Mary Jane Leach in conversation with Frances Morgan

From 7pm to 8pm Mary Jane Leach will talk about her work with Frances Morgan in the Oto project space on Ashwin Street (free entry). The music will then start in the Cafe at 8.30pm sharp.

Frances Morgan is a writer based in London. She writes about music, film and sound for The Wire, Sight & Sound and others, and is currently researching histories of electronic music at the Royal College of Art and the Science Museum.

Programme Notes

Dawn Scarfe, Tuning to Spheres

A wine glass can be played by rubbing a finger around the rim in smooth circular orbits. It can also be played without being touched using sound alone.

Tuning to Spheres uses wine glasses as ‘lenses’ to amplify the sound of sine tones played from small loudspeakers.

The player changes the pitch of the sine tone to ‘tune in’ to individual glasses sat on turntables. When the turntables are set in motion, specific glasses are prompted to resonate as they pass underneath the speaker. (dawnscarfe.co.uk)

Mette Rasmussen

Sofia Jernberg

Mary Jane Leach

Mary Jane Leach is a composer/performer whose work reveals a fascination with the acoustic properties and how they interact with space. In many of her works Leach creates an other-worldly sound environment using difference, combination, and interference tones; these are tones not actually sounded by the performers, but acoustic phenomena arising from Leach’s deft manipulation of intonation and timbral qualities. The result is striking music which has a powerful effect on listeners. Critics have commented on her ability to “offer a spiritual recharge without the banalities of the new mysticism” (Detroit Free Press), evoking “a visionary quest for inner peace” (Vice Versa Magazine), and “an irridescent lingering sense of suspended time.” (Musicworks Magazine) Leach’s music has been performed throughout the world in a variety of settings, from the concert stage to experimental music forums, and in collaboration with dance and theatre artists. Recordings of her work are on the die Schachtel, Lovely Music, New World, XI, Starkland, Innova, and Aerial compact disc labels.

Ashley Paul

Ashley Paul is an American performer/ composer currently based in London. Her intuitive process integrates free form song structures with a focused approach to sound and clatter. A complexity of instruments including saxophone, clarinet, voice, prepared strings, bells and percussion create a delicate palette, uniquely her own. Her solo albums have received critical acclaim being chosen in The Wire: Top 50 Albums of 2013, Pitchfork’s “The Out Door” best experimental sounds of 2013, number one on Byron Coley and Thurston Moore’s “Tongue Top Ten” in Arthur Magazine, and included on NPR’s All Songs Considered “Best of 2010”. She has been interviewed and/ or featured in the Wire, The New York Times, Spex, Jungle World, The Sound Projector, Gonzo (circus), Dummy, BOMB, The Quietus, Ad Hoc, Foxy Digitalis, NPR’s “All Songs Considered” and Rare Frequency. Ashley’s composition “The Pace of Time” premiered at Roundhouse (London), August 2013, and was performed collaboratively with Nik Colk Void and Simon Fisher Turner.

Tom James Scott

Tom James Scott is an instrumentalist, composer and improviser currently residing in North-West England, UK.

Scott’s early interest in music was informed as much by a fascination with sound and improvisation as it was by traditional musical training, and his work continues to explore both lyrical and abstract means of sound making and composition. Since 2007’s ‘Red Deer’, Scott’s solo releases to date have seen a switch between guitar, piano and keyboard as their focal point (often with the addition of bowed objects and strings, field recording and electronics). United by a preoccupation with modern composition, traditional music, improvisation and song, Scott’s recorded work also draws inspiration from visual and literary sources, with certain titles often citing a now largely archaic form of dialect particular to Scott’s home county of Cumbria.

Scott is currently an active member of Charcoal Owls (with vocalist Russell Walker), and continues to collaborate widely with artists including Andrew Chalk, Timo Van Luijk and Jean-Noël Rebilly, releasing music both on his own Skire imprint and other labels including Where To Now?, Carnivals, Alter, Night School, Bo’Weavil Recordings, and Night People. (Cafe OTO)

Yoni Silver

A renowned bass clarinetist and multi-instrumentalist, Yoni Silver‘s current projects include different combos with Sharon Gal, Steve Noble, Mark Sanders, Tom Wheatley, Grundik Kasyansky and he is a long-time member of Iancu Dumitrescu and Ana Maria Avram’s Hyperion Ensemble. (Cafe OTO)

Thurston Moore

Lucy Railton

photograph by Camille Blake

www.lucyrailton.com

Dawn Scarfe

photography by Benjamin Borley

Dawn Scarfe is an artist based in London working with field recording, sound installation and performance. Her work explores things that seem to sound themselves such as resonating glasses, aeolian wires and self-opening swell boxes.

Dawn has collaborated with Ryoko Akama, Jem Finer, Jiyeon Kim and Volkhardt Müller. She works with soundCamp to organise Reveil: an annual crowd sourced live broadcast which tracks the sound of the sunrise around the world for 24hrs. Her work has been aired on BBC Radio 3 and Resonance FM. She has exhibited at ZKM Karlsruhe, Q-02 Brussels and New Mart, Seoul. Residencies include Sound and Music’s Embedded programme with Forestry Commission England, MoKS Centre for Art and Social Practice, Estonia, TOPOS Exeter and Octopus Collective with Cumbria Wildlife Trust at South Walney, Cumbria. Commissions include Organ Reframed, Union Chapel, Continuous Drift, Dublin and Tonspur MuseumsQuartier Vienna.