Shifting and switching from No Wave skronk to interstellar guitarist-as-drummer virtuosity, from stampedes of miniature Pomeranian Buffalos to All-You-Zombies heterophonies, Han-earl Park (박한얼) has been performing beautifully messy, joyously difficult, ambiguous and discordant improvised musics for over twenty years. Park is the mastermind behind ensembles including Eris 136199 with Catherine Sikora and Nick Didkovsky; Juno 3 with Lara Jones and Pat Thomas; and Gonggong 225088 with Yorgos Dimitriadis and Camila Nebbia; and performs as part of a duo with Richard Barrett. [More…]
Stet Lab featuring John Godfrey (guitar) plus The Real-Time Company (for the Ad-Hoc Association) of… Enda Buckley (guitar), Tony O’Connor (bass guitar), Owen Sutton (drums) and Athoulis Tsiopani (keyboard).
Admission: €10 (€5).
[Details…]
Stet Lab featuring Juniper Hill (voice) and friends, plus The Real-Time Company (for the Ad-Hoc Association) of… Philip Guiton (guitar), Marian Murray (violin), Claudia Schwab (violin) and Kevin Terry (guitar).
Admission: €10 (€5).
[Details…]
Interrupt the usual updates with news of a performance by my students.
On Friday March 19, 2010, 1:00 pm, at the Ó Riada Hall, UCC Music Building, Sundays Well, Cork, Ireland:
The Safety First Improvisers are putting on their end of year show. It will feature instances of momentary weirdness, inside and outside, reggae-rock-nuts and a popular Christmas number one. Support by the Dangerous Improvisations Group. Admission is free!
Every year is different, but this’ll be… all over the map! 🙂
A lip-reed, six strings, numerous membranes and metal discs.
Three valves; one potentiometer plus twenty-two frets; chains, sticks and beaters.
Six arms, six legs; three bodies coupled to artifacts.
No scores, many tactics; negotiated boundaries and shifting networks of relationships.
Date: Sunday, April 18, 2010.
Time: 8:00 pm.
Venue: Cafe OTO, 18–22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London E8 3DL, England.
Performers: Charles Hayward (drums), Han-earl Park (guitar) and Ian Smith (trumpet and flugelhorn) plus special guest Lol Coxhill (saxophone). Tickets: £5 advance / £6 on the door.
the performers
Charles Hayward is known as the pioneering drummer with This Heat and Camberwell Now, an ever growing list of solo concerts and CDs (most recent release Abracadabra Information on Locus Solus label), special collaborative performances, and is in Massacre with Bill Laswell and Fred Frith.
Throughout the 90’s up to the present he has initiated a bewildering array of events and performances, including the widely acclaimed series Accidents + Emergencies at the Albany Theatre, Out of Body Orchestra (too much sound, not enough space, not enough time), music made from the sound of the new Laban dance centre being built which was choreographed for the official opening, music for a circus (part of the National Theatre’s ‘Art of Regeneration’ initiative), the full-on installation/performance Anti-Clockwise (with Ashleigh Marsh and David Aylward) for multiple strobes, maze structure of diverse textures, 2 drummers, synthesizers and your nervous system. Recent developements include the Continuity evenings as part of Camberwell Arts.
Committed to song ‘but the shapes have to change’, his current one-man show is an intoxicating mix of percussive attack, swirling electronics and lyrical fragment collage.
“An unwavering belief in the power of the groove and an uncanny facility for generating one riff after another.” – The Wire
Improviser, guitarist, constructor and club-runner Han-earl Park (박한얼) works from / within / around the traditions of idiom-agnostic, experimental improvised musics, sometimes engineering theater, sometimes inventing ritual.
He is involved in ongoing collaborations with Bruce Coates, and with Franziska Schroeder, fifteen year long associations with Alex Fiennes and Murray Campbell, and has performed with Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith, George E. Lewis, J. D. Parran, Paul Dunmall, Pauline Oliveros, Thomas Buckner, Kato Hideki, Mark Sanders, Chick Lyall, Jan Langedijk, Stu Ritchie, Koen Nutters, Pedro Rebelo, Katie O’Looney, Elspeth Murray, Mark Trayle and Hannes Raffaseder. He is also the constructor of io 0.0.1 beta, an interactive musical artifact, and cofounder of the Church of Sonology.
Park is a recipient of grants from the Arts Council of Ireland and Music Network. He has appeared at festival including Sonic Acts (Amsterdam), the Center for Experiments in Art, Information and Technology Festival (California), dialogues festival (Edinburgh), Sonorities (Belfast) and VAIN Live Art (Oxford).
Park is founder and curator of Stet Lab, a monthly improvised music space in Cork, Ireland.
“Bandy-legged Han-earl Park (gitah)… drugged the ref and delivered a few kidney punches with a horseshoe in his boxing mitt.” – Jamie Smith (Owlhouse Recordings)
Since 1992 Ian Smith has been playing improvised music and has performed with Evan Parker, John Stevens, Maggie Nicols, Lol Coxhill, Steve Beresford and Eddie Prévost among others. His own trio, Trian, has played at the 1993 London Experimental Music Festival and the 1992 Soho Jazz Festival. He also participated in a reformation of Cornelius Cardew’s Scratch Orchestra in the ICA in 1994. He has collaborated with composer Roger Doyle, winner of the Bourges International Elecro-Acoustic Music Competition 1997, and he has been featured on two instrumental tracks by the hip hop band Marxman. He toured the UK with Butch Morris’ London Skyscraper conduction project in November 1997.
Current projects include The Temporary Brass Trio with Gail Brand (trombone) and Oren Marshall (tuba); Fanatic Hearts, an electric band with Dave Tucker (guitar), Alex Ward (alto sax/guitar), Pat Thomas, Knut Auferman (live sampling and processing), Simon Fell (electric bass) and Tony Marsh (drums); the London Improvisers Orchestra; and The Big Top organised with Oren Marshall and Dean Speedwell to actively encourage ad-hoc groupings of musicians from a myriad of backgrounds to come together, play and listen. The first meeting was in November 2000 and involved improvisors Maggie Nichols, Lol Coxhill, Alan Tomlinson, Steve Beresford and Simon Fell among others.
“…Exploring all of his instrument’s registers, producing dog growls, fanfares, miniscule mouthpiece squeaks and tones so muted they sound as if they come not from inside his horn, but from within his throat.” – Ken Waxman
On Monday, March 15, 2010, at 9:00 pm (doors at 8:45 pm): An improvised music event with the Jitney Trio (Marian Murray (violin), Neil O’Loghlen (double bass) and Han-earl Park (guitar)) plus the Quiet Music Ensemble (Roddy O’Keeffe (trombone), Ilse De Ziah (’cello), John Godfrey (guitar) and Jesse Ronneau (double bass)). The event takes place at The Roundy (Castle Street, Cork, Ireland) and admission is €12 (€6) at the door.
Performance by the Jitney Trio (Marian Murray (violin), Neil O’Loghlen (double bass) and Han-earl Park (guitar)) plus the Quiet Music Ensemble (Roddy O’Keeffe (trombone), Ilse De Ziah (’cello), John Godfrey (guitar) and Jesse Ronneau (double bass)).
Admission: €12 (€6).
[Details…]
[Poster…]
On Saturdays, January 9th, 16th, 23rd and 30th 2010, at 1:00 pm: The debut performances by the Jitney Trio! Marian Murray (violin), Neil O’Loghlen (double bass) and Han-earl Park (guitar) perform at Basement Project Space, 1 Camden Place , Camden Quay, Cork, Ireland. Admission is free.
2010 (date TBC): Blackrock Castle Observatory (Cork, Ireland) will be the site for on-stage meetings between human and machine improvisers. This event will mark the debut of two extraordinary machine musicians, io 0.0.1 beta++ and iWife constructed by Han-earl Park and John Godfrey respectively. Featuring Bruce Coates and Franziska Schroeder (saxophones), and Francis Heery (diffusion), the performances will be part critique and part playful exploration, both a boundary-breaking public demonstration of socio-musical technologies and an ironic sci-fi parody.
