Two duos and a quartet
David Birchall – banjo & acoustic guitar
Phil Durrant – mandolin & octave mandola
Fran Comyn – percussion
Khabat Abas – ‘cello
Doors 3.30 | music 4pm | £8 cash
David Birchall
David Birchall is a performer living in Manchester. He has played improvised music in the UK, Europe, Russia, Palestine, USA & Japan and undertaken artist residencies at The Penthouse (Manchester, UK) and Beppu Project (Beppu, JP). His work has been broadcast on BBC Radio 1, BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 6 Music & SWR in Germany. He organises and co-curators the Curious Ear series for improvised music in Manchester.
Francis Comyn
Francis Comyn is an improviser and percussionist based in the north of England. He has performed and recorded solo and in a number of group and collaborative projects based in London, Manchester and Sheffield including works featured on BBC Radio 3 and WFMU.
Phil Durrant
Born near London in 1957, Phil Durrant is a multi-instrumentalist improviser/composer/sound artist who currently performs solo and group concerts.
As a violinist (and member of the Butcher/Russell/Durrant trio), he was one of the key exponents of the “group voice approach” style of improvised music. In the late 90s, his trio with Radu Malfatti and Thomas Lehn represented a shift to a more “reductionist” approach.
As a mandolinist, he has been performing duos with guitarists Martin Vishnick, and Daniel Thompson. He also performs in trios with Maggie Nicols and Emil Karlsen as well as Olie Brice and Andrew Lysle.
Durrant still performs regularly with the acoustic/electronic group Trio Sowari (with Bertrand Denzler and Burkhard Beins) and Mark Wastell’s The SEEN as well as the international electronic ensemble MIMEO with Keith Rowe, Kaff Matthews, Thomas Lehn a.o.
Durrant was one of the musicians extensively interviewed for ‘The Practice of Musical Improvisation: Dialogues with Contemporary Musical Improvisers’, edited by Bertrand Denzler and Jean-Luc Guinnet and published by Bloomsbury.
philsowaridurrant + sowarimodular
Khabat Abas
Khabat Abas is an experimental cellist, improviser, and composer born in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq. She moves freely between artistic disciples and possibilities. Her work has been inspired by noise, improvisation, classical music, contemporary music and narrative story. Embodiment, materiality and sound research are tangible in Khabat’s work which began with the acoustic cello, prepared cello, and recently with adapted cello. In her practice, she questions what is out of the bounds that raise the possibilities. Therefore, she considers herself a rule-breaker, focusing on the cello, making the instrument into a different material, improvising, composing and producing sound installations, and being interested in making videos.
Abas has performed with various ensembles, including the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra, Sulaymaniyah string orchestra, Gothenburg Academic Symphony Orchestra and the Non-Ensemble for experimental music in Sweden. She has also collaborated with curators, artists and musicians in Kurdistan-Iraq, Sweden, Germany and the UK. Aba’s last piece for electro-acoustic cello was performed in Slemani-Kurdistan as a part of the Global Listening Biennial 2021. She also performed during the Space21 festival in Iraq Kurdistan 2021, Winter sound festival in Canterbury 2022 and the Borderline Festival Athens 2022. She is co-founder of Duo Moment; together with Hardi Kurda, they released two albums, “Broken Resonance” on Space21 Label and “Illegal Performance” at Café Oto 2021; she also did a video for her Bombshell cello. She has been awarded a grant from Salam culture house in Iraqi Kurdistan and the Swedish art council community (konstnärsnämndens).
khabatabas.com
