Sylvia Hallett is a multi-instrumentalist and composer moving between violin, Norwegian Hardanger fiddle, saw, accordion, electronics and found objects. She currently plays solo and with The London Improvisers Orchestra and The Heliocentrics. Recent collaborators have included Clive Bell, Chris Dowding, Mike Cooper, Evan Parker, David Toop, Jah Wobble, Anna Homler, LaXula, Opera North, h2dance, Jacky Lansley, Miranda Tufnell, Eva Karczag, Wonderful Beast, and The Royal Shakespeare Company. She performs internationally as a solo improviser, having released three solo albums. In July 2015 she was commissioned by the Livio Felluga Wine Company to create and perform a solo site-specific work on a hill in an Italian vineyard. She will be playing her bowed bicycle wheel and saw with electronics for this performance.
Susanna Ferrar has been playing the violin since she was eight years old, though when she left school she didn’t touch it for about 6 years. After that the route to Free Improvisation wound through folk clubs to a workshop with Trevor Wishart in Leeds in 1971 playing with water, a cup and a sponge, in the company of others who had also been instructed to make noise but not with their accustomed instruments and later, in 1978, to meeting Tony Wren and listening to “Sparks of the Desire Magneto”. Philipp Wachsmann’s wonderful West Square meetings, the Barry Summer School, Maggie Nicols’s “Contradictions” and the invaluable community that was the London Musicians’ Collective led to early participation in the London Improvisers Orchestra, which has now been going for more than 20 years. Ferrar released one cd in 1994, “A Boy Leaves Home”, with Lol Coxhill, Sylvia Hallett and Evan Parker. Having learned “classically” at school, Ferrar is pleased to develop the practice of using scored music of different sorts and delighted with her current collaborations with Catherine Pluygers and the other musicians of this ensemble, including the artist and engineer Livia Garcia, whose moving graphic scores are particularly inspiring.
Sue Lynch currently runs ‘The Horse Improvised Music Club’ with Adam Bohman, Hutch Demouilpied and Adrian Northover. She has performed with Adam Bohman, Eddie Prevost, Nuria Andorra, Richard Sanderson, Steve Noble, Crystabel Riley, Caroline Kraabel and Sharon Gal. In 2016 she formed, ‘Paradise Yard’-an electro accoustic ensemble,featuring women improvisers,performing at Iklectik, Cafe Oto and The ICA.In 2018,she performed at 3 Klange Tag Music &Word Festival, Switzerland with Hildegard Kleeb,at Womad BBC Stage and Guess Who Festival with The Scorpios. Solo performance at Pied Nu Festival,Le Havre 2019. Recent release with FMR records with ‘Dial’,a quartet featuring, Sue Lynch, Dawid Frydyk, John Edwards and Dave Fowler.
Julia Doyle: double bass player, also plays fiddle. From a classical background, Julia started playing in London in the early 1980s with jazz (Guest Stars, Jim Dvorak’s Toot Sweet, Venus Edge…) and went on to play various world musics (Holloway Allstars, Klezmer, Brazilian, Argentinian tango, Balkan, folk dance musics generally). She also has a firm rooting in improvisation starting with John Stevens and continuing with Maggie Nicols and Cats Cradle, Ntshuks Bonga, Hugh Metcalf’s Crossed Dressed Quintet) and others.
Full info coming soon…
