17 November 2024

Oren Marshall, Alan Wilkinson & Steve Noble

Oren Marshall began his musical career as a Tuba player playing with Trad Jazz bands in South London pubs in the early 80’s and has since worked with a diverse array of musicians and ensembles such as rock band Radiohead, Charlie Haden’s Liberation Orchestra, poet Moondog, Brazilian Maestro Hermeto Pascoal, the Pan-African Orchestra from Ghana, Nigerian Juju Master King Sunny Ade and in duo with award winning vocalist, Bobby McFerrin.

Alan Wilkinson has for many years been a leading figure in the British Improvised Music Community. His reputation of a full blast, take no prisoners approach was cast in the Leeds based trio Hession/Wilkinson/Fell. Based in London since 1990 his current groups include a long standing trio with John Edwards and Steve Noble, the quartet The Founder Effect with John Coxon, Pat Thomas and Noble, and many collaborations past and present with among others Derek Bailey, Peter Brötzmann, Thurston Moore, J.Spaceman, Chris Corsano, Konstrukt and Talibam!

Steve Noble was a student of the Nigerian drummer Elkan Ogunde . In the early 1980s he was a member of the group Rip Rig & Panic . In 1985 he took part in the Thessaloniki Jazz Festival as a member of Derek Bailey’s band, with whom he continued to work in the following years.

Lawrence Casserley, Pascal Marzan, Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg & Phil Wachsmann

Lawrence Casserley is best known for his work in free improvised music, particularly real-time processing of other musicians’ sound, and he has devised a special computer processing instrument for this work.

Currently living in London, Pascal Marzan performs on a 10 string microtonal guitar.

After studying classical guitar – mainly devoted to the twentieth century repertoire – and teaching guitar in several music schools in Budapest, Hungary and France, Pascal has dedicated himself to free improvisation and the exploration of microtonal tunings of his instrument. His playing has been influenced by his interest in the folk musics of Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa.

Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg is an improvising singer from Belgium. He is well versed in all sorts of vocalising: throat singing, overtones, yodels, mouth sounds, falsettos, multiphonics, invented languages to name a few.

Phil Wachsmann is regarded by many as an outstanding improviser of great invention, able to create new approaches within improvised music utilising acoustic and electronic sources.

Arc

The improvising electro-acoustic string trio Arc was formed in 1988 has performed since then with the same line up and has released three albums. Featuring Gus Garside, Sylvia Hallett and Danny Kingshill.

The group’s music has been described as ‘dramatic’, ‘sinister’, ‘witty’ and even likened to ‘a satanic horror movie score’ (though the person who described us thus also said “it was the best thing I’ve ever seen at Sonic Imperfections”).