The Leon String Quartet play at festivals and concert series across the UK with recent performances including quartets by Haydn, Schubert and Prokofiev. They actively promote new music, premiering works by local and international composers and collaborating with songwriters, artists and poets.
The Workshop Jazz Collective was formed by saxophonist Matt Miles to provide a platform for collaboration and experimentation. Some of the region’s best jazz performer-composers meet regularly to workshop each other’s pieces and develop personal approaches to writing for a chamber jazz orchestra.
This performance features premieres of several new pieces combining both groups.
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.
Ensemble Nist-Nah is an eight-piece Gamelan/percussion group led by Nantes-based Australian drummer Will Guthrie who take traditional Indonesian music in adventurous new directions. From the stately suspended temporality of the Javanese Gamelan Sekatan, to the delirious, thuggish repetition of the Javanese trance ritual Jathilan, to the shimmering acoustic glitch of contemporary Balinese composer Dewa Alit, Guthrie pays tribute to this sophisticated yet elemental percussion music whilst drawing on Roscoe Mitchell’s percussion works, Henry Threadgill’s multi-directional improvisatory music, as well as cross-cultural adventures from the likes of Trevor Watts, Michael Ranta and Mike Cooper.
[An] astounding debut from Ensemble Nist-Nah, a percussion group that uses drum kits, junk percussion and a complete set of Javanese gamelan instruments to produce sounds that absorb folk, jazz, noise and elements of contemporary composition … it sounds like "On the Corner"-era Miles Davis re-imagining latter-day Autechre via Antony Manning's foundational "Islets in Pink Polypropylene” (Boomkat)
NOTE: this event takes place in the Colyer-Fergusson Hall at the Gulbenkian Arts Centre on Tuesday 18th November at 7.30pm. Tickets cost £5 and can be purchased through the Gulbenkian box office. For more info visit: thegulbenkian.co.uk/events/ensemble-nist-nah/
Fran & Flora (Francesca Ter-Berg (cello) and Flora Curzon (violin)) have rapidly established themselves in folk, avant-garde and pop music circles with their distinctive improvisatory style and ethereal aesthetic. The duo draws its material directly from archival recordings, recovered manuscripts and study with traditional music masters.
time-travels brilliantly between solid folk origins and avant garde play with a surprise at every corner … as experimental as it is accessible (The Guardian)
Balladeste (Tara Franks (cello) and Preetha Narayanan (violin)) have crafted a distinctive musical language that seamlessly weaves together contemporary classical, Indian, baroque, and folk traditions. Ambient, soulful, and full of quiet power, Balladeste's live shows are as emotionally resonant as they are musically adventurous, as Free Range audiences will know from their extraordinary performance in 2023 with the poet Kelvin Corcoran.
music that can radiate suspense but at the same time is warm and intimate (Songlines)
Advance tickets/reserve your place: https://buytickets.at/freerange/1885922
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.
SiTron (Sinfonietta of Trondheim) is an internationally established Norwegian chamber ensemble specializing in contemporary music. Their highly skilled performers are proficient with both notation and improvisation. They come to Free Range after two nights at Cafe Oto in London, collaborating with the composer Michael Pisaro-Liu and the double bassist Michel Duch. They’ll be playing a mix of contemporary works by Norwegian based composers with a programme which includes Therese Ulvo (Curious Endorsement), Ellen Lindquist (Earth), Klaus Holm (Tipping Point) and Julius Eastman (Joy Boy).
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.
I think it was a feeling is a performance experiment about self voyeurism, shame and sensation. It’s also about pissing yourself: what it feels like when you can’t control it, and when you can. Elana will instruct you until you’re hyper aware of your body + bodies around you. You’ll be taught how to rub your fingers together, swallow + hide a wet patch. I think it was a feeling is brash, noisy + tender. It asks you to let go of control—because maybe pissing yourself actually feels good.
Writer and performer, Elana Binysh, will be experimenting live on stage with sound designer Naycha Somko.
Bill Hawkes has played viola and violin with Michael Nyman, the Balanescu String Quartet, the Nigel Kennedy String Quartet, Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush. In this solo set he plays a piece written for him by the composer Gavin Bryars and his own arrangement of Pink Moon by Nick Drake.
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.
Right Here, Right Now is a stunning free jazz quartet led by the prodigiously gifted trumpeter Charlotte Keeffe aided by Ashley Long (double bass), Ben Handysides (drums) and Moss Freed (guitar).
The radical spirit of offhand precarity which radiates throughout this session frequently bubbles over into an effervescent sense of the imperative to explore. In a word? Fearless. (PRESTO MUSIC)
A messy emporium of raw, raucous realness. Alive. Keeffe and her quartet nailed it. (FREE JAZZ BLOG)
Nutters Corner are a vaguely groove based improvising duo comprising Nick Wyver on various saxophones and Les Wilson on drums. They formed the duo during the second lockdown, taking advantage of the "support bubble" idea at that time because "our bands couldn't play, and we saw this an opportunity to learn about improvising together and see what was possible - also to explore ideas that could not happen in our respective bands.
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.
Peter Manson lives in Glasgow. His books include Poems of Frank Rupture, Adjunct: an Undigest and Between Cup and Lip, and his translations include Stéphane Mallarmé: The Poems in Verse. His most recent booklets are a collaboration with Mendoza, WINDSUCKERS & ONSETTERS: SONNOTS for Griffiths, and a solo pamphlet, self-avoiding space-filling curve. For more info, and samples, visit petermanson.wordpress.com
Rachel Musson is a saxophonist, composer and improviser renowned for her bold, fluid playing. She is currently a recipient of the prestigious Paul Hamlyn Composer award. Recent recordings include I Went This Way (577 Records) for 9-piece improvising ensemble including speech and various trio albums with Mark Sanders, Pat Thomas and John Edwards (577 Records).
'A free-improviser sensitive to melody-like narrative and dramatic pacing'. (John Fordham, The Guardian)
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.
We invite YOU to bring US your GLUTS (from allotments, gardens, orchard walks, foragings, even fridges...) and your GUTS (bellies to feed, lungs to sing, hearts to quake, stories and butts to shake). We will cook up a storm, sup and break bread together. What happens if we put care and community at the centre of our climate crisis response? What small, creative acts of repair can we enact locally and daily? What does food security mean and how do we support its emergence? We will harvest thoughts and dreams this evening; Cinderbiter lies near the embers of the communal fire for eons, dreaming and waiting for her moment to wake up. The time is now and we are here to call her into action.
Warning: may contain nuts, puppetry, organ(ic) hymns, foraged fables, humming and mumming. Curated by performance maker, Kristin Fredricksson.
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.
Safe Operating Space is about the beauty of unrepeatable moments. Composer, electronic musician, improviser and field recordist Tullis Rennie with mixes recorded and live music with the extraordinary line-up of Tara Franks (cello), Cath Roberts (baritone sax) and Dee Byrne (alto sax).
Their recent self titled album explores new aspects of Rennie’s practice while reflecting thoughts on themes such as global heating, AI-generated deepfakes, family life, and Kate Bush. Working live with the album as a departure point, the ensemble play alongside, against and around fragments of the recordings, Rennie using analogue drum machines and synthesisers.
"Blending string improvisations and outré brass with expertly deployed electronics and samples...equal parts tender and affronting, slaloming gracefully around conventional approaches to rhythm, melody and harmony with a lexicon that’s unmistakably his own" – Electronic Sound
"Free improv sessions get warped into booming, boundary-pushing electronica... as if we were listening to an intergalactic visitor’s attempt at appropriating the dancefloor" – the Quietus
Listen here: https://efpirecords.bandcamp.com/album/safe-operating-space
Doors for this event open at 7pm. Music begins at 8pm. A wide range of refreshment are available throughout the evening from the cafe.
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.