LONDON: The Horse Hospital

Monday 2nd March, 2026

7:00pm

Event information

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

--

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.

--

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.

--

Isidora Edwards is a London-based cellist, improviser and PhD researcher from Chile. Moving between thresholds that include the acoustic, amplified, and processed cello and electronics, her musical language questions epistemologies of time, listening, freedom, and pleasure. Her solo and collaborative performances with fellow improvisers have been presented in a vast number of festivals and venues around Europe, Latin America and the US. She was trained as a classical cellist at the Universidad Católica de Chile, and was awarded scholarships by the National Research and Development Agency of Chile (ANID) to pursue an MMus in Creative Practice (2019-2020) and a Practice-Based PhD in Music (2020-2024) both at Goldsmiths University of London.