Un/stable: Khabat Abas / Ivor Kallin / Billy Steiger (trio)

Event information

Un/stable showcases improvised music, with two sets from a string trio of Khabat Abas, Ivor Kallin, and Billy Steiger.

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Khabat Abas is an experimental cellist, improviser, and composer from Iraqi Kurdistan. She moves freely between artistic discipline and possibilities. Her works are inspired by a broad collection of methods, including noise, improvisation, and narrative storytelling as individual approaches. Therefore, she searches for unheard sounds or undiscovered spaces. Khabat is probably best known for her adapted cello and improvisational work exploring extended techniques, through which she started developing pieces that respond to the objects that are surrounding her or to her childhood memories. In her practice, she raises questions about what is out of bounds, raising the possibilities of sounds that cannot be controlled – in contrast to traditional musical values.

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Ivor Kallin exploits his heritage through poetry, deploying Scots and Yiddish as the basis for improvised poetry, with occasional English, when not collaborating with John Bisset in making over 100 films on Youtube as 213tv. He also plays viola, and bass in improvised music projects, e.g. Barrel, London Improvisers Orchestra, Jerico Orchestra, Glowering Figs, Ya Basta and other projects as they present themselves. He has played twice in Austria, once in Germany and apart from that mainly plays in London, so his passport is sparsely stamped. His beard is legendary, and has sparked an outbreak of copycat hipsterism in Hackney and amongst the Orthodox Jewish community.

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Billy Steiger was born in Howth on the 16th December, 1986. Now he plays the violin.

“Then he sat down by a pond and began to play a tune. As he played, the most extraordinary thing happened. One by one the fish in the pond began to jump out and fly about in the air. And what is more, they were all different colours and they were singing to the music.”
- Patrick, Quentin Blake.