Hundred Years Gallery is delighted to welcome this amazing trio… Che Chen / Bex Burch / Theon Cross
Doors 7.30 | music 8pm | £10 cash
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.