(Friday) April 27 – IMOO #176: Not the Music feat. John Butcher

***Note – special day and time: this is a Friday concert with an 8pm start***

• John Butcher – tenor saxophone
• Philippe Lauzier – bass clarinet, soprano saxophone
• Éric Normand – electric bass, snare drum

John Butcher’s work ranges through improvisation, his own compositions, multitracked pieces and explorations with feedback, unusual acoustics and non-concert locations.
Originally a physicist, he left academia in ’82, and has since collaborated with hundreds of musicians – Derek Bailey, John Tilbury, John Stevens, The EX, Akio Suzuki, Gerry Hemingway, Polwechsel, Gino Robair, Rhodri Davies, Okkyung Lee, John Edwards, Toshi Nakamura, Paul Lovens, Eddie Prevost, Mark Sanders, Christian Marclay, Otomo Yoshihide, Phil Minton, and Andy Moor – to name a few.

He is well known as a solo performer who attempts to engage with the uniqueness of place. Resonant Spaces is a collection of site-specific performances collected during a tour of unusual locations in Scotland and the Orkney Islands.
His first solo album, Thirteen Friendly Numbers, includes compositions for multitracked saxophones, whilst later solo CDs focus on live performance, composition, amplification and saxophone-controlled feedback.

HCMF has twice commissioned him to compose for his own large ensembles. Other commissions include for Elision, the Rova & Quasar Saxophone Quartets, reconstructed Futurist Intonarumori, “Tarab Cuts” (based on pre-WWII Arabic recordings, and shortlisted for the 2014 British Composer’s Award), “Good Liquor ..” for the London Sinfonietta and “Fixations and the Open Road” for CEPRO.
In 2011 he received a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Artists.

Recent groupings include The Apophonics (+Gino Robair/John Edwards), Thermal (+Andy Moore/Thomas Lehn), Vellum (+Tony Buck/Magda Mayas) and trios with John Edwards/Mark Sanders and Matt Shipp/Thomas Lehn.

Butcher values playing in occasional encounters – ranging from large groups such as Butch Morris’ London Skyscraper and the EX Orkestra, to duo concerts with David Toop, Kevin Drumm, Claudia Binder, Ståle Liavik Solberg, Paal Nilssen-Love, John Tilbury, Fred Frith, Keiji Haino, Ute Kangeisser, Matthew Shipp and Yuji Takahashi.

With their gentle noise and cracked linearity, the duo of Philippe Lauzier and Éric Normand enact a sound environment that is contemplative yet stands on the edge of the precipice; an environment in which the monsters of rough texture are tamed. Calling forth hidden lyricism from their instruments, Messrs. Lauzier and Normand scrape their fingernails across the proverbial blackboard to exquisite effect. The duo have played in more then 12 countris including Slovenia, Latvia, Norway, Croatia and Australia.