Evan Parker – Matinee Residency: "Ritual for John Coltrane" – Trance Map (Evan Parker + Matt Wright) + Filipe Gomes + Mark Sanders Percussion Quartet

Parker played with John Stevens in the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, experimenting with new kinds of group improvisation and held a long-standing partnership with guitarist Derek Bailey. The two formed the Music Improvisation Company and later Incus Records. He also has tight associations with European free improvisations - playing on Peter Brötzmann's legendary 'Machine Gun' session (1968), with Alexander Von Schlippenbach and Paul Lovens, Globe Unity Orchestra, Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath, and Barry Guy's London Jazz Composers Orchestra (LJCO). Though he has worked extensively in both large and small ensembles, Parker is perhaps best known for his solo soprano saxophone music, a singular body of work that in recent years has centred around his continuing exploration of techniques such as circular breathing, split tonguing, overblowing, multiphonics and cross-pattern fingering. These are technical devices, yet Parker's use of them is, he says, less analytical than intuitive; he has likened performing his solo work to entering a kind of trance-state. The resulting music is certainly hypnotic, an uninterrupted flow of snaky, densely-textured sound that Parker has described as "the illusion of polyphony". Many listeners have indeed found it hard to credit that one man can create such intricate, complex music in real time. Matt Wright: Matt Wright Matt Wright works as a composer, improviser and sound artist at the edges of concert and club culture, working closely with Evan Parker in their shared Trance Map project. He has presented work at venues such as the Sydney Opera House, Le Poisson Rouge (New York), the Muziekcentrum an ‘t IJ (Amsterdam), The Kim Ma Theatre (Vietnam) and Abbey Road Studios, Tate Britain and Tate Modern (London). He has been commissioned by organisations such as hcmf//, Transit Festival (Belgium) and MATA Festival (New York), with broadcasts on TV across Europe, and globally on radio, including a two-hour focus on his work on the ABC Network in Australia. Reviews of his projects have appeared in the New York Times, the Sydney Morning Herald, Vietnam Today and the Financial Times. In 2014, he remixed Robert Wyatt's Cuckooland album into a concert-length collaboration with Elaine Mitchener, Tony Hymas and the Brodsky Quartet and in 2015 Totem for Den Haag (available on Music at the Edge of Collapse with Ensemble Klang) was one of three pieces selected by hcmf// to represent UK new music in the UK/Mexico dual year. His music is released on Ensemble Klang records, psi, Migro and Extra Normal. Matt studied in Huddersfield, The Hague and at Goldsmiths and is Professor of Composition and Sonic Art at Canterbury Christ Church University in the UK. Mark Sanders: Mark Sanders Mark has worked with many greats of the British, European and American free jazz improvised music scene including Roscoe Mitchell, Roswell Rudd, Evan Parker, John Butcher, Henry Grimes, Elaine Mitchener, Wadada Leo Smith, Myra Melford, Charles Gayle , Sirone and William Parker He has also played with Jah Wobble, Harold Budd, Bill Laswell, Christian Marclay, International Contemporary Ensemble, Ilan Volkov and The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. He is a member of many working groups including duos with Nicole Mitchell and Rhodri Davies, Neil Charles' 'Dark Days' with Cleveland Watkiss & Pat Thomas, 'Last Dream of the Morning' with John Butcher & John Edwards, 'Shifa' with Rachel Musson and Pat Thomas and 'Sarost' with Larry Stabbins & Paul Rogers. As an educator he has taught improvisation at many universities around the country as a lecturer and guest tutor.Mark has played concerts and festivals around the world and appears on over 220 CD and Vinyl releases.Mark was a recipient of the Paul Hamlyn Award for Artists 2024 "Drop the needle on the first track — or any track for that matter — and the first thing one is bound to notice is the amazing percussion skills of Mark Sanders" – Peter Thelen... Exposé "Mark is just incredible and immensely diverse, he is at the center of "Kwingyaw" and it is difficult to tell what he is doing to get some of these sounds." – Bruce L Gallenter, Downtown Music Gallery, NY