I am sad to announce that I will unfortunately not be taking part in the events in Birmingham (March 17, 2020), Cheltenham (March 19), and London (March 21 and 22). All the events, however, are still taking place without me, so please support the fantastic community of local musicians and curators.
My warmest thanks to all the artists involved, big thanks to Jamie Dawson for again offering to lend me the use of his guitar amp, and special thanks to Tom Ward, Andrew Woodhead and Chris Cundy for inviting me to perform. I hope we can set up a rematch in the future.
The Lamp Tavern
Barford Street
Birmingham B5 6AH
England
7:30pm
Han-earl Park (guitar) presented by Fizzle. Also performing: Bruce Coates (saxophones), Sarah Farmer (violin), Walt Shaw (percussion) and Lee Boyd Allatson (drums). Admission: £7/5 at the door.
[Fizzle page…] The event is still taking place, but Han-earl Park will no longer be taking part.
March 19, 2020
Smokey Joe’s
16 Bennington Street
Cheltenham GL50 4ED
England
8:00pm
Chris Cundy (reeds) plus Han-earl Park (guitar) presented by Radio Egypt.
Admission: £5 at the door. The event is still taking place, but Han-earl Park will no longer be taking part.
March 21, 2020
waterintobeer
Unit 2 Mantle Court
209–211 Mantle Road
Brockley
London SE4 2EW
England
7:00pm (doors: 6:30pm)
Tom Ward (saxophone) and Han-earl Park (guitar) presented by BRÅK. Also performing: Cath Roberts and Charlotte Keeffe, and Colin Webster and Matthew Grigg. Admission: one Bank of England note.
[BRÅK page…] The event is still taking place, but Han-earl Park will no longer be taking part.
Han-earl Park (guitar), Alex Bonney (trumpet and electronics) and Cath Roberts (baritone saxophone). Also performing: Ti/om (Tom Ward: bass clarinet and flute; and Tim Fairhall: double bass). Admission: one Bank of England note.
[100 Years Gallery page…] The event is still taking place, but Han-earl Park will no longer be taking part.
The Lamp Tavern
Barford Street
Birmingham B5 6AH
England
7:30pm
Bruce Coates (saxophones), Han-earl Park (guitar) and Walt Shaw (percussion) presented by Fizzle. Also performing: Liam Noble (piano), Mark Lewandowski (double bass) and Jim Bashford (drums) and Andrew Woodhead (piano). Admission: £5.
[Details…] [Fizzle listings…]
Screeching and scraping in an improv style, this quartet assailed the ears with a pleasing melee of noise, some of it vaguely intelligible. Caroline Pugh jabbered away in what sounded like snatches of Greek, while the guitarist Han-earl Park did impossibly intricate yet percussive stuff on his guitar fret. Mad but entertaining. It was in the backroom of a gloomy back-street boozer. When I tentatively asked the elderly landlord “Where’s the jazz tonight?”, he said “I wouldn’t call it jazz. More like a fookin’ racket.” He was right! [Read the rest…]
Five performance this final month of 2015! A great privilege to have shared the stage with so many awesomely creative, smart and generous people. Let’s get to the hat-tips…
Okay, start with a thanks to my co-conspirators, Dominic Lash, Mark Sanders and Caroline Pugh, who consistently created fascinating, difficult, infuriating, confounding and beautiful spaces for interaction. Listening to the music play out in real-time, all I could think was that it sounds great whenever the guitarist shuts-up. (As Josh Sinton pointed out later, that’s really a wonderful position to be in; not knowing how to contribute to—to add to—an already perfect ensemble at play.)
Thanks to Ingrid Laubrock for the play—it was great to come-off a… logistically challenging set of gigs into a relaxed performance where, well, anything might happen… and we ended up in some interesting and unexpected places. (Felt very good about this one.)
To Josh Sinton and Nick Didkovsky, well… That. Was. A. Blast. …Thanks, Josh, Nick, for the Loud Jazz (best possible sense!).
Big thanks to all the venues and promoters, DIYers and supporters: to the indefatigable Andrew Woodhead at Fizzle; to Seth Cooke and everyone at Bang the Bore for an awesome event; to Fielding Hope, Oli Barrett and everyone at Cafe OTO for their support, and for their patience with all the ups’n’downs; to Josh and everyone at 65Fen Music Series; and to Cisco Bradley for inviting me to perform at New Revolution Arts (a beautiful space—socially, musically).
Thanks to Tom Durham the gentleman who lent me his amplifier in Birmingham (sorry, can’t remember your name!), and to Andrew Drury and Chris Welcome who did the same in Brooklyn—y’all made my travels so much more pleasant!
The tour by my ensemble with Dom, Mark and Caroline was made possible with funding from Culture Ireland, and I am extremely grateful for their support.
Thanks to Dom Lash and Kate Hendry, and to Josh Sinton and family, for offering a place for this itinerant musician to crash a night (or three). Kudos to Nasc Ireland for helping me navigate some border… technicalities 😉
And a very special thanks to the Best Sound Engineer in the Known Universe, Alex Fiennes, for taking time to make the music sound great in London.
Finally, as always, thanks, thanks, thanks, everyone, for listening.
An SUV-sized violin tailgating, a No Wave guitarist desperately trying to survive in the Appalachian Mountains, someone dropping sheets of metal during a Jazz Session, an evolutionary biologist finding themselves speaking in tongues (Awash In Blue).
I am beyond pleased, and feel extremely privileged, to be taking this group of stupendously creative, and unique crafty, people on the road. It’d be only a small exaggeration to say that this ensemble, more than any other, embodies the kinds of interactive creativity—an at times discordant tension between autonomy and collectivism—that get me fired up. Excited? Yes. And you should be too 😉 Hope you can make it to a performance; I guarantee it will be something special.
