Category Archives: grooves

Not long until ‘LUME Presents…’ at the Vortex!

Our ‘LUME Presents…’ series at the Vortex kicks off on August 3rd with a double bill of Overground Collective and Madwort’s Menagerie. It’s all very exciting and advance tickets are available now from the Vortex website! Here’s some background on the two bands…

Overground Collective

Paulo Dias Duarte is an award-winning Portuguese composer, based in London since
2003. Paulo’s compositions mix styles and frame musical clichés in very unusual way,
guiding audiences through rarely-visited musical fields. The Overground Collective is
an unorthodox big band composed of some of the wildest improvisers on the London
jazz scene. The combination of Paulo’s music and these improvisers makes each
concert a unique experience….as you can see from this video!

Guitar/composition – Paulo Dias Duarte

Alto saxophone/soprano/flute – Chris Williams
Alto saxophone/flute/piccolo – Julie Kjaer
Tenor saxophone – Rachel Musson
Tenor saxophone – Dan Mays
Bass clarinet – Tom Ward
Baritone saxophone – Joseph Stout

Trumpet – Noel Langley
Trumpet – Yazmeen Ahmed
Trumpet – Andre Canniere
Trumpet – Henry Spencer

Trombone – Paul Taylor
Trombone – Ed Reiband
Trombone – Raph Clarkson
Bass Trombone – Olivir Haylett
Tuba – Ben Kelly

Bass – Ben Bastin
Keyboards – Danny Keane
Drums – Jon Scott

Madwort’s Menagerie
After a momentary glimpse in a misfiring big band rehearsal, Tom Ward has been
bugged by an overheard snippet of a weird quartet comprising bass clarinet, flute,
trumpet and trombone. Transmogrifying some of his compositions for sax quartet,
hybridising this with his free improv duo Ti/om and finally balancing woodwind, brass
and strings with the addition of a cello, Tom is proud to present Madwort’s
Menagerie. Featuring some incredible improvising musicians with a full spectrum of
credits ranging from the London Improvisers Orchestra through Brass Mask, the
Overground Collective, Quadraceratops and The Imaginary Delta to Sinfonia Cymru
and the London Tango Orchestra.

Tom Ward – bass clarinet, flute, composition
Julie Kjaer – flute, alto flute
Alex Bonney – trumpet
Magnus Dearness – trombone
Adam Spiers – cello
Tim Fairhall – double bass

We hope you’ll agree it’s going to be a fantastic night of new music. Join us as we venture into a new chapter of LUME with these amazing musicians!

Artwork by the ever-awesome Peter Beatty…

‘LUME Presents…’ at the Vortex

We’re very excited to announce a new venture for late Summer and Autumn 2014: ‘LUME Presents…’ at the Vortex in Dalston! We will be hosting monthly double bills of our favourite musicians every first Sunday of the month starting on August 3rd. Join us for an extra dose of great original and improvised music…and a great excuse for some brand new artwork from the amazing Peter Beatty! Tickets are on sale from the Vortex website.

26th June: Shatner’s Bassoon

An exciting finale for the month of June with the notorious Leeds-based sextet Shatner’s Bassoon, bringing their distinctive brand of ‘controlled pandemonium’ to LUME as part of their UK tour. We’re in for a treat! Here’s the biog….

Shatner’s Bassoon are a group of six Leeds based composers/improvisers. Since forming in 2010 they have embarked on two tours of the UK, completed a PRS funded residency program, had a live show featured on BBC Jazz on 3, released their debut album ‘Aquatic Ape Privilege’ on their own label – ‘Wasp Millionaire’ and have been selected by Jazz North as ‘Jazz Ambassadors of the North’ on their ‘Northern Line’ program.

Influenced by contemporary artists such as Tim Berne, Mr. Bungle, John Zorn, Frank Zappa, Tyshawn Sorey and a range of rock and electronica; and with a combined experience that includes eastern European folk, Hindustani music, Brazilian music, straight ahead and free jazz, reggae, metal, contemporary classical and musique concrete; Shatner’s Bassoon have developed a unique collective sound based on developing complex compositional structures through improvisation – allowing the music to be naturally infused by their experiences. The results can range from dense free noise through intense riffs and ambient textures. They play with musical clichés and conventions to produce music that negotiates a path from the beautiful to the sinister, humorous and surreal.

Michael Bardon – bass/electronics

Ollie Dover – sax/clarinet

Joost Hendrickx – drums/electronics

Andrew Lisle – drums

Johnny Richards – keys/electronics

Craig Scott – guitar/electronics

This will be a packed night with a BIG lineup, so make sure you get to Long White Cloud early to avoid having to climb over the band! Doors 8pm, music starting at 8.30pm, £5 entry…join us!

12th June: Corey Mwamba/Olie Brice/Cath Roberts

The first meeting of a new group, as two of LUME’s favourite musicians join forces with our own Cath Roberts. Corey and Cath have played together before as part of a trio with Martin Pyne at the first Long White Cloud gig in February, while Olie and Corey have also worked together a few times in various ensembles. Who knows what will happen when they combine as a trio?

Corey Mwamba – vibraphone, small instruments

Olie Brice – bass

Cath Roberts – baritone sax

Doors 8pm, music starting at 8.30pm, £5 entry. Come along for an evening of improvised music from a never-heard-before band…

5th June: Metamorphic & Nut Club

This week we have a double bill of fantastic bands, featuring musicians from the Leeds and London scenes. Pianist Laura Cole brings her sextet Metamorphic, and bassist Seth Bennett will play a set with his new trio Nut Club. We caught Metamorphic’s set at the Vortex in April (with Seth guesting on second bass!), so we know we’re in for a great night of music!

Metamorphic

Metamorphic are a contemporary jazz/folk sextet based in London. They have released two album on the ‘F-ire presents’ label to critical acclaim: The Rock Between (2011) and Coalescence (2013). The instrumentalists in the group all met while studying on the Jazz Degree at Middlesex University in London in 2001, and vocalist Kerry Andrew became involved with the group through the promoter Moose Factory. Kerry also sings with the highly respected vocal trio Juice, whose album ‘Songspin’ recently won Best Contemporary Classical album of the year at the Independent Music Awards. Alto sax player Chris Williams is part of 2009 Mercury Prize nominated group Led Bib, and tenor/soprano sax player John Martin is a successful bandleader in his own right. Drummer Tom Greenhalgh also plays in the acclaimed group World Sanguine Report, led by Andrew Plummer, and double bass player Paul Sandy has worked with various groups such as The Rude Mechanicals.

Laura Cole – bandleader, piano/composer/arranger
Chris Williams – alto sax
John Martin – tenor/soprano sax
Kerry Andrew – vocals/loops
Tom Greenhalgh – drums
Paul Sandy – bass

Nut Club

Nut Club are an exciting new Leeds-based trio. Seth Bennett writes:

‘We set up Nut Club at the beginning of 2013, because we wanted to have a band that could workshop ideas for new tunes together, and could take their time over developing new material and a group aesthetic. We fit loosely into the mould of a jazz band, but play mostly original material with an emphasis on groove – groove in the New Orleans sense, not repetitive figures, but three people juggling music and rhythm between them. We explore the idea of jazz as a dance music – even in its most avant-garde manifestations; We still hear dance rhythms in free jazz and free improvisation.’

Ollie Dover – reeds
John Arnesen – drums
Seth Bennett – bass

As usual it’s doors 8pm, with the music starting at 8.30pm, and it’s £5 on the door. Some of you might remember the Stolen Project gig in April: when we have a sextet playing it can be tricky to get into Long White Cloud if you arrive after the gig has started! Plus, we’ve heard on the grapevine that a certain pianist/bandleader will be celebrating a special birthday on the night too. We advise showing up nice and early…

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

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

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.

6th March: Dave O’Brien Electric Trio

This week we’re hosting the first performance of a brand new trio project from F-IRE Collective member Dave O’Brien. Dave’s other group Porpoise Corpus is one of Cath’s favourite bands, and you should definitely check out their eponymous first album. It’s quite hard to describe Dave’s music for the Porpoise, but Mike Flynn (Time Out London) said of one gig that it ‘lurch[ed] between Jarrettish piano interludes and funky schlock-horror jazz-rock’! So there you have it. Come along and hear his new venture…

Dave O’Brien Electric Trio

Dave O’Brien – keyboards

Kevin Glasgow – bass

Nick Smalley – drums

Winner of the Peter Whittingham Award in 2006, Dave is a musician who has always had an itching desire to explore the unfamiliar and likes to invite audiences and band-mates to join the quest. In demand as a double bassist, bass guitarist and pianist, he works with many other groups in London playing jazz, rock, funk, m-base, samba, son-montuno, and various fusions involving other influences such as south-Indian music, flamenco and cabaret. He has been on musical field trips to Cuba, the Gambia and New York, where he attended a course at the School for Improvised Music.

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!

6th February @ Long White Cloud: Corey Mwamba/Martin Pyne Duo + Cath Roberts

Happy New Year! After a two month Winter break, we’re looking forward to starting things up again. The first gig of the new season features not one but two vibraphones, played by our friends the exciting improvisers Corey Mwamba and Martin Pyne. They will be joined in the second set by LUME’s own Cath Roberts on baritone sax. This should be an enjoyable evening, and our first at Long White Cloud. We’re hoping to make this space our new home, so do come along, check it out and help us settle in.

MWAMBA / PYNE DUO

Corey Mwamba – vibes, small instruments
Martin Pyne – vibes/electronics/percussion/toy piano

Vibes players Corey Mwamba and Martin Pyne initially stumbled upon each other’s work in cyberspace. Once they met in the flesh they began discussing the unlikely project of an improvising vibraphone duo. This remained an idea for a long time, until choreographer Sheron Wray called Martin and asked him to provide music for a project for improvising dancers. This provided the perfect opportunity to road test the duo format, and musicians and dancers were all smiling happily after the first rehearsal so it was all systems go!

Expect to hear a surprising range of textures and colours. Corey is one of the most fluent and inventive improvisers you will ever hear, dragging an extraordinary array of sounds from his instrument. In his work with his own band Busnoys, Martin has made a point of extending the sonic scope of the vibes with a range of subtle electronic processing, as well as triggering a variety of specially made sampled loops and drones. And expect a few other instrumental flavours thrown into the pot as the music simmers as well.

Thursday 26th September @ The Harrison: Madwort Sax Quartet

This week at LUME we’re heading back to The Harrison, and inviting Tom Ward to take the stage once again following last month’s debut of his other group Madwort’s Mechanical Mindset.

MADWORT SAX QUARTET

The Madwort Sax Quartet formed in 2011 to play compositions by Tom Ward and guided group improvisation. Tom’s influences include numerology and the movement of the planet earth through space, Steve Coleman, pioneering saxophone quartet Rova, Tim Berne, and transcriptions of bird song. Of technical interest was exploring contemporary techniques such as complex time signatures and metric modulations without the presence of a dedicated drummer or percussionist, and exploring harmony without a chordal instrument.

All the members bring their own individual, contrasting voices to the saxophone: Andy’s warm-toned, mellifluous tenor; Chris’s assertive, energetic alto familiar to fans of Led Bib; Tom’s lyrical, passionate but more reserved alto; and Cath’s fluid, assured baritone. When required, though, the ensemble manages to blend beautifully into a homogenous whole that belies these contrasts.

The group has been very well received (“a significantly distinctive musical proposition” – LondonJazz blog, September 2012), has recorded an EP’s worth of material (slated for release late 2013), and has played gigs in London, Manchester (hosted by Efpi Records) and Derby (hosted by Corey Mwamba).

The line-up is:

Tom Ward: alto saxophone & composition
Chris Williams: soprano & alto saxophones
Andy Woolf: tenor saxophone
Cath Roberts: baritone saxophone

More about the quartet and Tom’s other projects at his Madwort website. See you at the gig!