4 May
Nham Quartet (Tony Bevan/John Edwards/Jed Bishop/Michael Zerang)
“Brilliant stuff!” The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD (U.K.)
“Spirited, challenging free improvisation. Do yourself a favour and check them out” Jason Bevins, Cadence (U.S.A.)
“Imaginative and very satisfying” The Wire (U.K.)
“Strongly recommended to fans of intelligent, freethinking musicmaking” Coda (Canada)
The NHAM Quartet began in May of 2000 when British Bass/Tenor saxophonist Tony Bevan went to Chicago for a series of gigs with American stars trombonist Jeb Bishop and percussionist Michael Zerang. Such was the success of this collaboration, a tour of England was organized for May 2001, adding John Edwards on double bass. During this tour the CD “NHAM” was recorded, and was released on Foghorn in 2002. The Quartet toured in the United States the following year, playing principally in University towns and often performing workshops for the students, for example in Ann Arbour, Bloomington Indiana and the University of Chicago. The current tour of the UK represents a 10 year reunion.
TONY BEVAN
Tony Bevan is an improvising virtuoso on Soprano and Tenor saxophones, but perhaps is best known for his work on the Bass saxophone, on which he is probably Britain’s only major modern performer (“the world’s greatest improvising Bass saxophonist” – Timeout). He is closely linked with the late Derek Bailey, with whom he appeared and recorded many times, as well as with Free Jazz legend Sunny Murray, who, along with Edwards, he has been playing with for more than a decade, releasing a number of award winning recordings and appearing in Antoine Prum’s award winning film “Sunny’s Time Now”. He recently curated with Prum a 3 day festival on British Improvised Music in Berlin, which will be released on film in late 2012, following more filming in the UK in early 2012 . His playing covers all bases from rock group Spiritualised (on whose new album he is a featured soloist) to Classical Avant-Garde composer Luc Ferrari, with the likes of Barre Phillips, Matthew Bourne, Joe Morris, Marc Ribot and Tony Buck of The Necks in between. He runs the Foghorn label.
JOHN EDWARDS
“John Edwards has imposed himself on the radical and improvised music scene, revealing himself to be among the most gifted musicians and contrabassists to emerge in the last few years. … Particularly notable is the way he succeeds in joining refinement and extreme technical agility with a very physical and energetic way of playing, demonstrating a capacity for synthesis which gives his sound an unmistakable character.” (Fabrizio Spera, programme notes.) Edwards has performed with all of England’s major improvisers, appears on many CDs on the Emanem label, and is a member of saxophone titan Evan Parker’s trio, with percussionist Mark Sanders.
MICHAEL ZERANG
Michael Zerang was born in Chicago, Illinois, and is a first-generation American of Assyrian decent. He has been a professional musician, composer, and producer since 1976, focusing extensively on improvised music, free jazz, contemporary composition, puppet theater, experimental theater, and international musical forms.
Michael has collaborated extensively with contemporary theater, dance, and other multidisciplinary forms and has received three Joseph Jefferson Awards for Original Music Composition in Theater in collaboration with Redmoon Theater, in 1996, 1998, and 2000.
As a percussionist and composer, Michael has over eighty titles in his discography and tours nationally and internationally to 33 countries since 1981, and works with and ever-widening pool of collaborators.
Michael founded and was the artistic director of the Link’s Hall Performance Series in Chicago from 1985-1989 where he produced over 300 concerts of jazz, traditional ethnic folk music, electronic music, and other forms of forward thinking music. Michael has been a Board Member of Links Hall Since 1989. He continued to produce concerts at Cafe Urbus Orbis from 1994-1996, and at his own space, The Candlestick Maker in Chicago’s Albany Park neighborhood, from 2001 – 2005.
Michael has taught as a guest artist at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in performance technique, sound design, and sound/music as it relates to puppetry; rhythmic analysis for dancers at The Dance Center of Columbia College, Northwestern University, and MoMing Dance and Arts Center; courses in Composer – Choreographer Collaborations at Northwestern University; music to children at The Jane Adams Hull House.
Michael currently tours and holds workshops in improvisational music and percussion technique, and teaches private lessons in rhythmic analysis, music composition, and percussion technique.
JEB BISHOP
Trombonist/improviser/composer Jeb Bishop has performed, toured and recorded with groups including the Vandermark Five, the Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet, Ted Sirota’s Rebel Souls, Terminal Four, School Days, Ken Vandermark’s Territory Band, Rob Mazurek’s Exploding Star Orchestra, Globe Unity Orchestra, The Engines, and his own Jeb Bishop Trio. He has been recognized in Down Beat Magazine’s International Critics’ Poll every year since 2001. Bishop appears on dozens of recordings as improviser, composer, and interpreter of music by other composers, and has performed in clubs and at festivals throughout North America and Europe. He has also led or participated in workshops for students at conservatories in Chicago, Ann Arbor (Michigan), Birmingham (England), Vancouver (Canada), and Tilburg (Netherlands).
Nham Quartet on Foghorn Records
Helmut Lemke
amazing works with very long strings. not to be missed. more here http://www.sound-art.de
“Since he started his journey into the world of sound more than 30 years ago, he investigated sounds that are around us, some are obvious, some are familiar, some have to be found… and he has performed and exhibited process based work responding to his investigations.
His endeavour has taken him to concert halls and outdoor markets, to Galleries and Museums and to the frozen seas off Greenland, to Function Rooms of Pubs and to International Festivals. He has presented his work all over the globe, collaborating with other Sound Artists and Musicians, with Dancers and Scientists, Visual Artists and Architects, Poets and Archaeologists, Performance
Artists and Wildlife Rangers.
Helmut Lemke is still listening.”
From The Noise Upstairs.
Bridget Hayden
cosmic post blues melt down http://www.notwavingordrowning.co.uk/
“This former Vibracathedral Orchestra member’s raw and snarling solo debut provides a welcome and somewhat frightening counterbalance to the current wave of ambient-minded solo guitarists. Obviously, there is no shortage of noisy guitar albums in the world, but Hayden’s aesthetic is a pretty striking and unique one. For one, she is very primitivist in her approach to both her equipment and her playing. For this album, she apparently used just two pedals, an out-of-tune guitar, and a four-track that someone had found on the street. If she was playing scales and chords, it is likely that the “out-of-tune guitar” part of the equation would get pretty uncomfortable and obnoxious, but she doesn’t do that: at her most gleefully feral, such as in “Thrash Momento” and “Silk Wheels,” she strips away everything conventionally “musical” to leave just grimy, obsessively repeating moans and howls.”
Foxy Digitalis
@ St. Margarets Church,
Whalley Road/Rufford Road,
Manchester
M16 8AE
£5/£4
on facebook http://www.facebook.com/#!/events/387239897953529/
David Birchall 