Somewhere There presents…

Brick Quartet + Joe Sorbara // Knurl // Clutton, Grossman, Liu, o

Thursday 03 September, 2015

Ratio (283 College Street)

8pm

$10/pwyc

8pm

Clutton, Grossman, Liu, o

Rob Clutton (electric bass) Ben Grossman (hurdy gurdy, electronics) Germaine Liu (percussion) cheryl o (cello)

845pm

Knurl

Alan Bloor (sawblade violin)

930pm

Brick Quartet (Montréal/ New Zealand) + Joe Sorbara

Raphael Foisy (bass) Jeff Henderson (saxophone) Jacob Desjardins (drums) Vicky Mettler (guitar) + Joe Sorbara (drums, percussion)

Rob Clutton is a composer/performer with two solo bass recordings, Dubious Pleasures and Suchness Monster, on the Rat-Drifting label. In 2015 the Cluttertones released Ordinary Joy, a recording of original compositions, on the Healing Power label. Earlier independent releases include Holstein Dream Pageant and Tender Buttons. Rob has participated in collaborative projects including Handslang, This Moment, Drumheller, Clutton/Michelli/West, Kavli, Clutton/Johnston bass duo, and Sweet Session, a duet with Randi Helmers exploring the Sonnets of William Shakespeare. Other long-term projects have included the Steve Koven Trio, NOJO, John Millard and Happy Day, Lina Allemano’s Titanium Riot, the Ryan Driver Sextet, Tim Posgate’s Jazzstory, Nick Fraser Quartet featuring Tony Malaby, Ronda Rindone’s Quorum, the David Mott Quintet, Bill Grove Quartet, Mark Segger Sextet, AimToronto Orchestra, Shurum Burum Jazz Circus, Faint Praise, and the Winged Marsupials.

Ben Grossman is a busy musician: improviser, studio musician, composer, noisemaker and audio provocateur. He works in many fields, having played on over 80 CDs, soundtracks for film and television, sound design for theatre, installations, work designed for radio transmission, and live performances spanning early medieval music to experimental electronica. Ben's tools of choice are electronics, percussion, and, especially, the hurdy gurdy (vielle à roue), a contemporary electro-acoustic string instrument with roots in the European middle ages. www.macrophone.org

Germaine Liu is a Toronto-based percussionist, performer, composer, and creative improviser. Her musical interests primarily involve collaborative improvisation and composition informed by sonic and physical connections. She also loves teaching and playing musical games with children. During her undergraduate degree at University of Guelph, Liu studied percussion with John Goddard and Jesse Stewart and music with Ellen Waterman. At York University in Toronto she studied composition with David Mott.

Cellist cheryl o has been improvising ever since a sudden breeze blew her music away while busking in Spain. She got a classical music degree and used to play respectable, serious 
stuff. Now she can be seen picking up litter and attaching it to her cello. cheryl has been part of Toronto’s improvising scene for many years. When she’s not deep in a music theatre pit somewhere in the city, she can be found in various states of cello (un)dress. She has played with Mark Feldman, Taylor Ho Bynum, Lina Allemano, Barry Prophet, Rick Sacks, Octopus, Dj D-Sisive, Satoko Fujii & KAZE, and many others. cheryl is a dedicated multi-media collaborator and has blended her improvisations with live theatre, dance, film, text, poetry, painting and electronica.

Knurl --a.k.a. Alan Bloor-- is one of the premier noise artists in Canada. Using contact mics and scrap metal, Knurl creates powerfully harsh noise. At times reminiscent of the likes of Daniel Menche and Haters, Knurl has released two efforts for Alien8 Recordings as well as appearing on the Coalescence compilation. Other labels that have documented Knurl include RRR, Self Abuse, Labyrinth, Entartete Kunst, and Musicus Phycus. Knurl has performed with Keiji Haino, David Kristian, Haters, Princess Dragon Mom, MSBR, and Government Alpha and collaborated live with Jim O’Rourke and Thurston Moore.

Through free improvisation, the Brick Quartet blends their individual influences, including jazz, folk, blues, and world music, with a unifying noise/punk aesthetic. From minimalist soundscapes to moments of enormous intensity, the result is a soundtrack to your favorite gritty crime novel. Jeff Henderson (New Zealand) is a prolific improviser and sound artist who has performed internationally with artists such as Evan Parker, Steve Lacy, Peter Brotzmann, Han Bennink, Paal Nilssen-Love, and William Parker, among others. Intense and uncompromising, his performances have been described as ‘shock-and-awe projections of force into hostile territory’. In New Zealand, he is Director of the Audio Foundation, an organization established to support the experimental music community. Vicky Mettler, Raphaël Foisy-Couture and Félix Lachance are highly active on the experimental music scene of Montreal. They have participated, in different configurations, in the Suoni Per Il Popolo Festival (Mtl), the Jewish General Hospital Jazz Festival (Mtl), the Font Music Festival (Mtl), Rencontres de musiques spontanées (Rimouski), Audiopollination (Toronto) and Zula presents (Hamilton). This show will feature Jacob Desjardins filling in for Felix Lachance

Joe Sorbara is a highly inventive drummer and percussionist with a penchant for coaxing music out of practically anything. Joe's drumkit is regularly augmented with found and prepared materials which ensure that the sounds at his ready disposal are practically orchestral in scope. He is equally at home playing jazz standards, free improvised music, punk rock, and chamber music—but prefers to play them all at the same time. He leads The Imperative, a trio featuring Jay Hay and Karen Ng on tenor saxophones, and two large ensembles: the ten-piece Abakos and a ‘seven-or-more-tet’ known as Other Foot First. Joe plays in Ken Aldcroft's Convergence Ensemble, an improvising duo with Paul Dutton, the AIMToronto Orchestra, and Lullaby North, as well as in numerous ongoing and ad hoc collaborations with creative improvising musicians from all over.