Han-earl Park, April 11, 2011: ‘Lab report 2007-2011: signing-out as curator’

“As previously announced, after thirty-two events over three and a quarter years, I’ve stepped down as curator of Stet Lab as of February 2011.”

Corey Mwamba, December 9, 2010: ‘Lab report december 6th 2010: thank you!’

“It always helps if the other people are wanting to do the same thing and I think that happened—there were some lovely moments where things really came together. I was even relaxed enough to go on the drums—which as I am sure you’ll hear, was a mistake, but a relaxed mistake.”

Susan Geaney, December 6, 2010: ‘Lab report november 15th 2010: let the rant begin…’

“We improvisers dig the ego or can’t escape it. Like a game of snakes and ladders, we chop and change direction every 2–5″.”

Colm Pattwell, November 23, 2010: ‘Lab report october 11th and november 15th 2010: humming, buzzing’

“One thing I want to hear is someone just grooving on something limited or ‘standard’ for want of a better word. For all the different music being played at the lab, sometimes it just doesn’t sound that different to itself!”

Han-earl Park, April 26, 2010: ‘Lab report april 12th 2010: consequences of actions’

“A single quote… can have interesting and problematic consequences for interaction. The effectiveness of the quote—to be able to collapse and redirect and improvisation—is also what makes them hard to deal with.”

John Godfrey, April 23, 2010: ‘Lab report april 12th 2010: kudos’

Han-earl Park, April 7, 2010: ‘Lab report march 8th 2010: 3+1 questions’

“Is ‘success’ (however that’s defined) a meaningful idea in approaching (as listener or performer) improvisation?”

Ruti Lachs, February 7, 2010: ‘Lab report january 11th 2010: get together and make weird noises’

“I played some stuff that I couldn’t recognise as a tune, but the audience seemed to recognise it as valid, cos they clapped, and even laughed once or twice at the funny bits!”

Han-earl Park, January 26, 2010: ‘Lab report december 7th 2009: futzing’

“Neither ‘intentional’ (‘deliberate’ and ‘authorial’) nor ‘noise’ (e.g. the Cagian denial of agency). These things—‘noise’/‘intention’—exist on a line, and it isn’t so much about riding the border between them, but steeping off that line. We want to enter a space that is not about control, nor the lack of it, but about surprises, densities and irregularities; about relationships—differences and negotiations….”

Han-earl Park, November 21, 2009: ‘Lab report november 10th 2009: history and lineage’

“I want, at bare minimum, to be able to play—to have a relationship with the guitar that is technically accomplished—but I also want to want to be heard—that listeners/audiences would seek out my playing and my performances.”

Han-earl Park, November 2, 2009: ‘Lab report october 12th 2009: a conversation with eliza’

“Most of my work in the last few years has been in the jam session mold. People fly in, or I fly out, and there’s an ad-hoc meeting. What I miss is the band.”

Piaras Hoban, October 20, 2009: ‘Lab report October 12th 2009: be no shelter to these outrages’

“tap
“low end light a little
“the
“blow tap tap wind
“blow tap tap wind tap
“on”

Han-earl Park, July 3, 2009: ‘Lab report June 8th 2009: play different’

“I did have fun, but I think I also realized (remembered?) why I’d been avoiding this particular mode of interaction. It’s too easy; the choices are the most obvious. It’s like movies that, uncertain of the intelligence of their audience, get loaded with too much exposition.”

Veronica Tadman, June 13, 2009: ‘Lab report June 8th 2009: the alarm will sound if you don’t back away’

“So, why was it annoying me? I think it’s because I love control. (Why then am I interested in performing improvisation?) I wasn’t in control of the alarm: one could argue that I wasn’t in control of my fellow improvisers, but my argument to that is, if I wanted to I could have pulled the plug and prevented power. Also as we were an ensemble my input had a consequence on what happened (especially with what Piaras [Hoban] was doing because i was linked to his computer). Likewise he was in control of what happened with my input so it was almost like equilibrium.”

Han-earl Park, June 10, 2009: ‘Lab report May 11th 2009: parking your idiom’

“…I want the listening experience to be rich and interesting. If you’re sharp, you’d have caught it, made connections, and patted yourself on the back for being a clever listener; if not, well, no biggie, hopefully there’s enough complexity to provide ear-candy and (unintended) connections.”

Han-earl Park, May 25, 2009: ‘Lab report April 14th 2009: little instruments’

“My mentors include those who enroll gargantuan complex of musical resources and those who do not. How do I figure in this equation? There are, of course, pragmatic dimensions to this… but nonetheless what are the political/ideological implications of subscribing to one position?”

Ros Steer, April 1, 2009: ‘Lab report March 10th 2009: beginner bassist’s blathering blog’

“Leaving aside any personal taste in the aesthetics of sound, I think it’s more fun to perform together. I don’t mean that the performers should always be ‘in tune’ with each other or mimicking each other but just in tune to each other.”

Han-earl Park, March 29, 2009: ‘Lab report March 10th 2009: the possibility of failure’

“There’s a logic to the… abandonment of safety nets. Their absence can reveal who you are (and might be) without those prothesis. In engineering terms, by removing a component, you can test out the behavior of the rest of the (cyborgian) system…. What I discovered wasn’t exactly wonderful.”

Han-earl Park, February 23, 2009: ‘Lab report February 10th 2009: train wrecks and other fascinating disasters’

“I’m not sure what ‘opposite’ might mean in a musical-performance context (never mind one in which identities and relationships are being (re)negotiated in real-time). Isn’t saying that this (performance infected by agendas, etc.) is not improvisation, akin to saying that polemical or ideological disagreements are not democratic?”

Andrea Bonino, February 22, 2009: ‘Lab report February 10th 2009: on playing and being played’

“In the best moments when music really works, I still have the impression that music is coming through the musicians, and the musicians receive it and transmit it more or less like a radio set… think about that weird and beautiful sound that came out of your instrument almost by accident, and that you are trying to recreate with no success and you get the picture.”

Han-earl Park, January 30, 2009: ‘Lab report 2007-2009: how to run an improvised music club’

“Whether you would want to organize a regular improvised music event depends on what you’re looking to gain from it. Stet Lab, for me, is partly a long-term scene-building exercise; it is, at times, a place of research into the pedagogical, sociological and political dimensions of improvisative practice; an excuse to bring over practitioners whose work I am excited about; and a place to play.”

Han-earl Park, January 18, 2009: ‘Lab report January 12th 2009: healthy disrespect for the comfort zone’

“I’ve been prone to sports metaphors in the past, but Murray [Campbell] came up with a new one: table tennis. A great game of table tennis is not one that you score points, but in which all your resources—your body, your mind, your training—tells you one thing, but circumstances outwit you. You reach for the ball, but it ball heads in a completely different direction. You loose a point, but you go wow, how did that happen?”

Veronica Tadman, January 18, 2009: ‘Lab report January 12th 2009: detoxes really do work’

“I cannot quite figure out what was the key factor that made this months Lab stand out above the rest: Was it Murray [Campbell]? Was it the large crowd? The press release that constantly went on about a party?”

Han-earl Park, December 16, 2008: ‘Lab report December 9th 2008: when is a cliché a cliché’

“Are my gestures the same size? are my ideas-per-minute constant? I think, on a good day, on the microscopic level, my playing exhibits (complex / interesting / infuriating / contradictory) variation, but I fear that, on a macroscopic level, it’s often (simple / boring / predictable / coherent) uniformity that rules the day. Am I getting too comfortable in this space?”

Kevin Terry, November 24, 2008: ‘Lab report November 10th 2008: mindful auto-pilot nonsense’

“The aspiration for this month’s Lab (though I admit I decided on it less that five minutes before playing) was to play quasi-logically; pick a strategy and don’t budge… So I decide early on… to shadow Andrea [Bonino] and try to limit myself to playing while he isn’t. This is then complemented/complicated by playing pianissimo lyrically when he is playing. This is maintained throughout.”

Han-earl Park, November 20, 2008: ‘Lab report November 10th 2008: out of my depth’

“…By and large, if my adrenaline-choice-machine was doing anything, it was always looking for the nearest, most convenient route, avoiding interesting, circuitous options—the ones that lead off-the-edge into ugly-beutiful spaces and serendipitous-contradictory relationships.”

Veronica Tadman, November 19, 2008: ‘Lab report November 10th 2008: the rockstar wannabes’

“…As the only performer that doesn’t have an instrument that is material to hide behind, I often feel exposed and perhaps somewhat uncomfortable; this has consequently had a knock-on affect on my performance. However, not so much this month.”

Han-earl Park, October 16, 2008: ‘Lab report October 9th 2008: being paul desmond’

“Searching for a way to operate in this group, I was trying to reach Braxton’s Desmond in my musical personality (i.e. carefully considering many choices, but selectively executing only a small number of them). And that’s not a position I’ve tried to occupy in a long time…. It turned out, however, to be an interesting scheme for generating tactics in real-time, if not one that I feel compelled to return to.”

Tony O’Connor, July 30, 2008: ‘Lab report July 10th 2008: consequences of a noisy head’

“Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the insurmountable difficulties of the situation forced my mind to give up and get on with it…. The problem, I think, is that this type of improvisation should be an immediate response, and every time a thought gets in the way, it puts a filter between the event and the response. There are times in the first piece where this barrier breaks down, like the strange antiphony section, but mostly I was just quietly panicking along to my own internal monologue. ‘An E major? What are you THINKING!? Oh great, some more string noise, yeah, that’ll win them over… Muppet.’”

Han-earl Park, July 25, 2008: ‘Lab report July 10th 2008: fitting the square piece into that triangular hole’

“You know… that you’ve lost the game in improvisation when you’re preempting the music. You don’t want to be thinking this is how it should be, goddamnit, and I will fit that square piece into that triangular hole. Much more fruitful is to approach the problem almost like resource management: given our context, what can we do? given our current location, where can we go? given where we’ve been, how we’ve travelled, what exciting places could this route(s) lead us? This becomes a question of possibilities—what we can make of what we have (and who we are).”

Melanie L. Marshall, July 7, 2008: ‘Lab report June 12th 2008: thoughts of a newbie improviser’

“Now I know what goes through a newbie improviser’s head, or at least through this newbie’s head: sheer terror.”

Han-earl Park, June 26, 2008: ‘Lab report June 12th 2008: being the odd-one-out’

“Secondary problem with this strategy: although ‘having plenty of time to think about my re-entrance’ is indeed a luxury, like a lot of ‘prepared means’, they come with Improviser’s Hazard No. 697: exactly when would be a good time to act?”

Eoin Callery, June 17, 2008: ‘Lab report June 12th 2008: noisiest “hoedown”’

“A special mention must be made of the vocal talents of two heavily intoxicated eastern european (they never quite managed to explain exactly where they were from!) who entered the fray at various points. People may say that you could never perform something like Zappa’s ‘Lumpy Gravy’ live—well given the right balance of whatever they were on, they may decide to stage it yet….”

Composer-performer John Godfrey (guitar), however, has very generously stepped in to occupy the Lab’s guest spot. Godfrey will be joined by Han-earl Park (guitar) and Dan Walsh (drums), and the event will open with The Real-Time Company (for the Ad-Hoc Association) of… Andrea Bonino and Kevin Terry (guitars).

The event takes place this Tuesday (January 4, 2011), same place (Upstairs @ The Roundy), same time (9:00pm). [Details…]

We hope that you will come and participate.

Stet Lab featuring Murray Campbell John Godfrey
with Han-earl Park, plus Andrea Bonino and Kevin Terry

Tuesday, 4 January 2011

9:00 pm (doors: 8:45 pm)

Upstairs @ The Roundy [map…]
Castle Street
Cork, Ireland

€10 (€5)

Cork’s monthly improvised music event, Stet Lab, starts a New Year of on-stage mutations and hybrids on Tuesday, 4 January 2011, upstairs at The Roundy, Castle Street, Cork, Ireland. A unique opportunity to witness the interaction between novice and veteran, and local and visiting, improvising musicians, the January event will feature California-based multi-instrumentalist Murray Campbell John Godfrey.

Last heard at the Stet Lab two years ago (12 January 2009), Murray Campbell has proved to be of the most popular and generous visiting artists at the Lab. His contributions to the Lab were included as part of the Danny McCarthy curated CD Rediscovering Locality: A Sonology of Cork Sound Art+ (farpoint recordings), and his playing has been described by then Stet Lab regular Eoin Callery as “101 other things to be done with a violin” with “movement from long-sustained tone, multiple examples of melodic phrasing, and rapid combinations of whistle-tones, harmonics, bow scrapings, plucking and rhythmic taps—especially during the second trio—left nobody in doubt of his abilities and obvious comfort in many violin/fiddle styles.”

As a fiddler (of Scottish, Balkan and Bluegrass idioms), and a violinist and double reed player in classical, music theater and performance art settings, Murray Campbell has recorded with musicians from California, Scotland, The Netherlands and elsewhere, and performed on four continents. In addition, Campbell was long time musical and technical director of Jan Langedijk’s theatre company De Daders (Amsterdam), co-creator (with Alex Fiennes) of the octaphonic spatialization system for Dialogues (Edinburgh), and co-founder of the Church of Sonology. He regularly performs with musicians from the San Francisco Bay Area and broader Californian improvised and experimental music scenes, including as part of the ensemble Bristle with saxophonists Randy McKean and Corey Wright, and bassist Lisa Mezzacappa.

Murray Campbell will be joined by Cork-based improvisers including guitarist Han-earl Park, and the event will open with Stet Lab’s house band, The Real-Time Company (for the Ad-Hoc Association) of…, consisting of guitarists Andrea Bonino and Kevin Terry.

The event will begin at 9:00 pm (doors open at 8:45 pm) and entry is €10 (€5).

Stet Lab will return on Monday, 7 February 2011 featuring Belfast-based drummer Steve Davis.

updates:

01-02-11 change of guest artist from Murray Campbell to John Godfrey.

At this month’s Stet Lab, to name a few, we saw trumpeter Ian Smith, guitarist/gadget man Andrea Bonino, guitarist/pedal man Han-earl Park, guitarist Kevin Terry and vocalist Veronica Tadman. I must say I loved the ‘diva’d’ session from Veronica Tadman and Helena Reilly which failed to be recorded Why is it that all the stellar sessions never get recorded…. Never!? I enjoyed Veronica’s exploration into Indian vocal percussion, very distinct, clean and well layered and executed. Helena provided the sonic theatrics between the two vocalists which inevitably became ‘O No you didn’t, O Yes, I did!’—the battle of the divas commenced and it was brilliant from start to finish. I believe I heard a drone at some point coming from Han-earl’s guitar: it emerged out of the mist of chaos like a bright light, heavenly Han

Kevin Terry always surprises with his unlimited array in playing styles from Psychedelic rock to Pastoral, Classical, Eastern, erratic, to the delicate. His sound is layered with many undertones which makes it hard to ever label this man; tonight was another classic Pick N Mix shop from Kevin Terry. Andrea Bonino laid out on a magic carpet with his guitar and an array of unusual but wonderful sounding gadgets-some resembling a vibrator!? Actually this seems to be the weapon of choice for many guitarists? Andrea has an intense approach to detail which draws you in from the beginning; he seems to understand that a slight nuance can make the world of difference in sound. I particularly enjoyed Han’s and Andrea’s duets, great spark of energy between the two.

Finally, Ian Smith who was a breath of fresh air, beautiful tone and great expression. I found Ian to possess a unique sensitivity to other performer’s material, which is rare in free improvisation- a real pleasure to play with.

Come and take your own snapshots people. This music is open and honest, its all laid bare for your perusal. You will sit there curious, perplexed, surprised, liberated, violated and many times enlightened. Whatever way you take it, I guarantee a part of you will want to get up and join in.

Really enjoyed my first night, October 11th. It’s a long time ago by now but can still clearly remember the highlight of the night; from 7 minutes and 50 seconds to end of ‘guviorum’ with Han-earl Park (guitar), Helena Reilly (voice) Claudia Schwab (violin) and Dan Walsh (drums). Excellent decision to continue Dan, and such a striking outro from Claudia. Other favourite moments from the night were Jeffrey Weeter on tom and splash, and getting to have a go myself (thanks Claudia!).

From November 15th, don’t remember so much even though it was only last week! Great sounds from Andrea Bonino’s electronics and guitar, particularly in the duet with Han…. that sound was full! Loved some of the extended techniques from Ian Smith. Can’t really remember much from the quartet I played in, just that there was a lot going on!

So in general, I’ve been enjoying it all so far. One thing I want to hear is someone just grooving on something limited or ‘standard’ for want of a better word. For all the different music being played at the lab, sometimes it just doesn’t sound that different to itself! But that’s just a niggley complaint; if I want to hear that, maybe I should just try it myself?!

See you all next month… really looking forward to hearing some of that tasty vibraphone!

Oh, Han…. definately get that fridge plugged out for the next night. That humming, buzzing piece of crap gets to perform in every piece!

Kevin Terry, Ian Smith and Susan Geaney (photo: © 2010 Julia Healy)

Big thanks to Ian Smith for some of the most energetic and eclectic music. Thanks also to The Real-Time Company (for the Ad-Hoc Association) Of… Andrea Bonino, Helena Reilly and Athoulis ‘Athos’ Tsiopani for kick-starting the evening, and to everyone who played (Susan Geaney, Han-earl Park, Colm Pattwell, Veronica Tadman and Kevin Terry). Kudos to Kevin for refereeing on the night, Athos for MCing, and to photographer Julia Healy [see the photographs (new window)…].

And warmest thanks to the small but enthusiastic audience who came to support this event!

As with all the recordings since December 2008, this month’s recordings are covered under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. [More info…]

Ian will be joined by guitarist Han-earl Park, and the event will open with The Real-Time Company (for the Ad-Hoc Association) Of… Andrea Bonino (guitar and electronics), Helena Reilly (voice) and Athoulis Tsiopani (keyboard).

Thank all who participated (performers, audience and behind-the-scenes helpers) over the last three years. Hope to see you over the next coming months!

…But in the meantime, here’s a clip of Smith with Phil Minton, Charles Hayward and Dominic Lash:

Stet Lab celebrates its third birthday with trumpeter Ian Smith

Monday, 15 November 2010

9:00 pm (doors: 8:45 pm)

Upstairs @ The Roundy [map…]
Castle Street
Cork, Ireland

€10 (€5)

Stet Lab will be welcoming London-based, Irish virtuoso trumpeter Ian Smith in celebration of the third anniversary of Cork’s monthly improvised music club. The event takes place on Monday, 15 November 2010, upstairs at The Roundy, Castle Street, Cork, Ireland, at 9:00 pm (doors open at 8:45 pm).

Mainstay of the London improvised music scene, Ian Smith is best known as cofounder of the London Improvisers’ Orchestra, and The Gathering. He has performed with improvisers such as Evan Parker, John Stevens, Maggie Nicols, Steve Beresford, Eddie Prévost, Reeves Gabrels and Harris Eisenstadt. His second CD as a leader, Daybreak, featured Derek Bailey, Veryan Weston, Gail Brand and Oren Marshall, and his most recent release is with the spontaneous mashup ensemble Mathilde 253 with Charles Hayward and Han-earl Park plus Lol Coxhill.

Smith’s playing has been described as a “revelation…. There is a clear jazz edge to his tone, which sounds almost radical these days when many trumpet players in the improv world seem inclined to turn their back on that vocabulary. But he can also dip down to breathy flutters and muted coloristic playing” (Michael Rosenstein, Signal to Noise). His style has been compared to Wadada Leo Smith and Joe McPhee: “gestures seem to derive from earlier forms of jazz, and there are moments of harmonic directness that you could put chord symbols under. But it has all been thoughtfully moulded into a highly convincing and distinctive language” (Philip Clark, JazzReview).

Joining Smith on stage for the Stet Lab event will be Cork-based guitarist, and fellow member of Mathilde 253, Han-earl Park.

Opening the event will be a trio of Stet Lab regulars, Andrea Bonino (guitar and electronics), Helena Reilly (voice) and Athoulis Tsiopani (keyboard).

For three years Stet Lab has both introduced new blood into Cork’s musical life as well as fostering local talent. Cork’s monthly improvised music event, Stet Lab is a space in which improvisers can meet, play and learn from one another. Since its launch in November 2007, it has successfully brought together improvising musicians with varied experiences and from far afield; hosted twenty-two events with twenty-seven guest artists, including eighteen international visitors.

The event will begin at 9:00 pm (doors open at 8:45 pm) and entry is €10 (€5).

Next month’s Stet Lab will take place on Monday, 6 December 2010, featuring the exciting Derby-based vibraphonist Corey Mwamba.

the performers

Ian Smith has been playing since he was fifteen. He has studied with Joe Csibi (principal trumpet in the Irish National Symphony Orchestra) and Bobby Shew (Buddy Rich, Horace Silver bands) as well as learning harmony from Trevor England (ex-Berklee). As a bass he was a Vocal Scholar of the College of Music and a Choral Scholar of Christchurch Cathedral, Dublin. There is a strong tradition of trumpet playing in Smith’s family, his grandfather Chick Smith played in many British dance bands from the 1930s onwards and his cousin Jimmie Deuchar was at the forefront of British bop as well as playing in the Clarke/Boland Big Band. During the mid-80s while in Trinity College, Dublin, he arranged music for and played on many recording sessions, including jingles for the Bank of Ireland, a TV documentary score and singles for local rock bands. He has also composed and performed for theatrical productions including a version of Joyce’s Nighttown scene from Ulysses at the Project theatre, Dublin.

He has guested on albums by highly established Irish songwriters like Luka Bloom and Mick Hanley. He joined post-punk band the Real Wild West in the late 80s and gigged frequently with them for three years, including playing the Eurorock Festival ’87 in Frankfurt, the Mean Fiddler in London and supporting Echo and the Bunnymen and the Pogues in Ireland. The Real Wild West single was produced by Pogues Shane MacGowan and Philip Chevron; the album was produced by John Langford of The Mekons. Ian Smith appeared at the Cork International Jazz Festival in 1988 and 1989, playing a set with saxophonist Richie Cole in ’89. He has been involved in duo and trio gigs with guitarist Louis Stewart. He moved over to London in 1990 and in May ’91 co-founded the group Forest which quickly became established on the London freeform scene. He was a sometime member of the Screech Owls, a rock band which featured former Virgin Prune Dik Evans, which performed at the Mean Fiddler.

Since 1992 he 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.

He helped to institute the London Improvisers Orchestra in 1998 with Steve Beresford and Evan Parker, which continues to play monthly in London and has recently performed at the BimHuis in Amsterdam. He also founded The Gathering with Maggie Nichols.

In 2000 he recorded his second CD as a leader, Daybreak, with Derek Bailey, Veryan Weston, Gail Brand and Oren Marshall. Into the twenty-first century, as well as regularly playing with London improvisers, he has also performed with Greg Tate’s Burnt Sugar Arkestra, guitarists Han-earl Park, Reeves Gabrels, the Poet and Detriot legend John Sinclair, and New York-based drummer Harris Eisenstadt.

Smith’s style has the free-form panache of a Wadada Leo Smith or Joe McPhee, but his experience of other musics is never too far from the surface. Some of his gestures seem to derive from earlier forms of jazz, and there are moments of harmonic directness that you could put chord symbols under. But it has all been thoughtfully moulded into a highly convincing and distinctive language.

(Philip Clark, JazzReview)

Smith’s trumpet playing is a particular revelation. His brassy blats and smears play off of the hyperactive spatters of Eisenstadt’s drums. There is a clear jazz edge to his tone, which sounds almost radical these days when many trumpet players in the improv world seem inclined to turn their back on that vocabulary. But he can also dip down to breathy flutters and muted coloristic playing.

(Michael Rosenstein, Signal to Noise)

Improviser, guitarist and constructor Han-earl Park works from/within/around traditions of fuzzily idiomatic, on occasion experimental, mostly open improvised musics, sometimes engineering theater, sometimes inventing ritual. He feels the gravitational pull of collaborative, multi-authored contexts, and has performed in clubs, theaters, art galleries, concert halls, and (ad-hoc) alternative spaces in Denmark, England, Ireland, The Netherlands, Scotland and the USA.

He is involved in ongoing collaborations with Bruce Coates, and with Franziska Schroeder, fifteen year long associations with Alex Fiennes and Murray Campbell. Recent performances include ensemble Mathilde 253 (Park, Charles Hayward and Ian Smith) with Lol Coxhill, a duo concert with Paul Dunmall, a trio with Kato Hideki and Katie O’Looney, an improvisative meeting with Thomas Buckner and Jesse Ronneau, and the performance of Pauline Oliveros’ ‘Droniphonia’ alongside the composer. He has appeared at festivals 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 founded and curates Stet Lab, a monthly improvised music space in Cork, Ireland, and teaches improvisation at the UCC School of Music.

During the 1990s Andrea Bonino performed regularly with Eugenio Sanna and Nanni Canale, who had been students of Donal Rafael Garrett during his years in Pisa, Italy. A friend of John Coltrane, Garret encouraged musicians to learn to be creative on many instruments instead of focusing on mastering one. Andrea followed this advice and still likes to keep an experimental attitude in his work, improvising on guitars and other stringed devices, electronics, objects and toys. Among others he has played with Mike Cooper, Roger Turner, Steve Noble, Roberto Bellatalla, and with the late Mississippi blues legend R. L. Burnside.

Marian Murray, Alexander Hawkins, Paul Dowling and Tony O’Connor (photo: © 2010 Julia Healy)

Big, big thanks to guest artist Alexander Hawkins for taking time out of his busy schedule to join the Lab; for his generosity and his musicality. I can’t think of a better improviser with whom to close the season.

Thanks also to the double basses of The Real-Time Company (for the Ad-Hoc Association) Of… (Paul Dowling and Tony O’Connor), and to all who performed (Andrea Bonino, Juniper Hill, Marian Murray, Han-earl Park and Kevin Terry). We gratefully acknowledges the support of the UCC School of Music and the Basement Project Space in making the June 2010 event possible. Thank again to Veronica Tadman for work behind the scenes, and to photographer Julia Healy [see the photographs (new window)…].

And as always, thanks to all who came to listen, and to all who supported the Lab during the 2009–2010 season. See you in October!

As with all the recordings since December 2008, this month’s recordings are covered under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. [More info…]

Big thanks to Juniper Hill who, with shape note singers Sam Backer, Claire Hogan, Sadhbh O’Flynn, Barry Twomey and Robert Wedgbury, contributed of the most adventurous of Labs. Thanks also to The Real-Time Company (for the Ad-Hoc Association) Of… Marian Murray, Claudia Schwab and Kevin Terry for revisiting (and reinventing) the Stet Lab double fiddle and guitar format. Kudos to all who performed, regulars (Andrea Bonino, Tony O’Connor and Han-earl Park) and newcomer (Gavin Prior), and to Veronica Tadman for work behind the scenes.

Thanks for listening!

note: Because of the poor audio quality of the recordings (there’s significant distortion on the recordings of the vocal ensemble), I am not releasing the full recording of the May 2010 performances. If I am able to ameliorate the recordings, the complete recording of the May 2010 performances may be available at a later date. In the meantime, if any of the performers involved would like copies of the recording, please get in touch.

As with all the recordings since December 2008, this month’s recordings are covered under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. [More info…]