I bill be performing as part of Orchestra NEw at Café Oto on the 1st of April. This is a benefit event in support of Ukraine.
More info here and below:
A large improvising ensemble brought together by Caroline Kraabel; for this event it is made up of women and non-binary people; the group is also open to trans people.
Khabat Abas, cello Sofia Vaisman-Maturana, cello, Isidora Edwards, cello Shama Rahman, sitar Shima Kobayashi, chromatic harmonica Emi Watanabe, flutes Emily Shapiro, clarinets Caroline Kraabel, alto sax (contributing a piece for improvisers) Dee Byrne, alto sax (contributing a piece for improvisers) Sue Lynch, tenor sax, flute, clarinet (contributing a piece for improvisers) Cath Roberts, baritone sax Charlotte Keeffe, trumpet Rosa Theodora, piano Beibei Wang, percussion (contributing a piece for improvisers) Greta Pistaceci, theremin and electronics Kirsty Ferguson-Lewis, voice (contributing a piece for improvisers) Lara Jones, soprano saxophone
Livia Garcia will provide an animated film-score for improvisation
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ONe exciting thing about improvising as a person who is not a cis-gendered white man is working to find a new musical language, freeing oneself of the default assumptions built up over millennia of domination and oppression... this may produce musics and processes that sound wrong in some ways, or to some ears, but if we can conceive of them and allow ourselves to explore them it opens up novel, important and unfamiliar sound-worlds.
Improvising is also a way for us to be together safely in sound, life and communication while we search for these new languages... mutual respect; listening, uttering… knowing when we can be trusted NOT to listen, learning to listen in new ways... every timeoneplays there are new ways of hearing, as well as new things to hear.
Improvisation is also, by necessity, a big part of just being ‘other’ ... and otherness (that everyone has somewhere in their heart, in some tiny or huge place) is where we improvise from, because we have little choice but to seek...
We don’t want to be granted special privileges from which we’re currently excluded, but to re-make the world so all can be heard.
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All proceeds from tonight’s gig will be donated to two organisations supporting refugees and civil society in Ukraine: https://www.donio.sk/kto-pomoze-ukrajine Providing the basic necessities of life, plus legal and psychological assistance for people in Ukraine, and those who have left Ukraine for Slovakia, offering a network of contacts and assistance for them in their integration into the labour market or education.
https://kyivpride.org/en/ Providing humanitarian support to LGBTI people in Kyiv
