I’m pleased to announce Mercury Over Maps #24 at Hill Station Cafe and Venue!
Hill Station Cafe
Tuesday, March 3rd
Doors 730/Music 8pm
£10/£5 (students) Cash/Card at the Door
Please join us!
More information: http://billthompson.org/aka_prof_lofi/mercury-over-maps-24
Mercury Over Maps #24
PHIL DURRANT and BILL THOMPSON
PHIL DURRANT – Modular Feedback
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 acoustic or electric mandolinist, he has been performing duos with guitarists Daniel Thompson, Martin Vishnick and Pascal Marzan, as well as saxophonist Christoph Gallio. He also performs regularly in a trio with Mark Wastell and John Butcher and has many ongoing projects with drummer Emil Karlsen including a trio with Maggie Nicols and another trio with< pianist Laura Cole.
As a semi-modular synthesist, Phil Durrant continues to perform with Bertrand Denzler and Burkhard Beins in Trio Sowari. The group celebrated their 20th anniversary in 2024. He also has a duo with drummer Mark Sanders.
He is also a member of the international electronic ensemble MIMEO with Keith Rowe, Kaffe Matthews, Thomas Lehn, Rafael Toral a.o. With Mark Wastell, Steve Beresford and David Toop, he is also involved in an audio/visual project celebrating the work of the celebrated Scottish artist, Alan Davie.
In addition, Durrant has many ad-hoc groupings with a wide variety of musicians including Dominic Lash, Andrew Lisle, Colin Webster, Tansy Spinks, Khabat Abas, Tim Hodgkinson, Bill Thompson, a.o. Phil Durrant has also collaborated and composed site-specific music for a wide variety of choreographers, including Maxine Doyle, Susanne Thomas, and Gill Clarke.
https://www.facebook.com/philsowaridurrant/
https://www.facebook.com/sowarimodular/
BILL THOMPSON – No Input Guitar Pedals
Bill Thompson is a sound artist and composer. He performs regularly as a soloist as well as in a number of groups including The Seen, zerøspace, and Airfield (with Ian Spink), and duos with Ian Stonehouse, Phil Durrant, and Yoni Silver. Past collaborations include performances with Keith Rowe, Faust, EXAUDI and others.
Although originally trained as a guitarist, Thompson has worked with live electronics for the better part of 15 years. In recent years he has returned to guitar using one built by Moog combining it with electronics with miscellaneous tabletop devices, found objects, flashing lights, and the occasional vibrator.
He has earned numerous awards and commissions including the PRS for New Music ATOM award, the GAVAA visual arts award, a PRS for New Music Three Festival commission, the 2010 Aberdeen Visual Arts Award, and was nominated for the Paul Hamlyn Award.
Hardi Kurda – violin / electronics
Hardi Kurda is a sound artist, holding PhD in music at Goldsmiths, University of London, and curator of SPACE21 Sound Gallery in Slemani. He uses radio frequency to explore noises that may have been considered illegal, abandoned, unheard, invisible, broken, distorted, untold, forgotten, or simply noises from nowhere, without a place or destination. He developed the concept of The Found Score to connect noises deeply with audiences to create Urgent Listening where listening became a force of necessity based on his listening’s experience when he illegally moved to Europe. Hardi’s work receive attentions from festivals, Universities and venues across Europe, Asia, Middle East and Africa such as PRS New Music Biennial in the UK at South Bank Center, Another Sky Festival, Shubbak Festival, Café OTO, (London), Sound Argument at Leiden University and Orpheus institute (Ghent), Tarkib (Baghdad) University of Santa Barbara (California), Sonorities Festival (Belfast), Borderline Festival (Athens), and MaerzMusik, Soundings ADK (Berlin), Nomos Museum (Gdansk), Reproduction (Goa), CHR (Cape Town) Irtijal festival (Beirut). He has been granted various residencies and grants including Beyond1932 (London), LeGuessWho? Festival (Utrecht), Radio Art Residency (Halle, Germany), Swedish Arts Grant Committee, Melos Collective (Vilnius). His recent solo album Radiola Springs. VGR Culture Grant in Sweden described him as… “Hardi bridges diverse musical traditions with socially committed compositions that blend electro-acoustics and chamber music, enriching the classical repertoire for our times.”
Tilly, a versatile flautist, improviser, and educator from Devon, England, is deeply immersed in the world of contemporary and experimental music. She honed her skills during her undergraduate studies at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and is now coming to the end of her master’s degree at the Royal College of Music. Tilly has played alongside orchestras such as the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Scottish Opera and BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, as well as winning first prize in the RCS Concerto Competition and Recital Prize for Woodwind. Driven by a love for Avant Garde and the unusual, Tilly actively engages with contemporary and experimental works. She has collaborated with composers to premiere pieces such Erin Thomson’s “Infinite Kaleidoscope” for flute and electronics, and Oliver Hawker’s “Good News Behind Closed Eyes” for flute and upright saw. Tilly plays regularly with London Improvisers Orchestra, is a member of the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group’s NEXT Programme and serves as principal flute in the contemporary ensemble Standard Issue.
Douglas Benford, composer and sound artist, has been involved in various audio genres and monikers since the late 1980s, performing at institutions in the UK (Bristol’s Arnolfini, London’s Science Museum, Tate Modern, The Roundhouse, ICA and Glasgow’s CCA), festivals worldwide (Mutek, Synch, Transmediale) and has had installation work in numerous UK galleries (London, Swansea, Stroud and Essex). His pieces and performances have been aired on the radio internationally, BBC Radio 3 and the Ambrosia Rasputin show on Resonance FM. After numerous electronica releases and activity in the 90s and 2000s, he now plays using acoustic sources (eg harmonium, tenor recorder, objects) with the London Improvisers Orchestra and Confront Recordings / Mark Wastell’s The Seen collective and regularly attends Eddie Prevost London improvisers workshop. His collaborators include Phil Durrant, Dominic Lash, Blanca Regina, poets Tamar Yoseloff and Iris Colomb, Angharad Davies, sculptor Rob Olins, Matt Atkins, Lina Lapelyte, Marjolaine Charbin, Sylvia Hallett, Steve Beresford, Hannah Marshall, Adam Bohman, Dominic Lash, Rachel Musson, Keisuke Matsui, Tom Ward, John Edwards, Jennifer Allum and Sue Lynch.
VIV CORRINGHAM AND LAWRENCE CASSERLY
Viv Corringham (voice, electronics, field recordings)
A New York based British vocalist and sound-walker, who has been described as “a vital force in improvised music since the late 1970s” (Corey Mwamba, BBC Radio 3). She has been cutting her own distinctive path ranging across free improvisation, Greek Rembetika and soundwalks.
She is a certified teacher of Deep Listening, having played and studied with composer Pauline Oliveros, Awards include two McKnight Composer Fellowships through the American Composers Forum.
Her work has received international recognition and been presented in venues in 26 countries, including Fonoteca Nacional de Mexico, Issue Project Room New York, Hong Kong Arts Centre, Onassis Centre Athens, ICA London, Serralves Contemporary Art Museum Portugal and Tempo Reale Festival Florence.
Articles about her work appear in many books and publications.
Her latest albums “Soundwalkscapes” on Flaming Pines label have been well received; the Wire wrote that “Corringham voices the depth of place.”
She has collaborated with musicians Pauline Oliveros, Elliott Sharp, Pat Thomas, Maggie Nicols, Al Margolis, Charles Hayward, Chris Cochrane, Mia Zabelka, John Edwards, Steve Noble, Mike Cooper, Dave Mandl and many others over a career of more than four decades.
“a vocalist of stunning virtuosity” (The Wire)
LINKS:
website: http://www.vivcorringham.org/
https://flamingpines.bandcamp.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
(Viv Corringham solo at Oxford Improvisers event, UK)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
(Viv Corringham solo improvisation at Iklectik, London)
http://suelynch.bandcamp.com/
(Duo with Sue Lynch at Boat Ting, London)
https://listeningbiennial.net/
https://www.thewire.co.uk/
Lawrence Casserley (signal processing)
“…the certainty is that Lawrence Casserley can be more innovative and creative than many of the ringleaders of the young generation of ‘laptoppers’.” Rui Eduardo Paes
Lawrence Casserley (born Essex, England, 1941) has devoted his career to the creation and promotion of live performance electronic music in a wide variety of ways for more than fifty years. In 1967 he became one of the first students of electronic music on the new course at the Royal College of Music, London, taught by Tristram Cary. His career continued at the Royal College of Music, where he became Professor-in-Charge of Studios and Adviser for Electroacoustic Music.
Since taking early retirement from the RCM in 1995 he has worked with many of the leading improvisers, particularly Evan Parker and his Electracoustic Ensemble. While he focuses primarily on the real-time transformation of other musicians’ sounds, he also uses voice, percussion, home-made instruments and found objects as separate sound sources or inputs for his self-designed Signal Processing Instrument.
Casserley’s instrumental approach to live computer sound processing is the hallmark of his work, which is documented on more than forty releases; he has performed and given workshops throughout Europe and in North and South America, Asia and Japan. Current collaborations include Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg, Philipp Wachsmann, Trevor Taylor, Gianni Mimmo, Martin Mayes, Nicola Baroni, Martin Hackett, Pat Thomas, Dominic Lash, Jeffrey Morgan, Harri Sjöström, Yoko Miura, Mia Zabelka and Viv Corringham. He is a regular member of Oxford Improvisers.
Mercury Over Maps is an extended residency by Bill Thompson featuring performances, installations and talks with various collaborators and guest artists.