Dopo la chiusura del 'mitico' club The Red Rose di Seven Sisters Road al jazz e alle musiche di improvvisazione, la London Improvisers' Orchestra ha trovato ospitalità per le proprie sessioni, per tradizione la prima domenica di ogni mese, presso il Cafe Oto. Dell'orchestra - collettivo mutevole e assai flessibile, dove comunque ricorrono le presenze di Harry Beckett, Ian Smith, Terry Day, Alan Tomlinson, Caroline Kraabel, Lol Coxhill, Sylvia Hallett, Pat Thomas, Steve Beresford - è disponibile da poco un nuovo cd, Improvisations for George Riste, per l'etichetta curata da Evan Parker, psi.
L'orchestra è colta in azione in diversi filmati realizzati dalla regista e pittrice Helen Petts, e se ne vedono alcuni estratti, assieme ad altri di notevole interesse, in http://www.youtube.com/user/helentonic

Cafe Oto
18-22 Ashwin Street
London, E8 3DL
tel 020 7923 1231

E ancora a proposito di anniversari per Henry Cow: esattamente trent'anni fa si teneva a Milano, in piazza del Duomo, il loro ultimo concerto. Era il 25 luglio 1978.

Una breve storia del gruppo raccontata da Chris Cutler si legge in http://tinyurl.com/5hvzob, introdotta come segue:

"There are a million ways to tell this story: through the music, the social arrangements, politically, artistically, subjectively. Certainly every member of the group would have a very different version. I'll just try to give some bones, some significant events, a little background and say, now and then, how, I felt about some of it. Memory is treacherous, so I write this referring as much as possible to contemporary documents and notes. Most what follows is adapted loosely from something I wrote for Andy Ortmann soon after the band broke up. Which explains why the style is sometimes a little odd.
A couple of other preliminaries:
Henry Cow was first and foremost a performing group; none of the records get near to what we were like on stage, and of course, there is a mass of music that we never even tried to record.
For the bulk of our touring life, there were as many women in the band as men - road crew as well as performers.
Henry Cow was a full time project and we pretty much lived on top of each other for about 5 years, either on tour or rehearsing. We lived frugally - all the money we earned went into a kitty to pay for equipment, vehicles, repairs, and travel. Only in the last three-and-a-half years were we finally able to pay ourselves anything (£10, £15, £20 and in the last six months £25 a week). The band fed us - that was my job, with Maggie Thomas, who came on most of the tours with us and ended up being our sound engineer. John's wife Sarah was also our sound engineer for a long time, and their tiny son Ben travelled with us a lot, as did Dagmar and Anthony's son Max.
The group was run through a combination of meetings - formal, weekly, minuted meetings - and personal zones of responsibility (for accounts, catering, route planning, administration, maintenance and so on). We wound up in a lot of bizarre places and did some things which, looking back, might appear extremely eccentric - noble - ridiculous - stupid - idealistic but which seemed perfectly reasonable at the time. There was hardly any outside - so where would perspective come from? I just mention it, since there's no space for any of that in here. Your cue, then, to dip what you read below into a pot seething with failure and achievement, art and psychology, agape, confusion, suffering - and moments nothing could improve upon. And hormones. Lots of hormones. You talk about a revolution? We 'eel.. someone else already had the last word on that: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."

http://www.ccutler.com

In http://www.schl8hof.wels.at si legge il programma - ancora provvisiorio - della ventiduesima edizione del festival Unlimited a Wels, Austria dal 7 al 9 novembre 2008.

venerdì 7 novembre 2008

ore 19.00 @ Schl8hof:

Subshrubs (Angelica Castello, Maja Osojnik, Katharina Klement, Billy Roisz)
C.K. & The 45ers (Christof Kurzmann, Ken Vandermark, Clayton Thomas, Martin Brandlmayer, N.N.)
A Tribute To Albert Ayler (Joe Mcphee, Roy Campbell Jr., William Parker, Warren Smith)
Le Tigre De Platanes & Etenesh Wassie

sabato 8 novembre 2008

ore 14.00 @ Kornspeicher: Lasse Marhaug solo

ore 15.00 @ Mkh: Xavier Charles, Franz Hautzinger, Jp Gross, Lionel Marchetti
ore 19.00 @ Schl8hof:

High Birds (Paul Dunmall, Hilary Jeffery, Rozemarie Heggen, Alan Purves)

Fire Room (Ken Vandermark, Lasse Marhaug, Paal Nilssen-Love)

Trio Wilbert De Joode / Christine Sehnaoui / Le Quan Ninh

Kackala (Hilary Binder, Eva Kubesova, Katerina Kubesova, Lexa Walsh)

Getatchew Mekuria & The Ex & Guests (Joost Buis, Xavier Charles, Brodie West, Colin Mclean)

domenica 9 novembre 2008

ore 14.00 @ Pavillon: Christine Sehnaoui & Susanna Gartmayer

ore 15.00 @ Kornspeicher: Alan Purves solo
ore 18.00 @ Schl8hof:

Duo Rozemarie Heggen & Mary Oliver

Root Down Orchestra (Tommy Meier, Irene Schweizer, Co Streiff, Hans Koch, Uvam.)

Sol6 (Luc Ex, Hannah Marshall, Ingrid Laubrock, Mandy Drummond, Veryan Weston, Tony Buck)

Peter Brötzmann / Michiyo Yagi / Paal Nilssen-Love

http://www.schl8hof.wels.at