Live
Juxtavoices
Juxtavoices is a 20 voice antichoir which has been entertaining and occasionally alarming audiences since 2010. At this concert they will be performing two pieces, both written specially for Bishops House which use the house’s structure and space as a part of the music. Expect the unexpected as this legendary group conjures its unique mix of performance poetry and improvised voices.
“Here's a mass exorcism, a whole tribe talking in tongues, 30 full-moon were-Ligetis, and Wicker Man workings wrangled by the Swingle Singers." - Stewart Lee, SUNDAY TIMES
Whale Detective
A meeting of sonorous clarinet and piano sounds and lush electronic textures, loops and drones from the reflective to the mysterious, in the moment conversational music. Hannah Brady (clarinet/alto clarinet/alto sax) and Jez Matthews (piano/electronics) have developed a musical relationship over 20 years through a long standing involvement in the jazz scene. Their music is almost entirely improvised, with electronics providing both an inspiration and a starting point.
They’ve recorded 2 EPs, one as whale detective, which featured on BBC Radio 3’s ‘Freeness’ programme, and Sheffield Live’s ‘Sounds Like This’ radio show, and a second with like-minded Sheffield improvisers balo, entitled ‘baleine’, released in February 2023, with a sellout gig at Jazz at The Lescar, an award-winning weekly gig which Jez also runs.
"The musical chemistry between Hannah and Jez is undeniable and, with the aid of atmospheric electronics, their improvisations mesmerise." Now Then Magazine
https://whaledetective.bandcamp.com/album/whale-detective
https://balo-project.bandcamp.com/album/baleine
Instagram: @whaledetective
Previous gigs
First live outing for this new quartet version of the group. We're a motorik influenced improvising rock group, and our current live set is based on our recently released fourth album VEER. "This album almost miraculously achieves an enviable balance between form and disintegration, coining a language that is neither jazz nor rock, nor pure avant-garde, but rather a very personal fusion of all these styles." (New Dawn Of Prog). We're supported on this date by improvising electronics duo AYUSP.
8.00-10.45 pm, doors open 7.20 pm
Martin Archer: saxophones
Charlotte Keeffe: trumpet
Chris Sharkey: guitar
Dave Sturt: bass guitar
Adam Fairclough: drums
Yvonna Magda: violin/electronics
Laura Cole: piano and Rhodes
Martin Pyne: vibraphone/electronics
Sheffield-based saxophonist, composer and record producer Martin Archer reprises his highly successful 2020 gig at Sheffield Jazz with a talented octet of musicians. Taking the electric music of Miles Davis as its starting point and the radical innovations of the black American music of the AACM as its end point, Anthropology Band is about finding the atmosphere through a deep rhythm, a searing blues run, a delicate melody, or a cascading solo statement.
Band leaders Martin Archer and Charlotte Keeffe have kept the music as simple as possible – often driven by the bass line – and the structures loose to enable the group to let the music breathe in a different way each time it is played. There are multiple chordal instruments in the centre of the sound, allowing each soloist to sit on a kaleidoscopic wave of inter-crossing figures which push the music forward. This music will be taken from the original studio album, the subsequent live album ‘Scald’, plus some new pieces performed for the first time at Sheffield Jazz.
“An outstanding collection of improvisers with a programme that is inspired by, but definitely not copies from, electric Miles. In fact, if it’s not sacrilege, I’d say it’s better, it’s a 21st century version. It’s how Miles might have sounded if his collaboration with Jimi Hendrix and Gil Evans had come about” – Peter Slavid, review of Liverpool International Jazz Festival gig
“Martin Archer’s aesthetic is an intriguing and transformative one—whatever enters his world comes out changed, if not utterly, then beautifully” – Duncan Heining, All About Jazz
“Anthropology Band takes Davis’s electric phase as inspiration for a massive, gorgeous double album of the same set of compositions…” – Lee Rice Epstein, Free Jazz Collective
“This really deserves a wide and enthusiastic audience and is highly recommended” – Chris Baber, Jazz Views
Hi Res Heart is an improvising group where spaciousness and fire co-exist. Even when the music is at its most abstract, the spirit of the blues is never too far away. the horns are direct and melodic in an open ended flow which reacts to the moment, while the unusual percussion set-up provides an ever changing textual and rhythmic counterpoint. For this concert the group expands its sound with the addition of double bass. Hi Res Heart's first album is available now from Discus Music.
'Cherish these sounds, for their creators indeed make them sing.'
Darren Bergstein, Downtown Music Gallery, New York
Martin Archer (woodwind), Charlotte Keeffe (trumpet), Martin Pyne (drums and vibes) plus special guests Michael Bardon (bass) and/or Nick Shelton (animations) on some dates