Live quartet improvisation:
Rachel Musson – saxophone
Magda Drozd – violin
Iris Casling – double bass
Douglas Benford – recorders / objects
Doors 3.30 | music 4pm | £10 cash entry
Rachel Musson
Rachel Musson is a saxophonist, improviser and composer based in the UK. She has spent the last decade immersed in improvised music, and has also gradually been introducing composed elements into her work, drawing on text, field recordings and processing sounds. She is involved with a variety of improvisation projects, and works regularly with Mark Sanders, Pat Thomas, Hannah Marshall, Julie Kjaer, Corey Mwamba, Olie Brice, Alex Ward and Alex Hawkins, amongst others. She features on several releases, including a nonet featuring her composition ‘I Went This Way’ (577 Records), two with Shifa, feat. Pat Thomas and Mark Sanders, (577 Records), one with Mark Sanders and John Edwards (Two Rivers Records), trio with Liam Noble and Mark Sanders (Babel), and Corey Mwamba (Takuroku).
https://www.rachelmusson.com/
Magda Drozd
Magda Drozd, born in 1987 in Warsaw, is a Switzerland-based composer, violinist, and sound artist. On the label Präsens Editionen, she has released four solo music projects: Songs for Plants (LP, 2019), 18 Floors (LP, 2021), Viscera (EP, 2023), Divided by Dusk (LP, 2026). Further releases followed on Hallow Ground for their compilation Epiphanies, on Flaming Pines for the concept album Cassette Album by Salomé Voegelin, and on her own label Rivercore. Together with Nicola Genovese, she founded the duo Sopraterra, which released the LP Seven Dances to Embrace the Hollow on Präsens Editionen and La Becque Edition in 2025. She has been touring solo and with the duo around Switzerland, Europe, Japan and South Africa and played at venues and festivals as Simultan Festival Timisoara, Cave 12 Geneve, Belluard Festival Fribourg, Tobira Records JP, OtoOto Tokio, C3 Milano, Cabaret Volta Tallinn, Chiesa di Pazzo Lupi Johannesburg and many more. Drozd’s sound installations have been shown at the OTO Sound Museum, Museomontagna Turin, Shedhalle Zurich and Helmhaus Zurich, among others. She also works regularly as a composer and musician for theater, dance and radio productions, most recently at the Luzerner Theater, Schauspielhaus Zurich, Berliner Ensemble, LAC Lugano, Deutschlandfunk Kultur, with directors as Yana Ross, Tom Kühnel, Simon Waldvogel and Stefanie Ramb. As a composer, she has worked on projects with numerous other artists, such as Alice Bucknell and Veronika Spierenburg. Drozd is also active in the association Initiative Freie Musikszene Zürich and co-initiated the residency program Studio Z4 in 2023, which she co-manages. She is the founder of Rivercore, a label for experimental music, ambient, soundscapes & more.
https://praesenseditionen.
Iris Casling
Leeds-based double bassist, improviser, vocalist, and multidisciplinary artist Iris Joan Casling is an emerging force in the UK’s free improvisation and experimental music scenes. Self-described as an “improviser, double bassist, and hag,” her practice centres on somatic ritualisation—embodying physical, emotional, and ritualistic elements through free improvisation, often coloured by punk energy, noise, and raw expression. Active in Leeds and York’s vibrant underground, she performs in duos, trios, and larger ensembles, exploring extended techniques on double bass alongside vocal contributions that range from spoken word to intense screeches. Iris is a member of ONe_Orchestra New, bringing her deep, textural bass work to the group’s inclusive large-ensemble improvisations. She has collaborated with artists such as Gaia Blandina (cello), Nika Ticciati (keys/voice), Beth Veasey (drums), and others in projects spanning jazz-adjacent improv, noise-punk outfits like Bela Spit (where she also handles vocals), and supportive roles in folk/experimental recordings. Her work appears in venues like Hyde Park Book Club, Wharf Chambers, Cafe OTO (via ONe_Orchestra New), and Resonance FM broadcasts, as well as on releases including Nico Paul’s What is Lifted and Bela Spit’s spit/swallow.
https://belaspit.bandcamp.com/
Douglas Benford
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 recorders, 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 poet Iris Colomb, and the Multiple Melodicas group. His collaborators include Alan Wilkinson, Dominic Lash, Blanca Regina, poet Tamar Yoseloff, 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.
http://dbenford.bandcamp.com/
