Thomas Lehn - two day residency pass

Event information

Ticket for both nights of this Two day residency with EMS synthi maestro Thomas Lehn joined on the first night by saxophonist John Butcher and percussionist Roger Turner and a 'string' trio the following night featuring Tim Hodgkinson on table top guitar, Hannah Marshall on cello and Phillip Wachsman on violin.

THOMAS LEHN / synthesiser

Since about 1990 Thomas Lehn's central artistical work is live-electronic music, created on the basis of analogue sound synthesis. After a period of working with the Robert Moog's minimoog synthesizer, since 1994 his main electronic equipment is the Synthi A modular analogue synthesizer combined with the DK-2 keyboard, both developed and produced by the British company EMS in the late 1960s.

Thomas Lehn's electronic music is instrumentally live-performed. Musical material, process and structure are created and performed in real time.

A wide spectrum of experiences in numerous musical and music contextual genres merge in his current musical creations: in the 1980ies he has been working as pianist widely in the fields of classical, classical modern and contemporary music, jazz, music theatre and mixed media performances. Throughout the 90ies up today the centre of his work became the contemporary forms of music, both as interpreting pianist and performer of analogue live-electronic music.

Rooted in this background, he has been developing an individual language of electronic music, which inner syntax often seem to be rather of an acoustic than electronic nature.
"Lehn has a prodigious imagination as well as the rigor to keep things both fascinating and compelling" - Brian Olewnwick, All Music Guide
His ensemble activities include duets with Gerry Hemingway, Marcus Schmickler, Günter Christmann, Eugene Chadbourne, Paul Lovens, Italian violinist Tiziana Bertoncini, Swiss saxophonist Urs Leimgruber and French pianist Frédéric Blondy. He also plays in KONK PACK with Tim Hodgkinson and Roger Turner, TOOT with Phil Minton and Axel Dörner, THERMAL with John Butcher and Andy Moor and FUTCH with Jon Rose and Johannes Bauer. He is also a member of the larger ensembles vario 34 and MIMEO.

His music has been released by Erstwhile Records, edition explico, grob, editions Mego, Jazzwerkstatt and others.

JOHN BUTCHER / saxophones

John Butcher is a saxophonist of rare grace and power, who has expanded the vocabulary of the saxophone far beyond the conventions of jazz and other musics, to encompass a staggering range of harmonics, multiphonics, overtones, percussive sounds, and electronic feedback. But his playing is far more than merely an array of special effects; it's characterised by a drive and intensity that propels music into strange new places that are both incredibly beautiful and deeply exhilarating.

“In the hands of London improvisor John Butcher, the saxophone can sound like anything, from a piece of hollowed out brass baubled with pads and valves to a hermetically sealed feedback system, a miniature sound environment teeming with ever-evolving note forms, or a huge echo chamber inflicting dub scale damage on every breath . . .” - David Keenan, The Wire


ROGER TURNER / drums, percussion

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...

“Turner [used] brushes to create a wild spattering and scattering of sound from cymbal and snare, with sudden explosions from tom and kick drums. At times in this early passage he sounded like rain on a caravan roof, at others like a tool box in the back of a moving van” - Molloy Woodcraft, The Guardian


TIM HODGKINSON / table top guitar

Born in 1949, graduate in social anthropology at Cambridge, co-founder of the politically and musically radical group Henry Cow in 1968, Tim Hodgkinson has followed a restless and critical creative path. His compositions have been interpreted in such international festivals as: Spectrum XXI (Brussels, Paris, Geneva, London), Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (U.K.) where he was a featured composer in 2007, Craiova and Ploiesti Festivals (Romania), Guarda Festival (Portugal), Cantiere Internazionale d’Arte di Montepulciano (Italy), Konfrontationen Festival (Austria), Nordlyd Festival (Norway), Musique Action (France) and the European Symposium of Experimental Music at Barcelona. As an improvising musician on reeds and lap steel guitar Tim Hodgkinson has worked all over the world with many of the most acclaimed artists in the field and continues to be fully engaged in the celebrated Konk Pack trio with Roger Turner and Thomas Lehn.

HANNAH MARSHALL / cello

Hannah Marshall is a cellist currently active within improvised music in London, playing with, amongst others, Alexander Hawkin's Ensemble, 'Zinc' with Roger Turner and Tim Hodgkinson, and string trio 'Barrel'. She also works internationally with Luc Ex's and Veryan Weston's group SOL, in a trio with saxophonist Gianni Mimmo and pianist Nicola Guazzaloca, and Swiss duo 'diatribes'.

PHILLIP WACHSMAN / violin

John Corbett notes that Phillip Wachsman came to free improvisation from a predominantly classical background, particularly via the contemporary experiments of "indeterminacy, graphic and prose-based scores, conceptualism and electroacoustics, listening to Webern, Partch, Ives, Berio and Varèse, reading 'Die Reihe' and interrogating the rhythmic, harmonic and melodic preoccupations of Western art music. Starting in 1969, Wachsmann was a member of Yggdrasil, an ensemble performing works by Cage, Cardew, Feldman, Ashley and others and in this group he used contact mikes on the violin and made his own electronic instruments, ring modulators and routing devices.

Ironically, his studies with Nadia Boulanger in Paris (1969-1970) pushed him hard in the direction of free music. He recalls: 'Despite her neoclassical orientation, her insistence that composition is about the imagination of performance and its realisation, the live moment, and her stunning ability to make this happen was a powerful influence on me, steering towards 'performance' and therefore 'improvisation'.'"