Music : Che Chen / Bex Burch / Theon Cross. Wednesday 24th July 19:30

Hundred Years Gallery is delighted to welcome this amazing trio… Che Chen / Bex Burch / Theon Cross

Doors 7.30 | music 8pm | £10 cash

“When I went to see Peter at LSD, I told him how much I loved his singing on What’s Not Enough About That, a song I’d had on repeat since discovering Bex’s marimba driven post punk band, Vula Viel. I mentioned I’d be going to London over the summer and asked if he could put me in touch with her. He told me Bex lived in Berlin now, but surprised me a few weeks later when he said she’d be coming to town, New York that is, and asked if I wanted to do something with the two of them. I jumped at the chance and suggested we add Tomin (another Bex fan and her soon-to-be labelmate) to the group on euphonium and flute, and got us a date at Property is Theft, an anarchist book and record store that somehow manages to persist in the margin between the parallel condofuck and Hasidim universes that now characterize South Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Bex and I had a blast making messy, loosely locking mallet rhythms, her on her woody toned xylophone and me on gong and other metal bits, while our friends cruised above and below on brass and flutes of the silver and homemade garden hose varieties. And now summer is here and Bex and I are meeting in London afterall! Not knowing the scene (and knowing she’d know the warmest players), I asked Bex to help put together a small group. I almost jumped out of my chair when she told me Theon Cross could do it, having been floored seeing him command a big rowdy festival crowd alone, like a perfectly tuned runaway train, at Alien Disko in Munich some years ago. There’s continuity in that he’s a low brass player too. In music and life, when you follow your nose (or someone else’s) sometimes things just work out. What’s not enough about that?” – C.C.

Che Chen is a guitarist, rhythm enthusiast, improviser, bandleader and show organizer based in Queens, NY. An energetic presence in New York City’s experimental underground since the early 2000s, he has tread an idiosyncratic path from noise duo True Primes to studying guitar in Mauritania to improvising with veterans and upstarts from NYC’s storied creative music scene. In 2012, he and “plywood crate” player Rick Brown founded 75 Dollar Bill, a critically acclaimed group with flexible personnel whose hybrid music synthesizes modal and rhythmic concepts from the “non-Western” world, Sun Ra’s space chords and the minimalist and No Wave histories of their hometown. Organizing concerts has always been a parallel activity for Chen, stemming from a firm belief that music is social and must take place in community. He has organized hundreds of DIY shows in New York City, including the monthly series Fire Over Heaven at Outpost Artists Resources, which he has organized since 2017. He now also works for the music presenting non-profit FourOneOne.

Bex Burch : Whether combining the rhythmic timbres of wood, metal and audience claps or duetting with the atmospheric and elegiac echoed sounds of water dripping into a metal basin, Bex Burch is a composer, percussionist, producer and improviser who emphasises space, repetition and aspects of chaos. These themes characterise an ongoing approach she describes as “messy minimalism”.

Burch’s critically acclaimed 2023 debut solo album, ‘There is only love and fear’ was released via Chicago avant-garde label International Anthem and named The Guardian’s Contemporary Album of the Month. She has previously released music as part of Boing! with Leafcutter John, and the Strut-released band Flock, a cosmic, boundary pushing quintet with Tamar Osborn and The Comet Is Coming’s Danalogue. Burch also runs the label and post-punk band, Vula Viel, and has collaborated with influential artists like Peter Zummo, Dame Evelyn Glennie, Ben LaMar Gay, Dan Bitney and Macie Stewart.

Theon Cross is an award-winning tuba player and composer. He is a key component of London’s thriving jazz scene and his unique sound has been described as ‘innovative’ and hailed for ‘reinventing the tuba’. His debut EP ‘Aspirations’ brought him international attention and garnered him a Jazz FM nomination for best Jazz Newcomer in 2016. In 2019 he released his debut album ‘Fyah’ which was met with critical acclaim worldwide charting at no. 1 on the UK official Jazz & Blues charts, no.23 on the US Jazz Billboard and garnered high praise from major publications such as Rolling Stone Magazine, Pitchfork, The New York Times, The Guardian and NPR leading him to tour extensively throughout Europe, North America and South America.