A concert series to celebrate Lawrence Casserley’s 75th Birthday
Celebrating a few of the many collaborations with which I have had the privelege to be involved over the years.
Presenting some old and some new trios, and some other relationships.
There are so many other good friends and colleagues who might have been included, but there was not room for everyone.
There will be other opportunites…..
Lawrence Casserley has been making music with live electronic processing for nearly fifty years! Since the 1990s he has built a reputation for his instrumental approach to live electronic music processing in improvised music, which is documented on a formidable series of recordings with Evan Parker, Barry Guy, Paul Rutherford, Simon Desorgher, Adam Linson, Rainer and Martin Bürck, Jeffrey Morgan, Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg, Gianni Mimmo, Martin Mayes, Philipp Wachsmann and many others. The core of Lawrence’s music making is collaboration, and this special series of concerts represents just a few of the many collaborations he has developed over the years. Some of these relationships are long established, some are new combinations; all reflect the variety and depth of his music making. This concert series also celebrates a spate of new CDs released during 2016.
Lawrence Casserley Solo (for Bob, Hugh and Paul)
Lawrence Casserley is best known for his collaborative work with other musicians, transforming their sounds with his Signal Processing Instrument. He also performs solo sets using a mixture of voice, percussion (most particularly metal) and various found or invented instruments as sound sources for the SPI. On this occasion he will weave tributes to three esteemed colleagues who are no longer with us into the texture of his performance.
Trio ‘Granularities’ with Gianni Mimmo and Martin Mayes
“The sense of time and space was at times expanded by the acoustics of the church and by the use of loudspeakers in quadrophony which relayed the electronic sounds layered and diffracted by Casserley. At other times it contracted when the reverberations around the nave became focused in the apse in instrumental solos and duos, intensely concise, devoid of rhetorical excess, underpinned by a discrete use of extended instrumental technique and of noise.
“The textures woven by Casserley created an elusiveness in the distinction between cause and effect, between the instrumental sounds and their “virtual double”, transforming one into another in a sort of endless feedback.
“Strange to say, this is after all about a concert, yet this music becomes an expression of Hsin-hsin-ming’s famous Zen saying “There is neither “Other” nor “I” (…) All that can be expressed is: “Not two””.”
From a review by Ermes Rosina of out debut concert in Turin in 2009.
Gianni Mimmo tours extensively in Europe and USA. Mimmo has built an international reputation for his unique treatment of musical timbre and his exploration of advanced techniques. His style has developed a unique blend of abstract lyricism and contemporary flavours.
Martin Mayes has been described as an ‘alchemical juggler with sound’; his extraordinary playing on a wide variety of horns, including hand horn, alphorn, trompe de chasse and modern horns and conch shells, creates a magical world, interweaving choreographic and theatrical elements.
This trio has been active since our debut in Torino in 2009.
(Also celebrating the new Granularities trio CD “Scenes from a Trialogue” on the Amirani label)
