Pioneering and influential American saxophonist Bhob Rainey is touring the UK this autumn. His London gig sees him team up with like minded musicians Angharad Davies, Regan Bowering and Phil Durrant for an evening of two duos and a quartet.
Bhob Rainey
Bhob Rainey is a saxophonist, composer, and improviser. On the saxophone he has developed a distinctive, hallucinatory vocabulary that often sounds electronic, interspersed with an uncanny mastery of multiphonics. In 1998 he co-founded the duo nmperign with trumpeter Greg Kelley, touring extensively while upending a host of improvisational givens. Seeking to bring rigour to improvisation at a larger scale, he later formed The BSC, an eight-piece ensemble that navigated the challenges of group improvisation without relying on predetermined structures or cues. Their work and practices were explored in the 2011 book and album, Manual. Rainey additionally has a long list of collaborators and an especially refined solo saxophone style. He was awarded a Pew Fellowship in the Arts in 2013 for his work in this field.
In the realm of composition, Rainey focuses heavily on heterogenous electroacoustic work, combining sometimes extreme digital synthesis and processing with field recordings, live instruments, and other acoustic sources. He often explores the idea that a “human” is much more than just the idea of “human”, and much stranger.
Rainey has long-running, multidisciplinary collaborations, especially in theatre and dance. He has worked closely with Whit MacLaughlin /New Paradise Laboratories since 2012, integrating often unsettling music and sound design into their uniquely generative process of developing plays. In 2014, he began working with dancer / choreographer JungWoong Kim, collaborating on both large-scale, site-specific pieces and fully improvised events. Rainey has additionally made music for films and Chinese puppetry.
bhobrainey.com
Phil Durrant
Born near London in 1957, Phil Durrant is a multi-instrumentalist improviser/composer/sound artist who currently performs solo and group concerts. As a violinist (and member of the Butcher/Russell/Durrant trio), he was one of the key exponents of the ‘group voice approach’ style of improvised music. In the late 90s, his trio with Radu Malfatti and Thomas Lehn represented a shift to a more ‘reductionist’ approach.
In recent years as an electric mandolinist, he has been performing in a trio with Mark Wastell and John Butcher. As a semi-modular synthesist, Phil Durrant continues to perform with Bertrand Denzler and Burkhard Beins in Trio Sowari, as well as a duo with drummer Mark Sanders.
Durrant is also a member of the international electronic ensemble MIMEO with Keith Rowe, Kaffe Matthews, Thomas Lehn, Rafael Toral a.o.
facebook.com/philsowaridurrant
facebook.com/sowarimodular
Angharad Davies
Angharad Davies is a Welsh violinist based in London working with free-improvisation, compositions and performance. Her approach to sound involves attentive listening and exploring beyond the sonic confines of her instrument, her classical training and performance expectation.
angharaddavies.com
Regan Bowering
Regan Bowering is a percussionist, improviser and sound artist based in London. Her solo work explores various combinations of drums and percussion, objects, amps, speakers, and feedback. Her debut album “Solos for _ _ _ _ Spaces” (Dec 2023 on Bezirk Tapes) was described as “a play of contrasts, contradicting voluminous expressions with confined phrases, taming resounding feedback with faint percussive flutters, but one that feels driven by the desire to craft electrifying drama rather than pure autotelic dissonance.” (The Quietus). She is one third of a collaborative project with Li Song and Conal Blake, with two releases: “2 Movements” (Feedback Moves, 2024) and “Music for Snare Drums and Portable Speakers” (Infant Tree, 2023). Her debut LP “A Technology of Feeling” was released January 2026 on Infant Tree.
www.reganbowering.com
