a community of artists to create a daytime walk (more details of this announced on social media) and an evening event.

We can't tell you anymore because we don't know what this one will it be until it happens! It may involve reimagining culture after a collapse and it will involve Sarah Trillo (artist), Kristin Fredricksson (puppetry, movement), Kat Peddie (text), Thomas Gavriel (Seadog books), Billie M Vigne (artist, metalsmith), Miles Irving (forager), Tim Fletcher (hoodener, archivist).

Doors for this event open at 7pm. Music begins at 8pm. A wide range of refreshment are available throughout the evening from the cafe. 

Steered by William Burroughs, The Faversham Motorway Intersection Enthusiasts Club is an ongoing multimedia rhythm band formed in 2018. Rooted in repetition, the act draws from the rhythms of both motorway travel and dance music, finding a shared pulse between mechanical monotony and the endless flow of traffic.

Through live performance and visual extensions, it examines the overlooked mundanity, the rigid structures of concrete landscapes, and the spaces in between. The band has taken on various forms over the years, shifting and evolving while always maintaining a sense of curiosity. The club invites listeners and viewers to engage with their surroundings in new ways, encouraging a practice of contemplation, questioning, and interaction with the familiar yet unnoticed.

Casbah is a film that attempts to reconstruct – from memory – an experimental film noir monster movie that was never made.

Doors for this event open at 7pm. Music begins at 8pm. A wide range of refreshment are available throughout the evening from the cafe. 

Matt Wright’s ‘Spheric Totemic’ brings DJ culture and free improv together with splintered beats and immersive sound design. with Alexander Hawkins (keyboards), Neil Charles (bass), Mandhira de Saram (violin/fx), Stephen Davis (drums) and Matt Wright (turntables and live sampling).

Spheric Totemic is the project of Matt Wright a composer, producer and sound designer based in Kent, UK. is diverse output across improvised music, chamber composition and collaborations with dance, theatre and film.

He has collaborated with some of the most dynamic artists in the contemporary sphere, including Evan Parker, Peter Evans, Ikue Mori, Claron McFadden, B’Rock Orchestra, Spring Heel Jack, Ensemble Klang, Neil Charles, Alexander Hawkins and Elaine Mitchener. 

Preview: https://www.matt-wright.co.uk/spheric-totemic

Doors for this event open at 7pm. Music begins at 8pm. A wide range of refreshment are available throughout the evening from the cafe. 

When you’ve lived such a rich musical life as 80-year old saxophone legend Evan Parker the stories pour out. But what happens if you blur the boundary between anecdote and musical improvisation?

Evan Parker and Matthew Wright (Trance Map) join forces with long-time collaborator and sonic storyteller Filipe Gomes. Evan and Matt have recently released ‘Transatlantic Trance Map’ with False Walls and ‘Horizons Held Close’ with Relative Pitch. Evan and Filipe (Arco Barco, Ramsgate Radio) have recently collaborated on Daniel Blumberg’s Oscar-winning score for the hit film The Brutalist.

Doors for this event open at 7pm. Music begins at 8pm. A wide range of refreshment are available throughout the evening from the cafe. 

Doors for this event open at 7pm. Music begins at 8pm. A wide range of refreshment are available throughout the evening from the cafe. 

Wintersound is a festival of new music involving Canterbury Christ Church University, North Western University (Illinois) and Free Range.

The Six Tones combine traditional Vietnamese instruments and musical traditions with experimental Western music. Way back in 2015 this extraordinary trio gave a memorable performance inside glass boxes at a Free Range event in the Sidney Cooper Gallery. The Six Tones are Nguyễn Thanh Thủy (who plays đàn tranh) and Ngô Trà My (who plays đàn bầu) and the Swedish guitarist Stefan Östersjö.

For this special Free Range performance, we present two members of the group: Nguyễn Thanh Thủy and Stefan Österjö.

Wintersound continues on 17/01/25 with a series of talks and performances addressing the topic of ‘Musical glocalities and their influence: sound, geography, community’. Events are free but booking is required.

More info on WinterSound here: www.canterbury.ac.uk/events/2024/wintersound-2025

Doors for this event open at 7pm. Music begins at 8pm. A wide range of refreshment are available throughout the evening from the cafe. 

unterholz (‘undergrowth’) is an innovative audiovisual performance by German artist, composer and cellist Marcus Kaiser featuring members of the Free Range Orchestra. Based on an immersive projection of a camera moving slowly forwards through jungle undergrowth, the piece overlays audio and video from past performances. This becomes a visual analogy for the exploratory, organic growth of a semi-improvised piece as it is performed repeatedly in different places, with different people and different durations, accumulating meaning and identity with each iteration. Unterholz has been performed 23 times since its premiere in 2006, in Austria, Dusseldorf, Munich, Berlin, Ljubjana, and Tianjin (China) among other places. Discover more.

Sophie Stone's syntheses, initially composed for organ(s) and commissioned for the Amsterdam Wandelweiser Festival in 2022, has been especially adapted for the Free Range Orchestra who will premiere a new version of the piece for ensemble. syntheses captures Stone’s unique approach to notation which reflects both freedom and constraint of musical parameters. Players find and create their own paths through the notation to create a quiet unfolding soundscape.

This performance has been made possible by UCA Surrey galleries and the here.here concert series. This event is part of Being Human Festival, the UK’s national festival of the humanities, taking place 7–16 November 2024. Led by the School of Advanced Study, University of London, with generous support from Research England, in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy. For further information please see beinghumanfestival.org.

Blanc Sceol (Stephen Shiell & Hannah White) will be performing their piece ‘Kinetic Resonance’ on a new instrument called the Orbit they designed and made in collaboration with local luthier Kai Tönjes. Inspired by the work of Walter Smetak and an instrument called a torre (tower) made by his students in the Brazilian band Uakti, the Orbit is a ten-sided instrument played by two musicians. The body is spun by one performer while the other holds a bow to ten rotating strings, creating trance-inducing drones and ethereal harmonics. Blanc Sceol are an artist duo who work in the expanded field of listening, sound, and performance.

Learn about the instrument: www.blancsceol.co.uk/Orbit-the-instrument

The opening set features the violinist and producer Agathe Max.

‘With an elegant command of melody and a strident use of rhythm, Max … bridges the gaps between minimalism, post-classicism, the avant garde, krautrock, and plain old-fashioned pop’ (Boomkat)