Quartet improvisation:
Catherine Pluygers – oboe
Benedict Taylor – viola
Sue Lynch – saxophone
Douglas Benford – harmonium/objects
Doors 7.30 | music 8pm | £10 cash
Catherine Pluygers
Catherine Pluygers was born in Colchester in 1955. She studied oboe with Peter Graeme, Edwin Roxburgh and Terence McDonagh at the Royal College of Music and with Ray Still at the Banff Centre of Fine Arts, Canada. As a soloist she has toured widely in Britain with a particular interest in music for oboe and organ, contemporary music and improvised music and has premiered Sonata No 2 for Oboe and Piano by Ruth Gipps which was written for her. In 1985 she formed the New Wind Symphony Orchestra and New Wind Summer School. New Wind Symphony Orchestra gave its debut in the Queen Elizabeth Hall and worked in London and SE England until 1995. Since 1991 she has been presenting her own compositions including ‘Gloryland’ a one-woman show performed at Hull and Coventry Universities etc. and ‘The Square’ a mixed-media piece performed at the South Bank (QEH) and Hong Kong City Hall. She has also had performances on BBC Radio 4 ‘Woman’s Hour’, Almeida Festival, and in Denmark, USA, Hong Kong, Syria, India and Spain. She is currently promoting ‘Music for Solo Oboe by Women Composers’ and is touring this work at universities and festivals in the UK. In April 2005 she was the first solo oboist and the first person to present contemporary music in the April Spring Friendship Festival in Pyonyang, North Korea. In 1998 she started London New Wind Festival now in its 11th year – a small festival designed to promote contemporary music written for wind players supported by the Hinrichsen Foundation, Holst Foundation and the Performing Rights Society.
http://catherinepluygers.co.
Sue Lynch
Sue Lynch currently runs ‘The Horse Improvised Music Club’ with Adam Bohman, Hutch Demouilpied and Adrian Northover. Has performed with Adam Bohman, Eddie Prevost, Anna Homler, Richard Sanderson, Steve Noble, Crystabel Riley, Caroline Kraabel and Sharon Gal. Currently performs with the Psychedelic Afro Beat Sudanese band ‘The Scorpios’. In 2016 she formed, ‘Paradise Yard’, an electro acoustic 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, Tusk Festival and Guess Who Festival with The Scorpios. Solo performance at Pied Nu Festival, Le Havre 2019. Recent releases with FMR records with ‘Dial’, a quartet featuring, Sue Lynch, Dawid Frydyk, John Edwards and Dave Fowler and ‘Secant/Tangent’ (dxdy recordings) with Crystabel Riley and Nathan Moore.
https://suelynch.wordpress.
Benedict Taylor
Benedict Taylor is a leading figure within contemporary composition, modern string performance and improvised music in the British and European new music world. The central focus of his work is in new composition for live performance, film, theatre, contemporary dance, art installation and electro-acoustic composition. In performance, he predominantly works within improvisation, new composition and 20th/21st century music. Described as a virtuoso violist, through his performance work there is a focus on solo performance as a creative and investigative process. In 2012 he initiated an ongoing commission series and solo label Subverten (For Viola Solo). The first works premiered in autumn 2013 and continue several times each year. An award winning composer for film, theatre and television, he has composed for over 35 feature films, shorts and television/online series in both the commercial and independent sphere (Netflix, Amazon, Blumhouse, Film London, Ivanhoe) with his work showing at many leading international film festivals and theatre venues worldwide (Rotterdam Film Festival, Venice Film Festival, Berlinale, Palm Springs Film Festival, London Film Festival, Royal Court Theatre, Trafalgar Studios, Edinburgh Fringe, Southbank Centre, BFI London, NCPA Mumbai). As an improviser he has performed and recorded closely with many artists through the UK, EU, North America and Asia, including Keith Tippett, Evan Parker, Terry Day, Lauren Kinsella, Lawrence Upton, Alex Ward, Cath Roberts, Tom Jackson, Renee Baker, Paul Dunmall, Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg, Dirk Serries, Steve Beresford, Angharad Davies, Neil Luck, John Edwards, Ivor Kallin, Anton Mobin, Hannah Marshall, David Leahy, Adam de la Cour, Alison Blunt, Chris Cundy, Daniel Thompson, Kit Downes, Yves Charuest, Jost Drasler, Alexander Hawkins, Tom Challenger, Miya, Tetsu Saito, Erika Sofia Sollo, Gianni Mimmo, Stephen Crowe, Marcello Magliocchi amongst others. Notable Festival, venue and radio appearances include; Spontaneous Music Festival Poland, BBC Radio 3, Jazz en Nord Festival France, BBC Radio Late Junction, Cafe Oto, The Vortex, London Contemporary Music Festival, Tete a Tete Opera Festival, Ronnie Scott’s, Aldeburgh Festival, Galway Jazz Festival, Cantiere Internazionale d’Arte Montepulciano, Southbank Centre, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Fête de la Musique Berlin, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Manchester International Festival, Royal Court Theatre, Trafalgar Studios, Manchester Jazz Festival, Cheltenham Festival, BBC Radio 2, Resonance FM, Radio Libertaire and many others.
https://benedicttaylormusic.
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 now plays using acoustic sources (eg harmonium, toys, objects) with the London Improvisers Orchestra and Confront Recordings / Mark Wastell’s The Seen collective, as well as having been a regular contributor to the Lonely Impulse Collective. His collaborators include Alan Wilkinson, Dominic Lash, Blanca Regina, poet Tamar Yoseloff, Angharad Davies, sculptor Rob Olins, Matt Atkins, Lina Lapelyte, Marjolaine Charbin, Sylvia Hallett, Steve Beresford, Hannah Marshall, Adam Bohman, John Edwards, Jennifer Allum, Clive Bell, Emily Shapiro, Verity Lane and many others.
http://dbenford.bandcamp.com/
