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).
🔗
Whereness
Paul Cheneour website
Annie Catford Instagram
👂 Whereness on Spotify
👁 These words on YouTube
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)
🔗
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
A concert of two sets each led by distinctive composer/performers who co-run a new group called Free Women. Each Free Range season will include an event curated by Free Women.
Maureen Wolloshin & Khabat Abas
Anna Braithwaite with Phil Self & Samuel D Loveless
Anna Braithwaite, Maureen Wolloshin, Heledd Francis Wright, Nadia Louise Tewfik Bailey and Frances Knight
Composer, singer and performance artist, Anna Braithwaite, multi-instrumentalist Phil Self, and vocalist and trumpeter Samuel D. Loveless bring their project ‘Sirens of the Deep’ to Free Range. Originally conceived as a sight-specific performance on the deck of a Cold War submarine floating in the Medway, Sirens has been described as a ‘post-digital musical ritual designed to reconnect a fractured society’ and was a commission for the Electric Medway festival in August 2022.
Improviser, researcher and oboist, Maureen Wolloshin will be playing as a duo with the Kurdish-Iraqi cellist, improviser and composer, Khabat Abas.
The night will begin with a performance from a new, all women ensemble featuring Anna Braithwaite, Maureen Wolloshin, Heledd Francis Wright, Nadia Louise Tewfik Bailey and Frances Knight
About the musicians
Anna is a composer, singer and performance artist. She builds her unique, site-specific compositions in close dialogue with people and places, foregrounding the weird and theatrical concealed within the everyday.
She is a regular performer at Free Range, most recently as part of the Moonseed Collective (FR#220) and earlier, reacting to the Feminist Improvising Group’s recording from the album Another Evening at Logos 1974 79 81 with Sylvia Hallett and Gemma Storr (FR#169)
Khabat’s practice is based on sound and memory. It reflects on the socio-political, from a feminist perspective, in the war zone. Khabat builds cellos from different materials. These include a cello made from a bombshell found in her home city of Sulaymaniyah in Iraq. Alongside improvising and instrument-making her creative practice often incorporates sound installation and videography.
Maureen’s music extends the sonic range of the oboe and cor anglais. She recently commissioned a new instrument (from musician and inventor Henry Dagg) called the Gliss Anglais. Her compositions explore connections between graphic notation, touch, and sound and are presented as a sonic painting for the performer to navigate.
Phil divides his time between singing groups and community choirs, and regular gigging, composing and touring work with groups Yndi Halda, Will Varley, Molly’s Lips, Cocos Lovers and The Hellfire Orchestra. He is a member of The Montrose Composers Club.
Samuel is also a member of the Montrose Composers Club, as well as being a composer, vocalist, performance artist and trumpeter. His composition covers a range of genres challenging the traditional approach to composition, exploring the relationship between performer, space and audience, with accessibility and inclusivity being central to his work.
Links:
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:
During lockdown the Spanish trumpeter Daniel Cano recorded a blistering duo album with the great jazz drummer Doug Sides (who has played with jazz icons such as Lionel Hampton, Chick Corea, Benny Golson and Hank Jones amongst many, many others).
Stripped right back to just rhythmic textures and a strong melodic line, the duo launched the album, Duplexity, at Ronnie Scott’s jazz club in London.
Duplexity is a fine showcase for the evidently strong relationship between a trumpeter whose warm, bright open tone evokes the hard-bop masters of the ’50s and ’60s and a drummer with a light touch and a supple sense of swing. Restricted means, in terms of instrumentation, but the result is a rich experience with no sense of austerity — or of overplaying to fill the spaces. (Richard Williams)
Lumpen Nobleman will DJ before and after Daniel and Doug's set.
Lumpen Nobleman is an alias of Extra Normal label boss and Contra Pop Festival organiser Kyle McCallum. As well as organising what has since 2015 been one of the musical highlights of the summer, LN broadcasts excellent, eclectic shows monthly on Repeater, Tak Tent and Margate Radio.
Listen to Lumpen Nobleman's excellent 2020 Errors and Remedies EP - with remixes by Helena Celle, Don’t DJ, Mariam Rezaei (who knocked us out at Contrapop in August) and more, here: extranormalrecords.bandcamp.com/album/errors-and-remedies
Links:
Daniel Cano website
Doug Sides website
Lockdown sessions: Ronnie Scott's presents Duplexity 15/04/2021
February Live At Free Range. Work8hop Jazz feat. Daniel Cano and Frances Knight. Composed by Matt Miles
Extranormal Records website
“Dance to it, make love to it, stare at the clouds to it” - Iggy Pop
Formed by Bex Burch in 2015, Vula Viel’s music has shifted over the course of their three critically acclaimed albums, from Afro jazz-tinged adaptations of traditional Dagaare music towards a unique sound rooted in post punk.
Placing Bex's rawly delivered gyil (Ghanian xylophone) rhythms as the central element, the band’s scything rock dynamics have seen them championed by Iggy Pop. Bassist Ruth Goller (Skylla, Acoustic Ladyland, Melt Yourself Down) and drummer Jim Hart (Cloudmakers Trio) complete the line-up. They have gained further plaudits for their pulsating live shows at venues such as Café OTO and Total Refreshment Centre.
The trio are joined by NYC legend Peter Zummo. In addition to performing his own compositions and leading his own ensembles, he has worked with myriad bands, orchestras, composers and musicians.
Peter's celebrated trombone style is one of the most beloved features of Arthur Russell's sound, with whom he played and collaborated with in the recording studio.
★ ★ ★ ★ Evening Standard
★ ★ ★ ★ Jazzwise
★ ★ ★ ★ Financial Times
★ ★ ★ ★ Songlines
The Free Range Orchestra will be playing the opening set to launch their new album, Connections, recorded live with saxophonist Evan Parker in July 2021.
Links
Vula Viel website
Peter Zummo website
#5 Go Bang (Dinosaur L, produced by Arthur Russell, feat Peter Zummo)
Arthur Russell - In The Light of The Miracle (featuring Peter Zummo)
We finish our Spring season with a performance of Mendelssohn’s violin concerto like you’ve never heard it before.
The celebrated classical soloist, Chihiro Ono, will play the solo violin part completely straight, while an orchestra of improvising musicians, dancers and poets interpret Mendelssohn’s score with theremin, live electronics, oboe, flute, saxophones, trumpet, pianos, viola, violins, double bass, voices, guitars, bass clarinet, cutlery, musical saw and tap dancing.
Following on from their performance of the Beethoven violin concerto for BBC Radio 3, experimental music groups Squib-box and ARCO and the soloist Chihiro Ono join forces with the Free Range Orchestra for this extraordinary performance of this perennial classic.
The concert also features smaller sets by members of ARCO and Squib.
chihiroono.com Chihiro Ono (violin soloist)
neilluck.com Neil Luck (conductor?!)
squib-box.com/2018/05/baggage-beethoven-violin-concerto Beethoven violin concerto
bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05zshht Beethoven violin concerto
Since 2015, Refugee Tales has organised large scale walks in solidarity with refugees, asylum seekers and people who have been held in immigration detention. On each night of the walks the stories of these people are told, often in collaboration with major writers such as Ali Smith or Abdulrazak Gurnah.
Tonight Dragan Todorovic reads ‘The Migrant’s Tale’ in which the story of someone fleeing Syria is interspersed with a reimagining of ‘The Man of Law’s Tale’ from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. The theatre maker, puppeteer and Feldenkrais practitioner, Kristin Fredricksson, experiments with elements of puppetry, light, gesture and music to connect with ancient storytelling traditions that often took the form of semi-improvised multimedia performances.
refugeetales.org
kent.ac.uk/english/people/117/todorovic-dragan
kristinfredricksson.com