This week it’s our first gig at The Harrison. We’ll be presenting two great bands in their basement bar, which is a cosy space that often acts as home for all kinds of folk gigs. The venue is only five minutes’ walk from Kings Cross/St Pancras, so hopefully should be easy for everyone to get to. Do come down and support us as we start moving around as bit for the next few months: the programme remains full of the same exciting music except for 19th September, which will now be ‘LUME’s week off’…

Anyway, this Thursday 22nd August at the Harrison it’s a double bill of bands led by Toms: pianist Tom Millar and sax player Tom Ward. Tom Millar, chair of the Way Out West musicians’ collective and the man behind the current incarnation of the Green Note Jazz Jam (first Sunday of every month) formed his quartet in 2011. With guitarist Alex Roth, bassist James Opstad and drummer Mike Clowes, the group play mostly Tom’s compositions and have been gigging regularly around London.

Tom Ward is bringing a brand new ensemble to LUME: Madwort’s Mechanical Mindset. After spending the past year or so establishing the Madwort Sax Quartet (where ‘madwort’ is an anagram of Tom Ward), he has recruited a rhythm section and is exploring his music in a more stripped-down lineup of sax, keyboards (Dave O’Brien), bass (Spencer Brown) and drums (Olly Blackman). Tom composes using Steve Coleman-esque number sequences as a starting point, and the result is intriguing groove music that transports the listener in unexpected directions. In his own words:

“The main thing I’m working on with the compositions for this project is an idea that I’ve come in several places – notably Slonimsky via Coltrane, but also Wayne Krantz’s iOS and elsewhere – of exploring ways of enumerating possibilities in order to stretch your intuition as a composer. Of course, some search spaces are too large to be enumerated (such as the universe), so, I’ve been using a couple of simple algorithms based on prime numbers & symmetry to derive little grains of ideas, little points in the search space. I then grow these ideas organically, filtering them through my own personal listening history, taste & intuition, until they gradually develop their own personality, their own character as tunes. I think the sonic pallet they take on reflects things that I’ve been listening to in recent years, which includes Steve Coleman, Alas No Axis, MF Doom, Tim Berne and others.”

Yeah! Come with us to The Harrison for an evening of new music! 28 Harrison Street, Kings Cross, WC1H 8JF. Doors 8pm, £5 entry.

LUME is moving venues! Starting on Thursday 22nd August, we will be at The Harrison, Kings Cross, and The Hanbury Arms, Islington. See the flyer below for details of where each gig is happening…

This week we welcome to LUME Dee Byrne‘s band Entropi! Dee put the group together while studying at Trinity College of Music in 2010 and they explore her growing repertoire of original music. Expect heavy grooves juxtaposed with outbreaks of swing, tight arrangements framing open-ended improvisation, abstract harmony mixed with melodic departures. This will be an intergalactic evening of space sonics! With special guests Nick Walters and Olie Brice.

For a taste of what might happen on Thursday, check out their tune ‘Orbit’:

More recordings, videos and info can be found on the Entropi website.

Dee Byrne – alto saxophone, compositions
Nick Walters – trumpet
Rebecca Nash – piano
Olie Brice – bass
Matt Fisher – drums

This week at LUME we have a fantastic double bill. Join us for an exciting evening of music from these two ensembles! They have sent us over some background info to set the scene…

OVERGROUND COLLECTIVE

When Paulo Dias Duarte decided to run a big band, he decided first to get together a small group of players that would play and understand his music and then gradually start to add players until the big band was complete. The starting point was to play a piece commissioned to him by the Gulbenkien Foundation in 2005; ‘The Seven Deadly Sins’. Tonight they will play this starting point, and the band will be:

Paulo Dias Duarte – guitar and composition

Chris Williams – alto sax
Tom Ward – tenor sax
Geoff Bartholomew – trumpet

Ben Bastin – bass
Rob Pennel – drums
Gareth Wilkins – moog

Paulo has sent us a couple of videos of the big band in action:

ON THE ROOF

On the Roof is a collaborative amalgamation of 12 musicians and 4 dancers- a group of individuals each with strong creative personalities and a range of experience in different artistic fields, all tied together by a shared love of improvisation.

Tonight we feature a distilled trio of musicians from the core of On The Roof who will be playing some fresh new original pieces with wide ranging influences: from the Mandinka of western Africa to the Rebetis of Greece; as well as their current favourite Mingus composition ‘Haitian Fight Song’, a dirty arrangement of Riverboat Shuffle, and perhaps a few others…

Lizy Exell – drums
Louis Thomas – bass
William Scott – woodwind and composition
Matt Gordon – composition

We’re very happy that our gig listings are in the new issue of Green Chimneys! This great online and paper publication is a new hub for all the jazz/improvised and contemporary music happening in London. They have also kindly published a short article by Cath in which she attempts to describe what we’re trying to do with LUME. Usage of the word ‘new’ – 6; usage of the word ‘hope’ – 2. Not bad! See below:

LUME will be a place for original new work, encompassing elements of jazz, improvised and experimental music. We hope that it could also be somewhere for musicians to try out new ensembles or propose new collaborations. In discussion, we found that the word ‘lume’ was a useful signifier for what we feel the night’s ethos will be: the act of illumination can be read in two different ways, both of which seem apt. So in one sense, the establishment of this performance space will open up an additional opportunity to showcase, to highlight new music and help spread the word about the exciting musical projects that are constantly emerging in this city and beyond. And at the same time, the music that will be performed is in itself a collection of illuminations, of ideas that make themselves known in the mind of the composer or reveal themselves in the moment, on stage during an improvised set. The cartoon bulb suddenly lights up over the musician’s head! This is what we’ll be presenting.
 
Our venue, Hundred Crows Rising, is also looking to experiment with new things. They are a relatively new addition to the vast range of pubs and bars around Angel, and they seem keen to put themselves on the map by hosting what we hope will become an established night. The upstairs room is a light, airy space and we look forward to filling it with music every Thursday evening. We start on July 4th with two SE Collective groups – Identity Parade and Redshift – and continue with a programme of diverse bands over the next few months. For more information and occasional blogging, see our website at lumemusic.co.uk.

Welcome to the website of LUME, a new music night starting on July 4th at Hundred Crows Rising, Angel. Every Thursday night we will present original and improvised music from some truly excellent bands! For the first gig, two SE Collective groups will take the stage: Identity Parade and Redshift.

More info to follow as we finish booking the first three months of gigs…

Check out our listings page as it develops…and we’ll see you in July!

Cath and Dee