Khabat Abas -skin ‘cello
An experimental cellist, improviser, and composer from Kurdistan Iraq. She moves freely between artistic discipline and possibilities. Her works have taken a broad collection of inspiration including noise, improvisation, classic music, and narrative story, and used them as an individual approach. Khabat’s curiosity and the sense of exploration arise between her lived experience and as a cellist. Therefore, since 2008 her work based on sound research, beginning with the acoustic cello, prepared cello, and recently with adapted cello. Khabat is probably known for her adapted cello and improvisational work using extended techniques, In her practice, She raises questions about what is out of bounds, raising the possibilities of sounds that cannot be controlled. In contrast, to traditional musical values.
Wil Pritchard – viola, electronics
(they/them) is a Welsh songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. Mainly performing around London as Jaffro, electronics and vocals are their main tools of musical expression, but with an array of instruments spanning strings winds and percussion to choose from, who knows what they could show up with!
Marion Treby – keyboard
Marion Treby studied music at Southampton University where she was lucky enough to be taught composition by the composer Jonathan Harvey. Whether as a teacher, writer, performer or folk club organiser, music has since played a key role in her life, and her musical interests are wide-ranging. Her PhD focused on the relationship between black American music and the literary works of writer Toni Morrison, and she and a co-writer have published several articles and a monograph on the Gothic composer and polymath E T A Hoffmann. She and Faradena Afifi met through their mutual love of folk music, Fara subsequently introduced her to the world of musical improvisation, and since then Marion has worked with Maggie Nicols and other members of Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra, and become a Noisy Woman!
Caroline Kraabel – saxophone
Caroline Kraabel is a London-based improviser, saxophonist, artist and composer. She conducts and plays with the London Improvisers Orchestra (LIO). Sometimes she improvises solo while walking in London and elsewhere (broadcast over several years on Resonance 104.4 FM as Taking a Life for a Walk and Going Outside). She works with many other excellent improvisers, including Robert Wyatt, Maggie Nicols, John Edwards, Louis Moholo, Cleveland Watkiss, Hyelim Kim, Pat Thomas, Susan Alcorn, Sarah Washington, and Charlotte Hug.
Gwendolyn Kassenaar
A Dutch visual & performance artist based in London. A graduate from Chelsea College of Art, she paints live in performances collaborating with musicians and dancers. She improvises in the moment to express the ephemeral in her quest to fuse visual art, sound, rhythm, colour and movement. Recent performances include a large live-painted mural in Shoreditch together with a dancer, a multi-disciplinary performance at the HYG, and a duet with Beibei Wang at SOAS. During the London Jazz Festival 2021 her work was shown at the Vortex and Toulouse Lautrec Jazz Clubs. To view her recent work, visit Instagram
Faradena Afifi– bowed string instruments, movement and voice
Curator of ‘The Noisy Women Presents’ Fara is a community musician, a busker and folk musician. She started performing improvised gigs during lockdown 2020. As a result of jamming online with Maggie Nicols, who introduced her to the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra (GIO) and the Improvising Ensemble (IE). From then she performed with GIO, London Improvisers Orchestra and as part of Maggie Nicols’ ‘Creative Liberation Orchestra’ in Stockholm. She plays in duos with Banjo Nick Rambles, Maggie Nicols and Steve Beresford. And in the trio, The Noisy Women, with Marion Treby (piano) and Gwendolyn Kassenaar (Art).