I can already hear the laughters cracking among my closest friends as, lately, I have been beating the drum for my retirement and now I announce my next concert - the last one... for a bit... under this shape...

Anyway, Bechir "boom boom" Saade the maverick lebanese ney player and defunct clarinet player hits our shores once more. I had to put something together for him and I know you would never have pardonned me to leave such a gem pass by.

All the details will be available shortly.

Cheerio
o

Hello,

However much I like Cafe Oto I am quite excited to program an event in a different venue just for the ride. I'm inviting you to the charming church hall in Exmouth Market thrice blessed by the presence of David Stackenas, Frederic Blondy and Will Guthrie.

I'm double excited by the fact that the event will present music and films. Indeed Mathias Forge, french trombone player, is coming to London in the same period as Dirk De Bruyn, filmmaker from Australia.

All this is happening with fairly short notice as it's going to take place on Sunday the 2nd of November.

Short notice, visiting film and music artists and a different space, it could be a defining event of what I want to do - if ever the audience attend to it.

Cheerio

o

To revive this section I thought I could mention here other interesting events. To start off this new thread I chose -quite lazily I admit- a film event that's dear to my heart.

Peter Gidal curates a night of experimental films in the pavillion of the Serpentine Gallery, the films featured are:

Malcome Legrice: Matrix, Lecture at the Academy and Berlin Horse
Samantha Rebello: Surface of Residual Matter (collaboration with Angharad Davies) and In Suspension (steaming hot from Sam's editing machine)
Simon Payne: Colour Bars and Thirds
Jennifer Nightingale: Colour Pinhole Film (Cathedral)

All the details can be found here park_nights

And to read about the filmmakers have a look at:
Malcolm_Le_Grice
Samantha_Rebello
Simon_Payne

Jennifer Nightingale explores the relationships between the control of the filmmaking process and the gestures of the filmmaker. She studied for her BA from KIAD in Canterbury, and graduated with an MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art. She's been awarded the FURTHER2 residency from the no.w.here lab.

Back in front of my computer after a long while I can finally ask you what you thought of the last event (10th of April with Will Guthrie, John Edwards, Phil Durrant and all that)? Please send me your comments and impressions.
Also, I'd love to see pictures if you've got some so I can feel a bit less frustrated from missing it.


Now, I should have -and give- a break for a bit and will be back with new projects in two months. The first one is a night at Cafe Oto in Dalston where David Ryan and I will present works addressing - somehow - the relationship between improvisation and composition.


The other project is even more indeterminate but will involve dance, just to let you know that the research of the begining of the year hasn't been dropped out and we're building up a group of people interested in spending time on the idea of collaboration between music and dance.


Hope you're all well and merry.


See you before too long.


Cheerio

o

Listen to this...

Will Guthrie (perc)/ Guillaume Viltard (db)/ Sebastien Coste (s)
Phil Durrant / Eugene Martynec (both on software, synthesizers and samplers)
John Edwards (db) / Adrian Northover (s)

Sounds good? Well maybe to you but to me it's bad news as it'll take place on the 20th of April and I won't be able to make it. Pick up your chance to attend a Small But Perfectly Formed event without the Silly Beyond Poxy Foolish comparing and remember to tell me how it was.

o

Music's nice and all that but the reason of being of Small But Perfectly Formed is to help collaborations and not only concerts to happen.
I wanted to do meetings with dancers for a while. I had a chat with Olivier Toutlemonde (http://olivier.toulemonde.free.fr/) two years ago about a project he's got called Et/Ou where dance, film and music meet. Nice and easy! Take all the live performance types I know about and put them in a room to see what they can share and exchange. Chisenhale Dance Space offered the project a certain amount of studio hours to develop the idea.
The results will be presented in a very short improvisation on Friday the 7th of March.
It'll involve Guillaume Viltard, Samantha Rebello and Robert Anderson.

I'm curious to know if there'll be anybody from the music scene attending.

Laters,

o

Hello,

Frederic Blondy, pianist of best-seller Hubbub (see www.incursion.org/imr/archive/031.html) has conctacted me to sort out a concert. I've never heard him play in a small formation.
He's bringing with him Martine Altenburger who played few gigs with John Russel in London two or three years ago, I really look forward to see her again. He's also dragging Bertrand Gauget, a sax I've heard a lot about.

It shall take place on Sunday 24th February in the funny looking hall where I did the concert with David Stackenas.

Don't know yet who they're going to play with but John Bisset will be choosing the second act.

More soon.

Cheerio

o

A friend looked at my flyer yesterday and said "ah yeah, old school again".
You let yourself go in the gentle flow of your days and one day life catches up with you. There's a cure to all crisis. To prevent middle-age stroke let's have a wee computer night. Better a mixed media event!
The Foundry will -ever so kindly- host the third (or fourth?) Small But Perfectly Formed exhibition on Wednesday 12th of March. Damien Beaton is the lucky artist to display his work while incidentalists will count Isambard Khroustaliof, Nos Phillipe and Paul Abbott.

Do you know where I could buy good printed T-shirts?