David Ryan/Joe Zeitlin : Scorings/Improvisations/electronics
David Ryan and Joe Zeitlin have a longstanding musical partnership, from duo performances at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, to both participating in larger scale projects including performances at British Institute, Florence; University of Greenwich, Lauderdale House and numerous other venues. This current iteration of their duo is exploring the relationship between scored pieces, free improvisation and work with electronics.
David Ryan is a visual artist also actively involved in contemporary music. Although autodidact as a clarinettist, he had some lessons with Jazz musician Don Rendell. His musical interests were consolidated by the re-formation of the Scratch Orchestra (after the death of Cornelius Cardew) in 1984, and by connections with John Tilbury, Christian Wolff and Earle Brown for various performances/concerts. In 2015 he curated a large-scale exhibition Drawing Towards Sound looking at the relationship between drawing and musical notation at the Stephen Lawrence Gallery, University of Greenwich. In 2016 he was an Abbey Fellow in Painting at the British School at Rome, and in 2021 a recipient of the Shelagh Cluett Trust Award to complete a series of pieces for voice and piano. In 2023 and 2025 he worked on a collaborative opera piece for Ljubljana, Slovenia, Olomouc and Prague, Czech Republic. At the same time he has worked several improvised music projects.
‘Cellist Joe Zeitlin graduated from the Royal Academy of music with a dipRAM and was the winner of several cello prizes. A keen chamber music collaborator, he has held positions in two professional string quartets and various orchestras over the course of his career, and has performed at the world’s leading concert halls. Joe also works as a TV / Film composer as well as contemporary improviser and as such is an avid promoter of new music. His improvisations can be heard in 2025’s feature film Nosferatu as well as a host of documentaries for Netflix and terrestrial TV. Recent composition work includes scores for two audio books on Audible, music for ‘The Last Czars’ Netflix series as well as two forthcoming short films and various commercial projects.
