Ex-Nova: Will Butterworth, Mike McInerney, Marcus Penrose, Steve Day

Event information

Blended melodies & sound sculptures, imaginative explorations

Will Butterworth, piano
Mike McInerney, shakuhachi, humbox
Marcus Penrose, 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

Marcus Penrose is a double bassist and composer who has been a member of the London music scene for 25 years, heard regularly at the city’s major jazz venues (The Vortex, 606 Club and The Jazz Cafe). He's also played with a diverse range of artists at venues and festivals from the North of Scotland to Norway and Sweden and from the Swiss Alps to Cyprus to the Persian Gulf and many points between. He has recently collaborated with visiting international touring artists, Finland’s Olli Soikelli and France’s Adrien Moignard. He continues to write and perform with his trio, Aurelius which has received international recognition.

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

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