19 dicembre 2025

L'occasione di rivedere dal vivo il Westbrook-Blake è per ovvi motivi sempre più rara, perciò l'appuntamento di domani a Londra a Blackheath Halls è sinceramente tra i più importanti. Ci saranno Mike e Kate Westbrook, e con loro Phil Minton, Billy Thompson, Karen Street, Chris Biscoe, Steve Berry, Matthew Bourne e un ensemble corale ad hoc - il Blackheath Halls Community Choir - diretto da Paul Ayres. L'inizio è alle 19.30.

William Blake’s poetry has run like a 'golden thread' through the music of Mike Westbrook for over 50 years. His acclaimed settings of Blake’s visionary poetry continue to resonate powerfully with modern audiences. The first songs were written in 1971 for the National Theatre production of poet Adrian Mitchell’s stage musical Tyger, a tribute to Blake. In 1974, Mike formed his touring group, The Brass Band. The Blake songs became a cornerstone of the band’s repertoire. They have remained so ever since. From the beginning the Blake songs have been primarily associated with the voices of Phil Minton and Kate Westbrook, two of the most original and distinctive vocalists in contemporary music. Their unique partnership has been at the heart of many of Mike Westbrook’s compositions, notably his 1979 work, The Cortège. The current ensemble, formed in 2007, brings together some of the UK’s finest and most creative musicians from the worlds of jazz and contemporary music. Karen Street is a brilliant accordionist and frequent Westbrook collaborator, violinist Billy Thompson is a dazzling virtuoso. Steve Berry is a master double bassist and a mainstay of the Westbrook Orchestra, while the incomparable saxophonist Chris Biscoe has played a central role in Westbrook projects since the 1980s. Sharing the piano with Mike Westbrook is the highly talented young composer Matthew Bourne.

https://www.westbrookjazz.co.uk/westbrook-blake
https://blakesociety.org/westbrook-blake
https://www.blackheathhalls.com/the-westbrook-blake

18 dicembre 2025

Elliott Sharp ha pensato bene di accompagnare l'uscita del suo nuovo libro, Feedback-Translations from the IrRational (Wesleyan University Press, 2025), con la lettura pubblica di alcuni brani e con interventi musicali in solo e in duo con James Brandon Lewis: dal vivo al Roulette a Brooklyn, NY, la settimana scorsa, in diretta streaming e ora in Roulette Intermedium.

Feedback is a wide-ranging meditation on music, sound, artificial intelligence, consciousness, contemporary culture and politics, and the life of the touring musician. Author Elliott Sharp is considered one of the central figures in NYC's Downtown Scene and is a composer, producer, multi-instrumentalist, visual artist, and educator. Starting from a background in the sciences, Sharp found his passion for music as a teen, and it has never abated. His philosophy is informed not just by music and its creation but by continuing studies in physics and genetics and a visceral interest in our modern world and its joys and horrors. In Feedback, Sharp engages in speculative thought about how consciousness might have arisen and what the future holds for humanity with the advent of an Artificial Intelligence that is certainly artificial but might not exactly be intelligent. The "Improviser's Mind" is discussed in the context of post-quantum physics, probability, socio-acoustics, and Butoh dance. Sharp loves to digress into unpredictable areas but ties it all together in an overarching narrative that is both personal and conceptual.

17 dicembre 2025

La chiusura nel 2022 del celebre Mills College a Oakland, California e la sua successiva fusione con la Northeastern University - trasformandosi in Istituto con premesse e prospettive educative alquanto diverse - causò rabbia, sconcerto e disappunto tra studenti, insegnanti e numerosi operatori culturali della Bay Area, oltre a un buon numero di proteste e di cause legali. Alla fine di quell'epoca creativa e innovativa guarda oggi con affetto e rimpianto Zeena Parkins - lei che al Mills ha insegnato per diversi anni - dedicandovi Lament for the Maker, album prodotto da Relative Pitch Records. Contiene tre composizioni scritte per lei da John Bischoff, Laetitia Sonami e James Fei, e un suo brano 'aperto' (Berlin Bedroom) che sfida ogni limite e caratteristica costruttiva del suo strumento, ripreso in occasione del suo ultimissimo atto nella prestigiosa sede a febbraio dell'anno scorso.

https://www.instagram.com/zpribbon