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Ex-Nova: Will Butterworth, Mike McInerney, James Macphail, Steve Day
Blended melodies & sound sculptures, imaginative explorations
Presented by: Ashburton Arts Centre| 0 | ASHBURTON: Arts Centre |
|---|---|
| P | Saturday 29th November, 2025 |
| N | 7:00pm |
Event information
Blended melodies & sound sculptures, imaginative explorations
Will Butterworth, piano
Mike McInerney, shakuhachi, humbox
James Macphail, double bass*
Steve Day, percussion
This is a new ensemble for which there are not yet any audio or video recordings available, so it’s hard to answer your obvious question, “What’s this going to be like?” Here’s what drummer/percussionist Steve Day has to say about the music that they’ll be playing:
“Ex-Nova is built around the partnership between Mike McInerney & Will Butterworth. Mike is a UK master shakuhachi player. You can expect to hear this beautiful Japanese traditional wooden flute featured throughout the two sets planned for this gig at Ashburton Arts Centre. Mike and Will have also composed short original melodies featuring piano and tuned humbox* electronics. Once they are combined with Marcus’s bass, and Steve’s percussion, these small orchestrations take on their own ambiance.
“Whilst the music sometimes references the odd jazz standard (like Wayne Shorter’s Footprints), Ex-Nova’s aim is to focus on the relationship between Will and Mike. The role of drums and double bass is to build a kind of integrated counterweight to Mike and Will.”
* Humbox: this is a collection of electronics, or as Mike describes it here as a “live, mostly analog, modular synth”.
Will Butterworth, piano has worked extensively with many of the UK’s finest musicians including Dylan Howe, Asaf Sirkis, Andy Shepherd, Bill Bruford, Julian Siegel, and recently in a duo with Hadley Fraser. He was one half of the critically acclaimed ‘Stravinsky Duo’ with Dylan Howe, reinterpreting the works Stravinsky for drums and Piano. He has released 4 albums as band leader and his music has been heard on Radio 2,3 and classic FM. His latest quartet album ‘The Nightingale and the Rose’ – a suite of original music based on Oscar Wilde’s Children’s story of the same name – was be released on Jellymould jazz.
Here, Will Butterworth is improvising a piano solo, whilst artist Jo Waterhouse is constructing a visual image. And here he is, talking and playing with saxophonist Martin Speake (videos on YouTube)
“Butterworth speaks in [a] lyrical and melodic fashion. There’s a wistful, almost elegiac quality about the music…” Ian Mann The Jazzmann
“UK-based Mike McInerney studied shakuhachi with Iwamoto… he sits patiently singing amid vast soundscapes, until he unleashes complex spirals of flute trills, looping contrails across the sky.” Clive Bell, The Wire, music magazine
Steve Day “…in his jazz-formed music, the wild leap from a theme to [the] unexpected… is incontrovertibly the right one…” Roger Dennis, Wylde Publications
* James Macphail is on bass, replacing Marcus Penrose who is unwell.
Ashburton Arts Centre
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Venue information
ASHBURTON: Arts Centre| 0 | 15 West St Ashburton TQ13 7DT |
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| > | www.ashburtonarts.org.uk |
| ! | 01364 652781 |
| ` | Flat access from street. All who can, park in Town Hall Car Park, very close by. |
