A long overdue update of some of the many and diverse projects I have been involved with over the last year...
26 JUNE 2015 SFJAZZ CENTER - KRONOS PRESENTS TERRY RILEY FESTIVAL
There are moments in one's life/ career that imprint themselves indelibly into one's memory and you know will never be forgotten. Tonight was one of those for me. I have just returned from the SFJazz Centre having played as part of a scratch ensemble of some of the most incredible musicians I have ever met. Kronos Quartet's first Festival is to celebrate the life, work and career and 80th Birthday of the incredible Force of Nature that is Terry Riley! David Harrington and Janet Cowperthwaite invited me to contribute to a surprise finale playing jaw harp and saw for a new arrangement of the first piece Terry ever wrote for Kronos back in 1974 - Sunrise Of The Planetary Dream Collector. Playing alongside Zakir Hussein, Kronos, Wu Man and a dozen or so other brilliant people was unforgettable. Such a pleasure. Thank you Janet + David and Happy 80th Birthday Terry!
18 JUNE 2015 - PLAYED MUSICAL SAW AT MARC JACOBS' DECADENCE LAUNCH PARTY IN NYC
"Playing Lili Marlene on the saw....incredible!! #mjdecadence #marcjacobs"
Video clip below:
The incredible saw player at the #mjdecadence party
A video posted by Jamie Bochert (@jamiebochert) on Jun 20, 2015 at 2:54pm PDT
15 JUNE 2015 - CONTRIBUTED MUSICAL SAW AND JAW HARP TO NEW TOUT ALBUM, THIRD. OUT TODAY
"Can ambient music sound like Chris Isaak? If it can, then it’s Tout’s fault."
Great review here: https://www.normanrecords.com/records/153605-tout-third
29 MAY 2015 - PERFORMED DUET SET WITH LAURIE ANDERSON FOR HER SHOW "LANGUAGE OF THE FUTURE" AT SFJAZZ CENTER
http://www.sfjazz.or/events/season3/may29-laurie-anderson
23 MAY 2015 - TEST DEPT - DS30 SCREENING - Q+A + 'TOTAL STATE MACHINE' BOOK LAUNCH
An emotional, nostalgic, thought provoking evening at The Ritzy for the launch of the new Test Dept book and screenings of some of the archive footage and the new TD DS30 film. So great to see old friends and musical inspirations Gray, Paul and Angus (+ Alan Sutcliffe!) as well as bumping into many other eminent figures from my past! 30 years seems like 30 days. I'd not seen a lot of Brett Turnbull's archive footage before. Stunning and shocking in equal measure. Incredible to have been a tiny part of Test Dept. for a while back then. The World is a very different place now. Fight Back, Fight Back, Fight Back...
10 APRIL 2015 - RECORDING WITH STUART STAPLES AND THE EVER AMAZING JEHNNY BETH AT EASTCOTE STUDIOS
24 MARCH 2105 - Always such a total pleasure to spend time with my dear friend Simon Fisher Turner. Recording for new Deux Filles album. Playing Derek Jarman's beautiful Napolitan mandola from the 1870s simply adds to the enjoyment...
16 MARCH 2015 - MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA
On Monday evening in Melbourne I had an amazing experience. Via an acquaintance, I managed to contact a man I have been wanting to see and thank for 31 years. In 1984, Aboriginal musician and political activist Bart Willoughby taught me to play the yidaki (didjeridu). It changed my life. On Monday we spent several hours together talking, listening sharing. This man changed my life and my musical path. I want to thank him for his spirit and his wisdom and his love. For me Bart Willoughby is the most important musician in my life. Bart Willoughby, you are Real Australia.
MARCH 2015 - IN DREAMS: DAVID LYNCH REVISITED - 14 MARCH @ SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE AND 16/17 MARCH @ MELBOURNE RECITAL CENTRE
After a sold and and critically acclaimed premier at Barbican last June 2014, we took IN DREAMS to Australia where we sold out both the Sydney Opera House and Melbourne Recital Centre and garnered some pretty amazing 5* Press.
http://m.au.timeout.com/melbourne/music/events/13648/in-dreams-david-lynch-revisited
http://www.thedwarf.com.au/live_review/20770/in-dreams-david-lynch-revisited
http://www.australianmusician.com.au/review-dreams-david-lynch-revisited/
Click on image below for slideshow:
Wed 25 Feb 2015–Thu 26 Feb 2015
Improbable
The Eldership Project
Queen Elizabeth Hall
I created and performed a Live Score for 8 public sharings of Improbable's Eldership Project in 2 days and it was a life-changing experience. Exhilarating and Exhausting. Emotional and Uplifting. I sincerely hope this thing we joined forces to make will continue to grow and develop. Rare and beautiful moments spent with an incredible team.
Elders. Who are they?
We know them from stories: the toothless old cowboy, the crone with her potions, the grandfather who can relate to tearaway teenagers and the former ballerina who knows the price that must be paid.
Elders in stories know that their days of finding the cure / treasure / true love are over but they help the hero or heroine by being wise, older... and by just being there.
But in 21st-century Britain, Elders have nothing to offer us, do they?
Improbable, led by Artistic Directors Phelim McDermott and Lee Simpson, have set out to re-imagine the role of Eldership for a society that seems to think that Elder means elderly and elderly means that you're not much use to anyone.
The company's curiosity has taken them to some surprising places, including improvisation, puppetry, pyrotechnic spectacle, grand guignol and opera, but their focus is always on theatre as a living and live event unfolding in the moment.
The Eldership Project: an intimate work in progress; a piece in search of the lost path to Eldership: part installation, part performance and part conversation.
Click on images below for slideshow:
18 FEBRUARY 2015 - LEO ABRAHAMS + DAVID COULTER AT REDCHURCH
http://thequietus.com/articles/17239-xixo-see-saw-leo-abrahams-david-coulter-redchurch-brewery
JANUARY 2015 - LULLABY MOVEMENT PROJECT - SYDNEY FESTIVAL + MELBOURNE
LULLABY MOVEMENT is an evolving exploration of lullaby ritual
by Sophia Brous, David Coulter and Leo Abrahams (Australia/UK)
learned from migrant communities from around the world
interpreted through movement, music, theatre and song.
Commissioned for BANKSTOWN: LIVE by Urbantheatre Projects for the Sydney Festival
http://urbantheatre.com.au/current-projects/lullaby/
7/8/9 JANUARY 2015 - RECORDING SOLO SAW AT TILEYARD STUDIOS
An exciting start to the year with 3 days spent recording saws and jaw harps and other dcnoises with my old mate Martyn Ware for my dcnoisemaker library album for Christian Henson's SPITFIRE label.
4 JANUARY 2015 - NEW YEAR 2015 - TRESTLE RECORDS
The third of a Trestle Records annual tradition. A file sharing collaboration between artists on the label. A track with a strange life of its own being passed on from artist to artist.
31 DECEMBER 2014 - NEW YEAR'S EVE
As 2014 draws to a close, I look back with love, thanks and wonder at the incredible people, places and pleasures that have made it unforgettable. Too many to mention, but you know who you are! I will see in 2015 in solitude. Reflecting and projecting. A new beginning looms. My Beautiful Beloved Kei awaits me in California for our New Life in the Spring. A change is coming. To all my family and friends I wish Happiness, Love and Light. Ring in the Changes and let's make the World a better place. Happy New Year!
TUE 16 DECEMBER 2014–MONDAY 29 DECEMBER 2014 - APOCALYPSE MEOW: CRISIS IS BORN
I spent most of December performing with Meow Meow in one of the craziest shows I have ever been involved with. The woman is a crazed genius - and she is one of the most incredible vocalists I've ever worked with. Crazy and wild as the whole experience was, we managed to get some pretty amazing reviews!
Meow Meow
Apocalypse Meow: Crisis is born
Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall
Floods, fires, famines and unexpected fur-balls.
Are we at the End of Days, or just the end of another year?
Laugh in the face of imminent cat-astrophe as our favourite feline makes a rapturous return to Southbank Centre with her purr-fect, provocative brand of deliciously non-traditional holiday cheer.
She raised the roof of Queen Elizabeth Hall with her award-winning Little Match Girl in 2012 and blasted onto Royal Festival Hall with the London Philharmonic in 2013.
She toured the opera houses and circus tents of the world and crowd-surfed back into our hearts with Feline Intimate at London Wonderground this summer.
Now, to rouse you from your winter daze, it's a very Meow Meow Christmas show!
Celebrate the silly season with Meow's sensational songs, a sizzling hot band, surprising stocking stuffers, special special guests... and more christmassy schtick than you can throw a... Christmassy schtick at. Given the economic circumstances.
Enchanting, hilarious, wild and unexpected.
http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/dec/18/apocalypse-meow-crisis-is-born-review
http://www.timeout.com/london/theatre/apocalypse-meow-crisis-is-born
29 OCTOBER 2014 - PLAYING WITH THE HANDSOME FAMILY @ ISLINGTON ASSEMBLY HALL
Such fun to sit in with my dear friends Brett Sparks, Rennie Sparks and Jason Toth for their sold out show at Islington Assembly Hall this evening. Always such a pleasure. Thanks for inviting me.
25 OCTOBER 2014 - BRICK LANE - RECORDING SCORE FOR RIPPER STREET
Recording some of the scariest cues you can imagine on musical saw and nose flute with composer Dominik Scherrer.
22 OCTOBER 2014 - GOLDSMITHS UNIVERSITY MA PERFORMANCE MAKING
I am thrilled to be embarking upon a bit of a new adventure. It is my good fortune and delight to be working as a Visiting Tutor with MA Performance Making students in collaboration with MA Writing for Performance and MMus Composition students at Goldsmiths University of London. We shall be working towards creating new collaborative writing/ compositions to be performed on 11 December (my birthday!) So, onwards with the Barthes, Eisenstein, Tarkovsky and the Whitmore (!) and let's make this happen! Very happy and thankful to the amazing Anna Furse and my old ally Graeme Miller for roping me in. Can't wait to meet the students tomorrow...
11 OCTOBER 2014 - LANGUAGE IS A VIRUS FROM OUTER SPACE @ QEH - AN EVENING INSPIRED BY THE LIFE AND WORK OF WILLAM S. BURROUGHS
Very flattered to have received a lovely little review from last week's Burroughs Shenanigans at the QEH. The full piece was posted by Richard Strange. I wish I could have thanked Steve Ash for his kind words but tragically he died less than a week after the performance.
"But for me the best stage event came up next, when the sound artist David Coulter teamed up with drummer Seb Rochford (Polar Bear, Acoustic Ladyland) to produce two mind blowing psychedelic pieces The Branch and the Bundle and The Silence is Frightening. Ending in rapturous applause from the audience."
David Coulter and Seb Rochford , and Kate St. John, Terry Edwards, Jack Pinter and Richard Strange onstage as part of the William Burroughs Event at QEH. Photos by www.cjansenphotography.com
http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whatson/language-is-a-virus-from-outer-85860
8 OCTOBER 2014 - JARVIS COCKER GUARDIAN INTERVIEW
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/oct/08/jarvis-cocker-wireless-nights
Thanks Jarvis!
"Cocker is entirely self-taught as a musician, though he took his first steps towards becoming a classical composer earlier this year when the Kronos Quartet approached him to write a piece for its 40th anniversary concert at the Barbican. Cocker contributed a short work entitled Kerf for string quartet, electric organ and musical saw. “Kerf is a term used to describe the width of a blade,” he explains. “Saws – like string quartets – can play all the gaps between the conventional notes of the scale because there’s no keyboard or frets. I wanted to see how many different versions of a tone you could generate before it ceases to be the same note and starts to become another.”
Cocker wrote the piece in collaboration with virtuoso saw-player David Coulter, and played the single-note organ part himself. “That was because it was the only functional instrument in my basement when David came round to work on the piece,” Cocker explains. “It’s a bit cranky and unstable, though we used its quirks to determine the sound of the composition."
4 SEPTEMBER 2014 - RECORDING WITH STUART STAPLES IN LA SOUTERRAINE
28/29 AUGUST 2014 - SENSE OF SOUND'S MIGRATION MUSIC @ LIVERPOOL EVERYMAN
A dynamic new piece for Liverpool International Music Festival (LIMF) 2014.
It is a theatrical piece called Migration Music which mixes theatre and music in a collaboration between our extraordinary vocal ensemble, Sense of Sound Singers and beatboxers lead by Grammy award nominated Beatbox Master, Shlomo.
Make your own journey of musical discovery where Sense of Sound will ask, “What music is significant to you and how will you listen to the playlist of your life?”
A Nurse working with Alzheimer’s patients and other forms of dementia learns how to use music to stimulate responses, to stir the blood and to conjure memories of heritage and histories. By creating personalised playlists the Nurse sees a marked improvement in the mental and physical health of the people she cares for.
Migration Music explores the power of music and its ability to evoke, provoke and affect our consciousness.
The performance promises to be the theatrical highlight of the Liverpool International Music Festival incorporating unique interpretations of great musical pieces from the world of Classical Music, Jazz, Reggae, Spiritual, Dance and much more!
Directed by Matthew Xia
Musical Direction David Coulter
Digital Projection Design Joe Stathers-Tracey
Sound Design Xenia Bayer
Lighting Design Ciaran Cunningham
29 JULY 2014 - BECK SONG READER ALBUM RELEASED
Delighted to have contributed a track with Jarvis Cocker and Roger Eno to this release of BECK's Song Reader album - EYES THAT SAY "I LOVE YOU"