Susan Matthews / Manon McCoy

Event information

Susan Matthews is a UK based composer/musician, known for her intense, ambitious, hypnotic harmonies and industrial noise creations. She began composing experimental music, described by da/73 as ‘…dazzling abstractions of grace and beauty’, in 1999 and has developed a comprehensive CV of achievements, including gallery works, festival inclusions, artist residencies, live performances, film soundtracks and radio airplay, both home and abroad.

Susan Matthews’ ghostly minimalist piano hauntings are by turns complex and intimate. Immersing the listener in hypnotic harmonies, she offers abstraction as sublime beauty.

In 2005 she founded the independent record label Siren Wire Recordings and has also recorded music for Tursa, Apollolaan, Sonic Oyster Records, Earth Monkey Productions, Wild Silence, Pilot Eleven and d/a73.

An ardent collaborator, she has successfully worked with many of her favourite artists including Tony Wakeford (as Window Tappers), Rainier Lericolais, Clint Newton (as Harme), Clutter, The Dead Mauriacs, Ian Holloway, Thorsten Soltau (as Black Letters For The Lilies), Alistair Crosbie, Richard Moult, M, Yokna Patofa, Nick Grey, Damon Shulman and Fabrizio Modonese Palumbo.

In 2010 she launched Siren Wire Editions an independent record label specialising in hand made limited editions of music by carefully selected experimental artists from around the globe.

Manon McCoy
Manon McCoy (she/her) is an experimental harpist, composer and sound engineer based in the North. Her practice spans installation making, live performance, and experimental sound art. She is interested in exploring the boundaries of the pedal harp through preparations, live processing and improvisation. Manon studied MA composition at RNCM where her focus was in developing approaches for live processing of acoustic instruments, alongside research into site-responsive approaches to improvised performance. Her music draws from noise and experimental music as well as free jazz and improvised music. In 2022 she was awarded the Sound and Music Francis Chagrin Composers Award. Her work draws from training western classical music, contemporary classical music, free improvisation and British folk music.
One of her core projects in balo, a duo with drummer Will Shaw, who work on improvised music for harp, drums and electronics. They released their debut album renders in 2021, followed by a collaborative album baleine with colleagues whale detective in 2023. balo were artists in residence at Theatre Deli Sheffield 2023. In 2022 balo were commissioned by Lancaster Jazz Festival.
Manon also performs as a member of Emergence Collective and collaborates regularly with Lili Holland-Fricke, Alice Brookes, Emmy Lambert and Juliana Day. She has also worked with other improvisers in spontaneous performance such as Amirtha Kidambi, Stuart McCallum, and Corrie Dick.​ She frequently works on projects with visual artists Lucas McCoy and Luca Shaw. She performs across the North, at venues such as Jazz at the Lescar, HEART, Samuel Worth Chapel, Bishops House Sheffield, AATMA, Peer Hat, White Hotel and festivals: Lancaster Jazz, Newcastle Festival of Jazz and Improvised Music.

Manon’s playing reframes the role of the harp in her ensembles, taking a rhythmic lead and exploring repetitive and dynamic textures, likened to the works of experimental harpists such as ‘Zeena Parkins and Lara Somogyi’ in a recent review by James Cardie (NowThen Magazine). Her compositional practice explores themes that arise from her own lived experiences such as body, gender, and phenomenological perceptions of time and space. She is particularly interested in the uses of spaces both musical and physical, often designing pieces that rework the performer-audience dynamic. Her works bring with them a strong sense of storytelling and sharing of space.