Evan Parker's Might I Suggest

Event information

MIGHT I SUGGEST, 2014
The Vortex has announced the line-up for iconic UK saxophonist Evan Parker's fourth annual Might I Suggest festival, which runs from 28 January until 1 February 2014. Following 2013's enormously moving run of concerts with the legendary ICP (Instant Composers Pool) Orchestra from Amsterdam, the next festival sees a focus on the French musicians Evan has forged musical relationships with.

EVAN PARKER
Free improvised music has accounted for most of Parker's activities for nearly 50 years, whether playing solo or in groups, but both jazz and art music composers have also deployed the arresting physicality of his sound as a contrasting and energising element. A major force in European improvising, Parker is a natural collaborator. Put simply, he's one of the great saxophone players - ever. So, from his wide-ranging travels and experience, he has a unique slant on the European improvised music scene today. The festival is special for this year, as 2014 is the year when he celebrates his 70th birthday. Meanwhile many of these musicians are making all-too-rare visits to the UK.

"Can you think of a better saxophone player? I can't... the point with Evan is, he really starts beyond somewhere even where you could get to and takes it from there, that's the great thing about him. He is a giant." Robert Wyatt

Tuesday 28 January
Joelle Leandre / Alex Ward / Michel Doneda plus John Russell / Roger Turner

JOELLE LEANDRE
French double bass player, improviser and composer, Joëlle Léandre is one of the dominant figures of the new European music. Trained in orchestral as well as contemporary music, she has played with l'Itinéraire, 2e2m and Pierre Boulez's Ensemble Intercontemporain. Joëlle Léandre has also worked with Merce Cunningham and with John Cage, who has composed especially for her.

ALEX WARD
A composer, improviser, and multi-instrumentalist, Alex began playing with guitarist Derek Bailey when he was just 12 years old. As an improviser, he was initially principally a clarinettist (sometimes also playing alto sax), but since 2000 he has also been active as an improvising guitarist. Both as a clarinettist and guitarist, his longest-standing collaborations in the field of improvised music have been with the drummer Steve Noble.

MICHEL DONEDA
Over the years, Michel Doneda (b. 1954) has developed one of the most extensive musical vocabularies in free improvisation. A specialist of the soprano saxophone, he has gradually moved from left-field jazz to the fringes of free improv ever since he began to lead his own sessions in the early '80s. His trio with John Russell and Roger Turner has been playing and evolving over many years.

JOHN RUSSELL
An early involvement with the emerging free improvisation scene (from 1972) led Russell to found QUAQUA, a large bank of improvisers put together in different combinations for specific projects. Then in 1991, he started MOPOMOSO which has become the UK's longest running concert series featuring mainly improvised music, running a monthly series at the Vortex. He is also now regularly part of Evan Parker's own trio with John Edwards.

ROGER TURNER
Roger Turner is applauded for his precision and speed since he entered the London improvising scene in the 1970s. His restricted drum kit is extended by found objects to create a sound comparable to no other. He's played with Evan Parker, Cecil Taylor, Otomo Yoshihide, Shelley Hirsch, Joëlle Léandre, Keith Rowe...

Wednesday 29 January
Christine Wodraschka / Guillaume Viltard / Mark Sanders

CHRISTINA WODRASCHKA
No stranger to our shores, French pianist Christine Wodrascka has a reputation as one of the most intriguing and exciting keyboard artists. She understands how to use the piano not just as a keyboard instrument but also as a percussion instrument, aware of how to hit or caress the strings in a way that creates a new language. She has collaborated with most of the leading improvisers around Europe, such as Han Bennink, Mark Sanders, Fred Frith and, of course, Evan Parker.

GUILLAUME VILTARD
Since moving to London in late 2007, bassist Viltard has worked with many of London's best improvisers, forming strong associations with the circle of musicians centred on Eddie Prevost's experimental workshop, becoming a mainstay of the London Improvisers Orchestra, and playing in a great free jazz trio with Tony Marsh and Shabaka Hutchings that was sadly curtailed by Marsh's untimely death.

MARK SANDERS
Always searching for new sounds to use within the drumkit and playing in a variety of music settings, the past year has seen Mark working in composed and improvised settings with The ICE Ensemble, Christian Marclay, Otomo Yoshihide, Trevor Watts, Bill Orcutt, Henry Grimes, John Butcher and also as a soloist.

Thursday 30 January
Tony Hymas duo + Benoit Delbecq / Evan Parker

TONY HYMAS & DIDIER PETIT
Anthony 'Tony' Hymas is an English keyboard player, pianist, composer and is well known for being a founding member of Ph.D. He is a very versatile musician and contributes in different styles of music. He played with Jack Bruce in the Jack Bruce Band during 1976-78. He subsequently became one of Jeff Beck's backing musicians, first appearing on record with Beck on the 1980 album There and Back. Hymas would go on to work with Beck for over twenty years.

Didier Petit is a cellist living in France but travelling all over what Peter Kowald used to call the "Gobal Village", working with improvisers from the USA to China and all countries in between. He performs regularly with Parisian improvisers like Michel Doneda, Daunik Lazro and Denis Colin, and has performed with Sakis Papadimitriou, Roger Turner & Marilyn Crispell. He founded the In Situ label, devoted to creative improvised music and is Artistic Adviser for the Space Observatory of the CNES (National Center of Space Studies)


EVAN PARKER & BEOIT DELBECQ
Evan Parker and Benoit Delbecq: Evan and Benoit have played together in different contexts. Their work together is characterised by close listening and continuous interaction.
Delbecq is known for his prepared piano playing, making access to pitches, tone colours and intervals in addition to the normal tempered tuning. His connections with the UK scene go back many years to his collaborations with drummer Steve Arguelles nearly 20 years ago.

Friday 31 January
TRANCE MAP with special guest PETER EVANS

TRANCE MAP
For recorded Trance Map material, the studio becomes the arena for an expanded method of improvisation where successive layers of sound making are built up, revised, scrapped, edited, revisited... (As the CD liner notes say 'the tweaks went down to the wire.') In short, the way many musicians have been working for decades, but a new experience for a hard-core, real-time free improviser like Parker. 'I blame that demon Matt Wright,' said Parker in a recent interview.

In the meantime, Trance Map has become a live band using all the same techniques of live sampling, stored samples but usually these days include Toma Gouband the percussionist, whose work with lithophones - tuned stones - was sampled for the CD.

The addition of special guest, the astonishing and always brilliant Peter Evans on trumpet, opens a new chapter for the band.

Evan Parker (saxes)
Matthew Wright (live sampling)
Toma Gouband (percussion & lithophones)
Peter Evans (trumpet)

Saturday 1 February
Whahay (Paul Rogers, Robin Fincker, Fabien Duscombs) plus Paul Rogers & Guests

WHAHAY
Paul Rogers is one of the most formidable bass players to have come out of the UK, and was a mainstay of the amazing Mujician (which included regular sparring partners Keith Tippett, Paul Dunmall and Tony Levin.) His first project as leader for over a decade, Whahay is the fruit of a special meeting, which uncovered parallel routes, common ground and complementary languages. Formed following an invitation from the prestigious Jazz-à-Luz Festival in France this trio of multi-faceted improvisers with impressive individual track-records gathered around the music of Charles Mingus. The great composer, fourth guest to the feast, appears as a watermark through the earthy lyricism of his themes, interpreted with only one catchphrase: carte blanche! It is now developing into the "must see" band on the French jazz festival circuit, such playing to over 2000 in Nantes in September. At the Vortex you can sample them in their intimacy.

Robin Fincker - tenor saxophone, clarinet
Paul Rogers - double bass
Fabien Duscombs - drums

PAUL ROGERS + GUESTS
Paul Rogers plays with some of his long-standing friends and colleagues on the London scene.

With the support of Bureau Export, WDR Radio Cologne, Association Jazzé Croisé

TIMES AND SCHEDULES MAY CHANGE