Music : Faith Brackenbury & Tony Bianco. Friday 11th March 19:00

Tony Bianco : drums, percussion
Faith Brackenbury : violin, viola, effects, voice

Doors 7pm | music 8pm | entry £8 (cash only on the door)

Tony Bianco is an American jazz drummer and composer from New York City who moved to Europe in the early nineties. He has been described as a ‘true master of the drums ‘. He has played and recorded with many prominent jazz musicians including Elton Dean, Alexander von Schlippenbach, Dave Liebman, Paul Dunmall, and Evan Parker. In 2008 he brought Liebman and Parker together for a BBC recording which resulted in the album Relevance.

Bianco recorded a contemporary jazz album, In a Western Sense, featuring Zoe Rahman. He played with Elton Dean on his concept called ‘Freebeat’, which resulted in two albums featuring Dean on Northern Lights and Liebman on Monkey Dance.

In 2009 he recorded Never Pet a Burning Dog with the band douBt with guitarist Michel Delville and pianist Alex Maguire. The album received four stars from Down Beat magazine. In the annual poll by Arnaldo DeSouteiro, Bianco was one of the top five drummers and douBt was the third best instrumental group. In 2011, Bianco and Delville created the electro-jazz project Machine Mass, which was joined by Dave Liebman in 2012. Bianco is known for his ‘mercurial’, ‘octopusian’ drumming style, which combines the sounds of free jazz and straight jazz and reflects Bianco’s “musical creed – to be ‘loose and tense, free and strict’.(Wikipedia)

Faith Brackenbury was born in rural Suffolk and  spent her teens at a specialist music school honing her skills as a classical violinist, whilst really wanting to explore jazz, folk and rock instead. She went on to Brunel University and diversified, finding a path through Irish folk music, Hot Club jazz and rock bands to violin making, and motherhood, leading to a post grad in jazz at Birmingham Conservatoire  2012-14, whilst developing a folk/improvised duo with accordionist and pianist John Neilson, releasing their album ‘Crossings’ in 2018. After this she played, sang and recorded with alto saxophonist Martin Speake in various bands, including quartet Mafarowi, with guitarist Rob Luft and drummer Will Glaser, releasing their duo album ‘Zephyr’ in 2018, and her own KnifeAngel Suite, in response to the Knife Angel sculpture and the societal issue of knife crime in the UK, in 2019.

In August 2020 she started a collaboration of violin/ viola/ effects/ vocals with drummer Tony Bianco.Their first freely improvised album ‘Rising Up’ (Discus) being an expression of their strong stable creative connection within the instability of the current times.
www.faithbrackenbury.com

‘Talk about your dynamic duos.     Drummer/bassist Tony Bianco and violinist/violist Faith Brackenbury have pooled their talents to come up with one of   the best such meetings in recent memory.’ ~DMG

‘Ex-pat New Yorker, Bianco arrived in Europe in the early ‘90s and immediately lit a fuse under the free jazz scene as an in-demand drummer of masterful timing with an inventive way around his drum kit.’ ~Jazz Views

‘At times, Brackenbury’s playing was reminiscent of Ornette Coleman…’

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