Live quartet improvisation:
John Butcher – saxophone
Regan Bowering – percussion
John Edwards – double bass
Douglas Benford – tenor recorder / objects
Doors 3:30 | music 4pm | £10/£8 donation at the door
John Butcher: Born in Brighton and living in London, John Butcher is a saxophonist whose work ranges through improvisation, his own compositions, multi tracked pieces and explorations with feedback, unusual acoustics and non-concert locations. He is well known as a solo performer who attempts to engage with a sense of place. Resonant Spaces, for example, is a collection of performances recorded during a tour of unusual locations in Scotland and the Orkney Islands. Butcher originally studied Physics, but after publishing a PH.D (1982) on quantum chromodynamics he left academia and took off with music. He has since collaborated with hundreds of artists, some for many decades, including Derek Bailey, Eddie Prévost, Angharad Davies, John Stevens’ Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Okkyung Lee, Andy Moor, Sophie Agnel, Christian Marclay, Pat Thomas, Phil Minton, Rhodri Davies, Tony Buck, Magda Mayas, John Russell, Chris Corsano, Steve Beresford, Ståle Liavik Solberg and Matthew Shipp. Additionally he values occasional encounters – with large groups ranging from the WDR Sinfonieorchester (as soloist), and the 20+ piece EX Orkest to duos with Akio Suzuki, Liz Allbee, Keiji Haino, Isabelle Duthois, David Toop, Mariam Rezaei, Fred Frith and Joe McPhee. “Over 40 years of sustained performance and publishing, English saxophonist, improvisor and composer John Butcher has shaped much of what soprano and tenor saxophone can do, and what their roles and vocabulary in improvised music might be. I’ve always heard Butcher’s playing as a kind of nose-to-tail saxophony, where the whole instrument from reed-tip to brim of bell is available, accessible and articulate. Few other saxophonists slice as sharply back into the physical history, material (and physics) of the instrument, across its near 200 year history.
www.johnbutcher.org.uk
Regan Bowering is a percussionist, improviser and sound artist based in London. Her solo work explores various combinations of drums and percussion, objects, amps, speakers, and feedback. Her debut album “Solos for _ _ _ _ Spaces” (Dec 2023 on Bezirk Tapes) was described as “a play of contrasts, contradicting voluminous expressions with confined phrases, taming resounding feedback with faint percussive flutters, but one that feels driven by the desire to craft electrifying drama rather than pure autotelic dissonance.” (The Quietus). She is one third of a collaborative project with Li Song and Conal Blake, with two releases: “2 Movements” (Feedback Moves, 2024) and “Music for Snare Drums and Portable Speakers” (Infant Tree, 2023). Her debut LP “A Technology of Feeling” was released January 2026 on Infant Tree.
www.reganbowering.com
John Edwards is a true virtuoso whose staggering range of techniques and boundless musical imagination have redefined the possibility of the double bass and dramatically expanded its role, whether playing solo or with others.
Perpetually in demand, he has played with Evan Parker, Roscoe Mitchell, Sunny Murray, Derek Bailey, Joe McPhee, Lol Coxhill, Louis Moholo, Peter Brötzmann, Mulatu Astatke, Jonny Greenwood and countless others. “I think John Edwards is absolutely remarkable: there’s never been anything like him before, anywhere in jazz.” – Richard Williams, The Blue Moment
johnedwards.bandcamp.com
Douglas Benford, composer and sound artist, has been involved in various audio genres and monikers since the late 1980s, performing at institutions in the UK (Bristol’s Arnolfini, London’s Science Museum, Tate Modern, The Roundhouse, ICA and Glasgow’s CCA), festivals worldwide (Mutek, Synch, Transmediale) and has had installation work in numerous UK galleries (London, Swansea, Stroud and Essex). His pieces and performances have been aired on the radio internationally, and regularly on BBC Radio 3’s Freeness programme and the Ambrosia Rasputin show on Resonance FM. After numerous electronica releases and activity in the 90s and 2000s, he nowadays employs acoustic sources (eg tenor recorder, harmonium, toys, objects) with the London Improvisers Orchestra and Confront Recordings / Mark Wastell’s The Seen collective, as well as being a contributor to the Lonely Impulse Collective a member of the trio Small Print Drama with Tom Ward and Iris Colomb, and the Multiple Melodicas group. His collaborators include Alan Wilkinson, Dominic Lash, Blanca Regina, poets Tamar Yoseloff & Iris Colomb, Angharad Davies, Verity Lane, Clive Bell, sculptor Rob Olins, Matt Atkins, Lina Lapelyte, Marjolaine Charbin, Tilly Coulton, Sylvia Hallett, Steve Beresford, Hannah Marshall, Adam Bohman, John Edwards, Jennifer Allum and Sue Lynch.
dbenford.bandcamp.com/music
