Video turned up of my reading of Italo Calvino’s ‘Visibilty’, part of a project instigated by Danielle Ledda at University of Cagliari in Sardinia on Calvino’s ‘6 memos for the next millenium’. Playing from other manc improvisers here.
Tubers Music 5th August
RICHARD SCOTT’S LIGHTENING ENSEMBLE
Scott is now a Berlin based composer and improviser focusing on electroacoutic music.
Richard Scott (Buchla Lightening/WiGi/synth) www.richard-scott.net
Adam Linson (double bass & electronics) http://www.percent-s.com/
Phil Marks (percussion)
…David Birchall (guitar) www.davidmbirchall.wordpress.com
Last sighted with Evan Parker at the Cross Street Chapel, Manchester and also at the Manchester Jazz Festival 2010 amidst the Gothic grandeur of St. Anns Church.
Scott has indeed a weath of writing for The Wire and has worked for the London Musician’s Collective (LMC).
HUMAN COMBUSTION ENGINE
This process combusts 2 highly respected inventive improvisers from Leeds… Melanie Crowley and Phil Todd. THis event will hear them playing a duel of SYNTHS. Sounds like the throwing forward of Klaus Shulze into a hot pit.
http://www.myspace.com/ashtraynavigations/photos/23917721#{%22ImageId%22%3A23917721}
WOMB
This is a very exhilerating emerging band of Manchester! …Womb are fiercely dedicated to the act of expression. Womb’s approach is experimental, often creating music using World and homemade instruments, sculptures and found objects, as well as more conventional instrumentation. Womb employs some elements of structure but is currently centered around free improvisation with passion at its core. The sound is in a state of constant flux, of construction and deconstruction, of unity and of tension. Womb do not sit comfortably in any genre but parallels have been drawn to a range of styles including; noise, punk, no-wave, psych, spacerock, free jazz and drone.
http://womb.art.officelive.com/default.aspx
TICKETS ON THE DOOR
WAGED £5
UNWAGED £4
PUNCH SERVED AS A MATTER OF TRADITION AT TUBER EVENTS AND PRETZELS
Hewers of wood and drawers of water
New solo acoustic guitar download available here as of today courtesy of the splendid Electronic Musik of Warrington. Cheers to Ian for the cover.
Ad Hoc Dance autumn 2011
Pleased to announce that AD HOC dance are using the drawings I made as scores for music I made for them as the basis for a new performance this coming autumn. more details below. You can see the original scores here.
AD HOC DANCE – AUTUMN PERFORMANCE COURSE 2011
This 11 week course will be led by Ruth Tyson-Jones and will include contemporary dance technique and creative movement. The starting point for this course, will be a series of drawings created by musician, David Birchall. David created a sound score for an Ad Hoc Dance work back in 2009. He notated his music in a unique visual way. Two years on, these scored drawings will be re-interpreted through movement. The Ad Hoc participants will be led through some carefully crafted creative exercises. Their individual creative responses to the tasks, the resulting movement, will then be shaped in to a group choreography for performance on November 28th at The Lowry.
Mondays 6.15pm – 9.15pm
The Studio, The Lowry, Salford Quays
Dates: September 12, 19, 26. October 3, 10, 17 ( no session during half term on 24th October) and 31 and November 7, 14, 21 and 28
Cost for 11 weeks = £82.50 / £77 ( concs)
Loose fitting clothing required and bare feet
No experience necessary – open to all 18 plus years
Book via the Lowry website or call The Lowry box office on 08432086000
Ad Hoc Dance is The Lowry’s in-house adult contemporary community dance company
Ruth Tyson-Jones has been a professional contemporary dancer and choreographer for over 20 years. She has danced and choreographed for companies in United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland, Poland, Finland, Canada and U.S.A. She presently runs her own company, Axial Dance based in Manchester, and works extensively in theatre. She has a particular interest in placing dance in unconventional venues (in the form of Sited and Site Specific
work), bringing dance to those who may not ordinarily experience it, e.g. in a town square, and other public places.
Blank Media Performance
Couple of shots from the excellent Blank Media opening last week, DBH and I improvising for Naomi Kendrick to draw to.
See a different set here taken by Andrew Brooks.
Naomi has some interesting reflections on this kind of thing here on her blog.
Castles Built in Sand Night
Gigs in July
MATHILDE is a Leeds based collective with experience both nationally and internationally. All are passionate about introducing improvisation to a wider audience and are engaged in various other collectives and organisations.
Seth Bennett (UK) Double bass and trombone
Marie Andersen (Denmark), Dance and aerial theatre
…
Oliver Dover (UK) Saxophone, bass clarinet, trumpophone
Rachel Dean (UK) Dance artist and singer
Daliah Toure (Austria/Guinea) Dance and visual artist
http://mathildedance.blogspot.com/
PADDY STEER
This what BBC introducing have to say about Paddy…
“Ever wondered what the workings of a magical musical mind actually sound like in the raw, undisturbed by the mundanity of conventional song structure and want of chart positions?
If you have, then Paddy Steer is the man for you. He’s made a career out of living in the leftfield of music, offering up his considerable talents on everything from jazz drumming to Hawaiian guitar to the likes of Homelife and Toolshed, and happily bringing a smile to the faces of anyone who came across his work.”
http://www.myspace.com/paddysteer
doors 8pm £5 waged/£4 unwaged
Cheetham/Birchall Duo
live in Manchester end of May 2011
Birdsong Drawings from Isle of Eigg
Drawn start of May on the Isle of Eigg, which lies off the west coast of Scotland, part of the Inner Hebrides. The only industrial sounds present on the island are from the tiny amount of vehicles in use on the single road, which is only 5 miles long. Provides an amazingly open backdrop of silence against which a really wide variety of birds are almost constantly singing.
Below is a list of birds we definitely saw (there are over a hundred species on the island altogether)
Chaffinch
Blackbird
Thrush
Swallow
Swift
Eider Duck
Cormorant
Crow
Wagtail
?? (Black wing/white body. Auk? had synthesized/sine wave call)
Geese (grey/brown, red bill)
Seagulls
Hens
Oyster Catcher
Spoonbill
Robin
Sparrow
Berlin
Gig
Shot above kindly taken by Helen during set with Richard Scott & Olaf Rupp @ Lichtblikt Kino, Berlin
Birdsong & Bells
Picture of backyard from balcony of Thomas’ flat where we stayed was pleasantly overgrown and a real haven for birds, spent a good bit of time listening and playing along with them: mainly trying to isolate elements in it relevant to guitar: high end trills, repetition, slide on high end of neck, picks, clicks, harmonics.
The yard was also a great place to hear churchbells, a couple of times a day the church on the street at right angles rung out loud and clear. Wonderful drones and overtones from struck metal. Made me wonder where the bell sounds are in Manchester; silent mostly. Made me think of a great stop off on one of the Kalbakken tours, eating ice cream in the churchyard of Youlgreave in Derbyshire, blazing summers day with the bells ringing out, ominous atonal overtone drones hanging in the air.
David Birchall 