Doors for this event open at 7pm. Music begins at 8pm. A wide range of refreshment are available throughout the evening from the cafe.
Free Range are proud to present veteran jazz punksters Led Bib, who are touring to promote their new album, Hotel Pupik.
‘Led Bib are back as a lean and mean four-piece for their first new album in several years. It’s a riotously melodic set, with saxophonists Chris Williams and Pete Grogan going toe-to-toe with maverick drummer/bandleader Mark Holub and wildly creative bassist Liran Donan. While they ‘continue to make the world safe for dangerous music’, the sound of the group has matured and become deeper and more melodic, incorporating influences from other cultures and weaving them into their Motorik, prog and punky DNA’ (JazzWise)
The Brothers Bula are Bexhill's greatest living musicians and are internationally renowned for their multi-faceted musical style and avant-garde anti-aesthetic. Having been brothers since Toby's birth (2003) they have spent copious hours in a shed honing their auditory craft, which manifests as a heady concoction of explosive drumming, vintage TV themes, wailing sax and joie de vivre.
Doors for this event open at 7pm. Music begins at 8pm. A wide range of refreshment are available throughout the evening from the cafe.
Bill Dixon 100 celebrates the life and legacy of trumpeter, composer, artist, educator, and political activist, Bill Dixon, in his centenary year. Resolutely determined to stay true to his artistic philosophy, resisting standard definitions of composition, timbre, and jazz, he left an indelible mark on those who received his message, especially his students at Bennington College, Vermont. In 1964, Dixon co-organised New York’s landmark avant-garde festival, October Revolution in Jazz, with equal emphasis on political panel discussion and live music. In 1967, he released his first album as leader, Intents and Purposes, “one of the classic all-time jazz albums” (Kevin Le Gendre). Dixon continued to create and inspire until his death in 2010.
Part I will be a free improvised set featuring Sam Eastmond (trumpeter), Noam Solomons-Wise (drums), Fergus Quill (bass), and Evan Parker (saxophone), who collaborated with Dixon. Part II will be a performance of Index, a composition Dixon considered one of his most significant works, performed by the Free Range Orchestra, conducted by Sam Eastmond.
Doors for this event open at 7pm. Music begins at 8pm. A wide range of refreshment are available throughout the evening from the cafe.
Gina Southgate is a visual artist well known on the international jazz and free improvisation music scene for painting live at gigs. Gina says ‘I work with the frisson of the music, observing the relationship between the musician and instrument. I try to capture the energy and essence of the gig in real time … In performance situations I use my materials and surfaces sonically’. Free Range has invited Gina to curate an evening of live painting, performance and music and she has chosen two of the most extraordinary musicians in the UK: tuba player Hanna Mbuya (Anna Meredith, Jon Batiste, Soweto Kinch, Jason Moran, Solange, Arlo Parks) and the double bassist Neil Charles (Jack DeJohnette, the Sun Ra Arkestra, Mingus Big Band, Terence Blanchard).
Doors for this event open at 7pm. Music begins at 8pm. A wide range of refreshment are available throughout the evening from the cafe.
It is time to keep your appointment with… The Wickerwork Man. The Wickerwork Man is Trudgepig Folk Theatre’s take on a cult folk horror classic. The search for a missing child leads The Sergeant on a merry dance through the remote and idyllic Mummerisle. Can the upstanding outsider resist the lure of the comely Landlord’s Daughter? What sinister secrets are the islanders hiding? And what really happens here, on May Day? Trudgepig Folk Theatre irreverently reinterpret traditional mumming plays, bringing a healthy dose of absurdism to English folk traditions. Expect masks and tatters, song and dance, and plenty of unruly audience interaction.
Melinda Bronstein is an experimental musician based in Margate. Through haphazard live looping she creates beautiful melancholy atmospheres using casiotone, found objects and 'noises & toyses', finding magic in the mundane through brooding, ethereal songs exploring loss, hope, conflict and realignment.
Doors for this event open at 7pm. Music begins at 8pm. A wide range of refreshment are available throughout the evening from the cafe.
Seaming To is a London-born composer, vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, and producer. She gained early recognition performing with the supergroups Homelife (Ninja Tune) and 808 State’s Graham Massey’s Toolshed. Her work has been performed and presented at the Queen Elizabeth Hall (Southbank Centre), the National Theatre, Tate Modern, the Barbican (London), and MoMA (New York). For this performance she is joined onstage by her young family.
‘Whatever elusive or strange thing Seaming To might be, the experience she offers you is always a thrilling one’ (The Quietus)
David Leahy is a double bassist, dancer, researcher and educator. Originally from New Zealand, David studied classical music, jazz, celtic folk and many forms of improvised dance practice before specialising in multi-disciplinary performance. His new show combines theatre, movement and music to tell the story of one of the most intimate relationships between a human and an object: between a musician and their instrument.
Doors for this event open at 7pm. Music begins at 8pm. A wide range of refreshment are available throughout the evening from the cafe.
BENCHES is a multi-format, neurodivergent-focussed collaboration between composer Samuel D Loveless and artist Tim Hart, centred around Tim’s longstanding passion for photographing benches. The project explores how fascination, repetition, and variety shape a unique and deeply personal creative practice. For this performance, Sam works with the Free Range Orchestra to create an audiovisual work that invites the audience into Tim’s artistic universe – characterised by joyful curiosity, meticulous collecting, and the artistry hidden in everyday objects.
FRØffshǒüt are an unruly offshoot of the Free Range Orchestra featuring theremin, bass, drums and saxophones.
Doors for this event open at 7pm. Music begins at 8pm. A wide range of refreshment are available throughout the evening from the cafe.
Composer, producer and sound designer Matthew Wright introduces his new project Cracked Glaze, including a Q&A with the composer and an immersive playback of the 46-minute album, released in May on CD/digital by False Walls (Faversham). Cracked Glaze was performed by vocalist Sofia Jernberg, Ensemble Klang (Netherlands) and Wright’s improv/electronic group Spheric Totemic. The piece is built around a ‘spine’ of one long, descending scale, which is combined with other notation and improvisation.
‘this whole recording is rare and wonderful … the joy of hearing great improvisors at the top of their game, a murderers’ row new music ensemble, and a near flawless recorded document’ (Nate Wooley)
Sam Bailey’s Unruly Trio is a new project featuring bassist David Leahy and clarinetist Tom Jackson. Using earlier styles of jazz as starting points, they find ways of tearing the music apart before patching it back up again.
Doors for this event open at 7pm. Music begins at 8pm. A wide range of refreshment are available throughout the evening from the cafe.
Since the first Feral Choir about 35 years ago, singer and vocal experimenter Phil Minton, has led them in Japan, Brazil, France, Belgium, Germany, United States, Netherlands and Poland. Using the full range of sounds that the human voice is capable of, a Feral Choir is formed just a few days before each performance. If you are interested in exploring the totality of your voice, get in touch. Participation is free, no previous experience is necessary.
Leon Michener is a London-born pianist whose music spans recordings of 20th-century classical music through to free jazz. For this performance, he will be playing on an amplified portable Clavichord, prepared with found objects, which has also been “hacked” to include a custom-assembled electro-acoustic-mechanical percussion instrument in its lid.
Email sam@freerangecanterbury.org if you’re interested.
Feedback from previous Feral Choir participants:
“You have let the sun enter into my head”
“After singing with the feral choir I felt elated and alive. My voice felt bigger afterwards, and I find myself still appreciating how much it can do.”
In May 2013 a piano was left outdoors in private woodland near Canterbury, UK. Each month for a year Sam Bailey played the piano, improvising in response to the instrument’s changing state. A community of audience members and artists grew around the project and by the end of the year over 50 different musicians, dancers, poets, filmmakers and photographers had taken part.
This performance launches a beautiful new book of photographs and poetry from the Piano in the Woods project and a newly edited, mixed and mastered CD; both perfect Christmas gifts!
Nostalgia, beauty, community, growth and decay are all explored as the story of the project is told through music, spoken word, photography and 16mm film including the remains of the original Piano in the Woods.
Doors for this event open at 7pm. The events begins at 8pm. A wide range of refreshment are available throughout the evening from the cafe.
Rage through the Ages is the new show from Free Women exploring rage, and revolt.
Through their characteristic mix of words, music, theatre and humour, they are turning up the heat on the burning issues of the day. Beware, your blood may boil….
Bloody Men are an electronic music duo specialising in occult improvisation.
Doors for this event open at 7pm. The events begins at 8pm. A wide range of refreshment are available throughout the evening from the cafe.