Live quartet improvisation:
Clive Bell – shakuhachi + more
Emily Shapiro – bass clarinet
N. O. Moore – guitar
Douglas Benford – harmonium/objects
Doors 3.30 | music 4pm | £8/£10 cash at the door
Clive Bell is a musician, composer and writer with a specialist interest in the shakuhachi, khene (Thai mouth organ) and other East Asian wind instruments. He has travelled extensively in Japan (where he studied shakuhachi with the master Kohachiro Miyata), Thailand, Laos and Bali, researching music and meeting local practitioners. He currently tours with UK-based Japanese drumming group Taiko Meantime, and joins koto and shamisen players to perform the Japanese classical repertoire. He toured for over a decade with Jah Wobble, including shows at Ronnie Scott’s and the Glastonbury Festival. Clive is the shakuhachi player on Karl Jenkins’s album Requiem on EMI Classics, the final two Harry Potter movies, and the Hobbit. His shakuhachi playing has been featured live on Radio 3’s Late Junction and In Tune. In 2013 at the BFI, Sylvia Hallett and Clive Bell performed a live soundtrack for Walk Cheerfully, Yasujiro Ozu’s 1930 comedy gangster movie. Clive Bell has a substantial recording history as both a solo artist (his solo album, Shakuhachi: The Japanese Flute was reissued in 2005 by ARC Records) and as a composer for film, TV and theatrical productions (Complicite, Kazuko Hohki, IOU, Whalley Range Allstars). Jazz pianist Taeko Kunishima, Jaki Liebezeit, David Sylvian, David Toop, Jochen Irmler of Faust and Bill Laswell number among Clive Bell’s collaborators. Based in London, he writes regularly for the music monthly The Wire. Listen on soundcloud.com/clivebell / an-account-of-my-hut / fragrant-duos
Emily Suzanne Shapiro is a bass clarinetist and clarinetist dedicated to exploring and creating new music. Originally from Canada, Emily pursued her studies at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver Academy of Music, Concordia University and the Domaine Forget academy. Emily has a special love for the sound and scope of bass instruments and constantly pushes the limits of what she can do on bass clarinet. Alongside performing contemporary music on bass clarinet, Emily is involved in many other musical endeavours. Composing and improvising are central to her career, and she has been an active performer of Balinese gamelan for 10 years and has also explored jazz, klezmer, rock and electroacoustics. She is always seeking out new artistic experiences to enrich and motivate her work. She is a proud member of Duo Arasari, the London Improviser’s Orchestra, the Corner Quartet and Lila Cita and has performed all over London, including iklectik, Café Oto, Hundred Years Gallery, LSO St Luke’s, the Vaults festival, the Barbican and many more. She founded and curates the Mellifera arts platform, a monthly interdisciplinary arts performance event and the Lonely Impulse Collective, and online daily solo improvised music project. Outside of music, Emily loves gardening, running, whisky and making friends with animals. Listen here : emilysuzanneshapiro.bandcamp / lonelyimpulsecollective
N.O. Moore is an electric guitarist with a parallel interest in electronics and drum machines. As an improviser, he has played with people such as Eddie Prévost, John Butcher, Rachel Musson, John Edwards, Sue Lynch, Alan Wilkinson, Steve Noble, and Steve Beresford. He can now be heard on a number of recordings, including Nous (with Prévost and Jason Yarde) on Matchless, and The Secret Handshake with Danger (with Henry Kaiser, Binker Golding, Olie Brice, and Prévost) on 577. He has recently launched the DXDY Recordings label to present improvised and electronic musics. Moore is interested in the relationship between automation and autonomy, and how this affords fabrications of human sensibility and affect. His first album of purely electronic music will be released by Orbit577 later in 2021.
‘Moore shifts fluidly from argumentatively fractured jazz licks to spacey atmospherics to mad cat hisses; the appositeness of his contributions belies the sparseness of his recorded discography’ The Wire (Bill Meyer)
‘Moore unpacks an impressive bag of tricks.’ Jazzwise (Daniel Spicer)
‘Guitarist N.O. Moore would likely attract some attention in any fit company, for he brings a highly personal conception to an instrument often sullied by redundancy.’ Freejazzblog (Stuart Broomer)
dxdyrecordings.com
Douglas Benford, composer and sound artist, has been involved in various audio genres 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). After numerous electronica releases in his ‘si-cut.db’ guise, in the past decade he has focused on acoustic improvisation and installations, using field recordings, classical instruments, vocals and children’s toys. As well as playing with the London Improvisers Orchestra and Confront Recordings / Mark Wastell’s The Seen collective, his regular collaborators include Blanca Regina, poet Tamar Yoseloff, Angharad Davies, Lina Lapelyte, Clive Bell, Steve Beresford, Sue Lynch, Adam Bohman, Jem Finer, sculptor Rob Olins, as well as – in the past – pop group Saint Etienne, Momus, Rod Thomas (Bright Light Bright Light), Scanner, Stephan Mathieu and DJ Andrew Weatherall. He was also co-curator with Iris Garrelfs of the long running Sprawl audio events, established in 1996, in London.
http://douglasbenford.org.uk