excerpt: Han-earl Park, Dominic Lash and Mark Sanders at Fizzle, Birmingham

In anticipation of the performance tonight (October 30) with Dominic Lash and Mark Sanders, I’ve uploaded a short clip from our October 28 performance at Fizzle, Birmingham. Taken from the last few minutes of our first improvisation, I think the breadth of landscape the ensemble covers in that short time is impressive. [More about this performance…]

In a few hours, Han-earl Park, Dominic Lash and Mark Sanders will be performing at LUME (Long White Cloud, 151 Hackney Road, London E2 8JL). Come down for more real-time, interactive noise and serendipity.

tomorrow: Han-earl Park, Dominic Lash and Mark Sanders at LUME, London

Han-earl Park, Dominic Lash and Mark Sanders (London)
Tomorrow night (Thursday, October 30, 2014), at 8:30pm (doors: 8:00pm): LUME presents Han-earl Park (guitar), Dominic Lash (double bass) and Mark Sanders (drums), plus Strikethrough Me & You (Sam Andreae and Rodrigo Constanzo), at Long White Cloud (151 Hackney Road, London E2 8JL) [map…]. Admission is £5.

reminder: Han-earl Park, Dominic Lash and Mark Sanders at Fizzle, Birmingham

Han-earl Park, Dominic Lash and Mark Sanders (Birmingham)
This coming Tuesday (October 28, 2014), at 8:00pm: Fizzle presents Han-earl Park (guitar), Dominic Lash (double bass) and Mark Sanders (drums), plus A, B & C (Lee Allatson: drums; Stewart Brackley: bass and voice; and Bruce Coates: saxophones). The event takes place at The Lamp Tavern (Barford Street, Birmingham B5 6AH) [map…]. Admission is £5 (£3).

If you can’t make this one, on Thursday (October 30), Han-earl Park, Dominic Lash and Mark Sanders are also performing at LUME (Long White Cloud, 151 Hackney Road, London E2 8JL).

performances: Han-earl Park, Dominic Lash and Mark Sanders (Birmingham and London, October 2014)

Han-earl Park, Dominic Lash and Mark Sanders
October 2014: performances by Han-earl Park (guitar), Dominic Lash (double bass) and Mark Sanders (drums), Birmingham and London, England.

See the performance diary for up-to-date info.

about the performers

Improviser, guitarist and constructor Han-earl Park has been crossing borders and performing fuzzily idiomatic, on occasion experimental, always traditional, open improvised musics for twenty years. He has performed in clubs, theaters, art galleries, concert halls, and (ad-hoc) alternative spaces across Europe and the USA.

Park engages a radical, liminal, cyborg virtuosity in which mind, body and artifact collide. He is driven by the social and revolutionary potential of real-time interactive performance in which tradition and practice become creative problematics. As a constructor of musical automata, he is interested in partial, and partially frustrating, context-specific artifacts; artifacts that amplify social relations and corporeal identities and agencies.

Ensembles include Mathilde 253 with Charles Hayward and Ian Smith, Eris 136199 with Nick Didkovsky and Catherine Sikora, and Numbers with Richard Barrett. Park is the constructor of the machine improviser io 0.0.1 beta++, and instigator of Metis 9, a playbook of improvisative tactics. He has performed with Wadada Leo Smith, Paul Dunmall, Evan Parker, Lol Coxhill, Mark Sanders, Josh Sinton, Louise Dam Eckardt Jensen, Gino Robair, Tim Perkis, Andrew Drury, Pat Thomas and Franziska Schroeder, and as part of large ensembles led by Wadada Leo Smith, Evan Parker and Pauline Oliveros.

Festival appearances include Freedom of the City (London), Sonorities (Belfast), ISIM (New York), dialogues festival (Edinburgh), CEAIT (Los Angeles) and Sonic Acts (Amsterdam). His recordings have been released by labels including Slam Productions, Creative Sources and DUNS Limited Edition.

Park taught improvisation at University College Cork, and founded and curated Stet Lab, a space for improvised music in Cork.

“Guitarist Han-earl Park is a musical philosopher…. Expect unexpected things from Park, who is a delightful shape-shifter….”

Brian Morton (Point of Departure)

Dominic Lash is a freely improvising double bassist, although his activities also range much more widely and include playing bass guitar and other instruments; both writing and performing composed music; and writing about music and various other subjects.

He has performed with musicians such as Tony Conrad (in duo and quartet formations), Joe Morris (trio and quartet), Evan Parker (duo, quartet and large ensemble) and the late Steve Reid. His main projects include The Dominic Lash Quartet, The Set Ensemble (an experimental music group focused on the work of the Wandelweiser collective) and The Convergence Quartet.

Based in Bristol, Lash has performed in the UK, Austria, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey and USA. For nearly a decade he was based in Oxford and played a central role in the activities of Oxford Improvisers; much of 2011 was spent living in Manhattan. In 2013 and 2014 he is taking part in Take Five, the professional development programme administered by Serious.

Festival appearances include Akbank Jazz Festival (Istanbul), Audiograft (Oxford), Freedom of the City (London), Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Hurta Cordel (Madrid), Konfrontationen (Nickelsdorf), LMC Festival (London), Manchester Jazz Festival and Tampere Jazz Happening.

His work has been broadcast on a number of radio stations, including BBC Radios 1 and 3 and Germany’s SWR2, and released on labels including Another Timbre, b-boim, Bead, Cathnor, Clean Feed, Compost and Height, Emanem, Erstwhile, FMR, Foghorn, Leo and NoBusiness.

Since moving to Bristol he has been involved in organising concerts under the banners of Bang the Bore and Insignificant Variation. A new venture is the monthly series happening every second Wednesday at the Arnolfini entitled Several 2nds. Events include performances, workshops, film screenings and discussions.

“Following in an illustrious lineage from Barry Guy through Simon Fell… breathtaking.”

John Sharpe (All About Jazz)

Mark Sanders has played with many renowned musicians from around the world including Evan Parker, Peter Brotzmann, Derek Bailey, Myra Melford, Paul Rogers, Henry Grimes, Roswell Rudd, Okkyung Lee, Barry Guy, Tim Berne, Otomo Yoshihide, Luc Ex, Ken Vandermark, Sidsel Endresen and Jean Francois Pauvrois, in duo and quartets with Wadada Leo Smith and trios with Charles Gayle with Sirone and William Parker.

New collaborative projects include ‘Riverloam Trio’ with Mikolaj Trzaska and Olie Brice, ‘Asunder’ with Hasse Poulsen and Paul Dunmall, duos with John Butcher and DJ Sniff, ‘Statics’ with Georg Graewe and John Butcher, and trio with Rachel Musson and Liam Noble.
Mark and John Edwards play as a rhythm section with many groups including Trevor Watts Quartet, ‘Foils’ with Frank Paul Schubert and Matthius Muller, Mathew Shipp’s ‘London Quartet,’ also playing with Fred Frith, Wadada Leo Smith and Shabaka Hutchins amongst many others.
Christian Marclay’s ‘Everyday’ project includes Mark with Christian, Steve Beresford, John Butcher and Alan Tomlinson, he also works regularly in the projects of Mikolaj Trzaska, Gail Brand, Paul Dunmall, Peter Jaquemyn, and Simon H. Fell.
Mark has performed in the USA, Canada, Brazil, Japan, Morrocco, South Africa, Mozambique and Turkey, playing at many major festivals including, Nickelsdorf, Ulrichsburg, Glastonbury, Womad, Vancouver, Isle of Wight, Roskilde, Berlin Jazz days, Mulhouse, Luz, Minniapolis, Banlieue Bleues, Son D’hiver and Hurta Cordel.

He has released over 120 CDs.

“A gifted player capable of seamless movement between free-rhythms and propulsive swing.”

John Fordham (The Guardian)

updates

10-24-14: add link to LUME page and Fizzle listings.

performance diary 08-16-14 (Birmingham, Cork, London)

upcoming performances
date venue time details
September 28, 2014 The Roundy
Castle Street
Cork, Ireland
8:30pm (doors: 8:15pm) Han-earl Park (guitar), Roslyn Steer (bass) and Dan Walsh (drums), with Caroline Pugh (voice) and Tony O’Connor (bass).
Admission: One euro note (€5/10/20…).
[Details…] [The Roundy page…]
October 20, 2014 The Roundy
Castle Street
Cork, Ireland
8:30pm (doors: 8:15pm) Han-earl Park (guitar), Roslyn Steer (bass) and Dan Walsh (drums), with John Godfrey (guitar) and Kevin Terry (guitar).
Admission: One euro note (€5/10/20…).
[Details…]
October 28, 2014 The Lamp Tavern
Barford Street
Birmingham B5 6AH
England
8:00pm Han-earl Park (guitar), Dominic Lash (double bass) and Mark Sanders (drums) presented by Fizzle. Also performing: A, B & C (Lee Allatson: drums; Stewart Brackley: bass and voice; and Bruce Coates: saxophones). Admission: £5 (£3).
[Details…] [Fizzle listings…]
October 30, 2014 Long White Cloud
151 Hackney Road
London E2 8JL
England
8:30pm (doors: 8:00pm) Han-earl Park (guitar), Dominic Lash (double bass) and Mark Sanders (drums) presented by LUME. Also performing: Strikethrough Me & You (Sam Andreae and Rodrigo Constanzo). Admission: £5.
[Details…] [LUME page…]
2014– Europe I am based in Europe as of 2014, and I am seeking performance opportunities for, in particular, my Europe-based projects including Numbers (with Richard Barrett), Mathilde 253 (with Charles Hayward and Ian Smith). Interested promoters, venues and sponsors, please get in touch!
2015 UK Seeking performance opportunities for the quartet of Josh Sinton (saxophone and clarinet), Han-earl Park (guitar), Adam Hopkins (double bass) and Dominic Lash (double bass) in the UK, early/mid 2015. Interested promoters, venues and sponsors, please get in touch!

Continue reading “performance diary 08-16-14 (Birmingham, Cork, London)”

cuttlefish: Study of Notation

cuttlefish, ‘Study in Notation.’
Design (cc by-nc) 2014 Peter O’Doherty. Cover artwork © 2014 Ciarán Ó Dochartaigh. Score/artwork © 2014 Han-earl Park. Photo © 2013 Emilio Vavarella.

I’m honored to find my concept thumbnail (‘Study in Notation’) in the pages of cuttlefish (issue #1, summer 2014), a “zine for contemporary culture, music, art, aesthetics, politics,” edited by Peter O’Doherty. The piece was accompanied by an excerpt from my interview with Miguel Copón:

I’m not sure at all where this is leading, but having through some combination of ideology and necessity (ain’t it always the way?) found myself somewhat involuntarily in the ‘Total Improvisation’ camp, I’m beginning to look on the other side of the fence. Let me be clear, the, to borrow Lewis’ term, Eurological conception of the score and the practice that surrounds it (theorized in detail by Small, Cusick, Nicholas Cook and others), with its limited models of control and dogma of reproducibility, and naive notions of aesthetics, does not interest me at all.

However, I’m feeling a gravitational tug. Maybe it’s due to coming into close contact with musicians who have a much more sophisticated (if often, from an non-practitioner’s POV, misunderstood and under theorized) relationship with the score and the possibilities of notation. But it’s a distinct pull. Still working—struggling—through some ideas, and studies, and have far, far more questions than answers about the possible role notation and the score might have in an improvisative context, but that’s the new thing that’s exciting me at the moment. [Read the rest…]

The theme of cuttlefish’s inaugural issue is “work-in-progress (sketches, doodles, journal entries, streams of consciousness…),” and features contributions by Wim Bollein, Laura Duran, Evgeniy Aleksandrovich (=dozen), Graham Holliday, ja’s ink on paper, Daniel Kan, Francisco Martins, Corey Mwamba, Ciarán Ó Dochartaigh, Peter O’Doherty, Han-earl Park, Kiyomitsu Saito, Tom Tebby, Nicolas P. Tschopp, Andrea Valle, Krysthopher Woods and Alice Xiang.

If you are interested in contributing to future issues of cuttlefish, please contact cuttlefish[at]peterodoherty.net.