Author Archives: deebyrne

7th February @ The Vortex: Njanas and Far Reaching Dreams

We’re excited to be back at the Vortex in 2016 with two fresh new ensembles playing their original compositions. This promises to be a great evening of music!

NJANAS 

An exciting new collaboration bringing together four creative voices from across the UK scene. In their own words: ‘This is a brand new project of female musician/composers Laura Cole, Filomena Campus, Tori Handsley and Ruth Goller who are all band leaders in their own right. The ensemble, which celebrates women’s art and music, started more than a year ago. We often feel under-represented as women in the worlds of jazz and art, and in this project all compositions are inspired by a female artist (such as Frida Kahlo, Niki de Saint Phalle, Gertrude Stein, Franca Rame and many more) or written by a female composer. The name Njanas is an encounter between the gigantic sculptures called ‘Nanas’, created by painter and sculptor Niki de Saint Phalle, and ‘Janas’, ancient legendary female figures and fairies/witches that relate to the myth of the Sardinian Goddess-Mother.’

Filomena Campus – vocals

Laura Cole – piano

Tori Handsley – harp

Ruth Goller – bass

Percy Pursglove’s Far Reaching Dreams Trio

Following the critically acclaimed success of his ‘Far Reaching Dreams of Mortal Souls’ commission for large scale choir and jazz ensemble, multi-instrumentalist Pursglove debuts his fascinating new trio, featuring Percy on trumpet, Paul Clarvis (drums) and Ivo Neame (piano, accordion), with original music inspired by speeches and works of iconic historical figures.

‘Somehow Percy Pursglove created a completely whole musical world all of his own. That is a rare achievement’ Jazzwise

Percy Pursglove – trumpet

Paul Clarvis – drums

Ivo Neame – piano/accordion

As usual, doors are at 7.30pm and the music will start at around 8pm. Vortex Jazz Club, 11 Gillett Street, N16 8JH.

See you there!

All the best,

Cath and Dee

29th May: Lauren Kinsella Quintet

Award-winning vocalist Lauren Kinsella and her band bring us an evening of new music and improvisation.

Lauren Kinsella Quintet

Lauren Kinsella is a contemporary vocalist and composer based in London. Hailed as ‘a completely down to earth and exquisitely vivacious young Irish singer’ (Katie Bull The New York City Jazz Record), she has performed in venues across Ireland, the UK, Switzerland, Hungary, France, Germany, Portugal, Norway and India. She is the 2013 Kenny Wheeler Prize winner and performs in many groups including Thought-Fox, Blue-Eyed Hawk, The Bears and Alex Huber / Lauren Kinsella Duo . Her music regularly appears on BBC Radio 3, Jazz FM, RTE Lyric FM and BBC Radio Scotland and she has released albums on WideEar Records and Diatribe to critical acclaim.

Lauren Kinsella – vocals

Laura Jurd – trumpet

Dan Nicholls – keyboard

Conor Chaplin – bass

Simon Roth – drums

Promo shot jan

As usual it’s doors at 8pm, with the music starting at 8.30pm, and £5 entry. Long White Cloud, 151 Hackney Road, E2 8JL…just around the corner from Hoxton overground station.

 

 

22nd May: Nightjar & Andre Canniere’s Freeway

This week we have a great double bill: Joe Wright brings his quartet Nightjar, and Andre Canniere presents his new band Freeway. Both projects feature acclaimed vocalist Alice Zawadzki.

Nightjar

Saxophonist and composer Joe Wright’s totally hypnotic and individual band plays brooding, atmospheric songs. Nightjar creates a totally unique world of sound and colour, from blissed out, dreamy, ambient soundscapes to dark and dirty grooves, all tied together by Wright’s intense and lyrical improvising.

Joe Wright  saxophone / compositions / electronics

Alice Zawadzki  voice / violin

Jeff Spencer  bass

James Maddren   drums

nightjar

Andre Canniere’s Freeway

Andre Canniere is an acclaimed trumpet player, composer and educator currently based in London. Originally from rural Pennsylvania (USA), Canniere spent the first five years of his career in New York City where he worked with artists such as Maria Schneider, Bjorkestra, Ted Poor, Ingrid Jensen, Donny McCaslin and Darcy James Argue. He has toured widely throughout the United States and Europe with performances at Carnegie Hall, Birdland, the London Jazz Festival, The Hague Jazz Festival and the Rochester International Jazz Festival. Andre’s second album ‘Coalescence’ was released on Whirlwind Recordings in October 2013.

For this gig, Andre will bring his new ensemble ‘Freeway’, featuring a stella lineup of top London musicians.

Andre Canniere  trumpet, compositions

Alice Zawadzki  voice

Hannes Riepler  guitar

Max Luthert  bass

Ollie Howell  drums

andre-canniere-photo

As usual it’s doors at 8pm, with the music starting at 8.30pm, and £5 entry. Long White Cloud, 151 Hackney Road, E2 8JL…just around the corner from Hoxton overground station.

8th May: Alex Bonney Trio with James Allsopp

After a great duo set last month with Hannah Marshall, Alex Bonney returns to LUME this week with his own band. As LUME regulars will tell you, Alex is well-known on the London improv/jazz scene, co leading a variety of projects including Leverton Fox, Splice and BABs.  He has a critically acclaimed improvising duo with bassist Dave Kane and appears frequently as a sideman in several London based bands such as Brass Mask, Golden Age of Steam, World Sanguine Report, Nostalgia 77 and more. Joining him in the trio are Olie Brice (recently sighted at LUME in Stolen Project and playing duo with Fumi Okiji) and world-renowned drummer Jeff Williams.

Alex Bonney – cornet

Olie Brice – bass

Jeff Williams – drums

In the second set, the group will be joined by multi-instrumentalist and Golden Age Of Steam leader James Allsopp on bass clarinet. This promises to be an excellent night of original and improvised music! Doors 8pm, music 8.30pm, £5 entry.

bonney

(Photo by Nagib El-Desouky)

1st May: Ant Law Quintet

We are delighted to welcome this high-calibre jazz quintet led by guitarist Ant Law, playing his compositions.

Ant Law Quintet

Guitarist Ant Law was a scholar at both Edinburgh University and Berklee College of Music until moving to London in 2008. He then picked up work with artists such as Tim Garland, Mica Paris, Gwilym Simcock, Leon Ware, Asaf Sirkis, Koby Israelite, Camille O’Sullivan, Britain’s Got Talent star Tony Laf, X-factor winner Steve Brookstein and Eileen Hunter, and members of Incognito and Level 42.

Ant’s debut album “Entanglement” was released on the 33Jazz record label in February 2013 to great critical acclaim. This project was awarded funding from the Jazz Services Recording Support Scheme. The album launch at Pizza Express Dean Street was sold out and the band then completed a 29-date UK tour, with further support from Jazz Services. Ant completed the second volume of compositions whilst on tour in Brazil this summer. The band are showcasing that music before recording the second album.

Ant Law – guitar

Michael Chillingworth – reeds

Rick Simpson – piano

Calum Gourlay – bass

Dave Hamblett – drums

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Doors 8pm, music 8.30pm. Long White Cloud, 151 Hackney Road, E2 8JL. £5 entry.

17th April: Our Own Decay & Olie Brice/Fumi Okiji

A double bill this week, with a set from trumpeter Nick Malcolm’s improvising trio plus a duo of Olie Brice and vocalist Fumi Okiji.

Our Own Decay

Improvising trio lead by the formidable trumpeter and composer Nick Malcolm, featuring vibraphonist Corey Mwamba and the fantastic drummer / composer / Pop-up Circus impressario Simon Roth.

Nick Malcolm – trumpet

Corey Mwamba – vibraphone

Simon Roth – drums

nick-malcolm

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Olie Brice – bass

Fumi Okiji – vocals

 Unknown-2  FumiOkijisOldTimeJazzBand

Doors 8pm, music 8.30pm. Long White Cloud, 151 Hackney Road, E2 8JL. £5 entry.

 

27th February @ Long White Cloud: Wolf Suit

We’re really looking forward to welcoming this high calibre trio this week. Get down to Long White Cloud early to make sure you get a seat!

Wolf Suit 

Freely improvised jazz from this new trio, featuring award-winning reedsman James Allsopp, sought-after bassist Olie Brice and and the ever-impressive Tim Giles.  Between them the members of Wolf Suit have worked with leading musicians as diverse as Paul Dunmall, Django Bates, Ingrid Laubrock, Jeff Williams, Mark Sanders,Tom Rainey, Mark Lockheart, Julian Arguelles and Stan Sulzmann, among many others…

James Allsopp – reeds
Olie Brice – double bass
Tim Giles – drums

Doors 8pm, music starts 8.30pm, £5 entry. Long White Cloud, 151 Hackney Road, E2 8JL.

wolfsuit

 

 

20th February @ Long White Cloud: Deemer & Tom McCredie/Matt Herd Duo

This week we’ve got an exciting double bill of two improvising duos: Deemer, a collaboration between LUME’s own Dee Byrne and sound artist Merijn Royaards, and sax/bass duo Tom McCredie/Matt Herd. Come and sip a coffee, beer or glass of wine in our fantastic new venue and experience these complementary yet contrasting bands…

Deemer

The brain-child of Merijn Royaards and Dee Byrne, Deemer started life in 2006 as a weekly improvisation/electronics session in a warehouse in Hackney Wick. The project has since evolved into an installation/performance based electro-acoustic ‘two-manned’ orchestra, whose aural narratives are created within fluid frameworks that map a trajectory in time, but leave the sonic textures and compositions entirely free and undetermined. Deemer employ, among other things, alto saxophone, drums, analogue electronics, tape, transducer microphones/speakers to instantly compose, activate space, and blur the boundaries between free jazz and sound installation.

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Tom McCredie/Matt Herd duo

Tom McCredie (bass) and Matt Herd (alto saxophone) are graduates of the Royal Academy of Music, up and coming on the London jazz scene. Through improvisation they explore moods and atmospheres drawing on their varied musical influences, from jazz to classical to folk and so on. They have been performing together for three years now and are hoping to release an EP by the end of this year.

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Doors 8pm, music starts 8.30pm, £5 entry. Long White Cloud, 151 Hackney Road, E2 8JL.

 

13th February @ Long White Cloud: Pickpocket

We are looking forward to welcoming Ian Bumstead and his quintet Pickpocket to LUME next week. We saw them play at the Amersham Arms last Autumn and really enjoyed Ian’s compositions played by such a killing line up of London’s finest players! We’re in for a treat  – but  watch your belongings!

Pickpocket

Surreptitiously pilfering through the musical baggage, the fast-fingered SE-London quintet Pickpocket combine edgy grooves and sinuous lines amid sonorous free-improv with an almost criminal abandon. More artful than the Artful Dodger, structured simplicity brushes against anarchic freedom, where dissonant vamps casually disappear into distant harmonious sequences. With a veiled nod in the directions of Dave Holland, Mark Turner and David Binney, dexterous misdirection is the name of the game, no matter how deep the pocket.

Ian Bumstead – Tenor Saxophone

Tom White – Trombone

Steve Pringle – Fender Rhodes

Fergus Ireland – Double Bass

Pete Ibbetson – Drums

The gigs will start a bit earlier this season, i.e the music will *actually* begin at 8.30pm. Doors at 8pm, £5 entry. Long White Cloud, 151 Hackney Road, E2 8JL. Nearest station: Hoxton. See you there!

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28th November @ The Harrison: Otriad + Roth/Bonney/Marshall

After an amazing gig last night for the EFG London Jazz Festival, LUME decamps to The Harrison for our last gig of the year. We are very pleased to welcome Alex Roth’s Otriad.

Otriad_tree_lo-res

OTRIAD

In 1941, three Jewish brothers went into hiding in Poland’s Naliboki Forest to escape capture by the encroaching Nazi troops. By the end of the Second World War, they had led over 1,200 other Jews to safety, establishing a tight-knit community that resisted the Germans on one side and their co-operating Belarussian forces on the other. The Bielski Otriad, as the group became known, defied the fate of so many of their kind by refusing to give up hope even under the bleakest conditions.

It is this strength of community spirit that inspired the formation of Alex Roth’s Otriad, itself centred around three brothers of Polish-Jewish ancestry. Nick, Alex and Simon Roth (playing saxophones, guitars and percussion respectively) grew up to the sound of their mother’s violin and piano, quickly taking up the instruments that would eventually allow them to develop a unique musical understanding together. This three-way dynamic has been pivotal to each of their careers thus far, forming the core of several groups along the way (including the ten-piece electro-acoustic chamber ensemble Sefiroth).

Otriad is completed by two musicians whom Alex has met through studying for his MA at the Royal Academy of Music: James Opstad, who has been the bassist in Alex’s trio (with Simon again) since 2010, and saxophonist Joe Wright (half of the electro-acoustic improvising duo Wright/Roth, which has been active for over a year now).

Alex’s music for Otriad is an expression of the relationships that have formed between these five musicians, moving between folk-like melodies, free-form improvisation, electro-acoustic soundworlds, complex rhythmic structures and richly evocative harmonies.

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Support set with:

Nick Roth (sax)
Alex Bonney (trumpet)
Hannah Marshall (cello)

See you at the Harrison, 28 Harrison Street, Kings Cross, WC1H 8JF.

Doors 8pm, music starts from 8.30pm. Entry £5.