NOTE: this performance will take place at the Colyer-Fergusson Hall, Gulbenkian Arts Centre, University of Kent on Sunday 13th October 2024 at 8.00pm. Free entry, booking required. Contact Gulbenkian box office for booking.
Stevie Wishart is an internationally established composer, violinist and hurdy-gurdy player whose current work focuses on ecology and the environment. She started her career playing with leading free jazz players in London, Berlin and New York as well as establishing the award-winning early music ensemble Sinfonye. Since then she has made music for concerts, galleries, theatre and dance with commissions from the BBC Proms, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Ensemble Variances. Her music has been used by choreographers from Pina Bausch to Wayne McGregor.
The undoubted master of the hurdy-gurdy in the UK is Stevie Wishart, who plays both traditional early music and contemporary experimental music. She says the hurdy-gurdy is like "an acoustic synth" (The Quietus)
Free Range has commissioned Stevie to write a piece for and with the Free Range Orchestra. Through collaborating with the group and individual players, Stevie will create music that combines her ecological concerns with an understanding of musical communities.
Free entry. Book your free ticket through the Gulbenkian Arts Centre box office. https://thegulbenkian.co.uk/events/stevie-wishart/
This special event is a collaboration between the Gulbenkian Arts Centre, Free Range and world-renowned Hurdy-Gurdy maker Claire Dugue.
‘Living legend’ Valentin Clastrier is considered the inventor of the modern hurdy-gurdy which, in his hands, creates a magical and virtuoso universe. His playing is full of surprises, as is his career. Originally a guitarist alongside Jacques Brel he then discovered the hurdy-gurdy and, over the years, worked with instrument makers on prototypes of electroacoustic hurdy-gurdies leading to his current 27-string instrument.
‘deep sonorous drones supporting cascades of notes and sometimes discordant swashes of sound, with electronic effects feeding the serpentine melodies and creating hauntingly powerful, sometimes intoxicating sonic spirals’.
After winning several prestigious awards and much critical acclaim, Valentin is back in England for the first time in over 20 years and we’re very happy to have him in Canterbury!
There will be two workshops for hurdy-gurdy players earlier in the day, one with Valentin Clastrier and the other with Nigel Eaton. To book a place contact Claire at mail@claire-dugue.com
Evan Parker (soprano saxophone)
‘If you've ever been tempted by free improvisation, Parker is your gateway drug’
Stewart Lee, The Guardian‘There is, still, nothing else in music - jazz or otherwise - that remotely resembles an Evan Parker solo concert’
Steve Lake‘One of the music's greatest living instrumentalists’
The Times
For over 50 years Evan Parker has been widening the scope of what is possible on a saxophone. Using techniques such as circular breathing, Parker creates complex worlds of sound with vivid, intricate detail projected into polyphonic textures that slowly evolve and grow. It’s as if Parker dismantled all musical language associated with the saxophone and stripped it back to simply air passing through a column and, from this ground zero, created something new that is simultaneously primal, modern, hypnotic, intimate, vast and microscopic.
Information about tickets and booking
We have partnered with the Gulbenkian Arts Centre for this special event.
Tickets cost £15 (£10 students) and are available here:
Click here to book tickets
Links
Valentine Clastrier Links:
Evan Parker Links: