12th October 2022.
For ame’s second piano residency, four composer-improvisers, known individually for their work across multiple genres, are brought together for 2 days to jointly explore a common ground of soundscape and composition.
Yoko Miura – piano, melodeon, toy piano
Charlie Collins – waterphone, metal, percussion
Faye MacCalman – clarinet, tenor saxophone, efx, voice
Derek Saw – tuba & electronics, pocket trumpet
Yoko Miura, born in Tokyo, studied classical piano from the ages of 5 to18, after which her already diverging classical and jazz influences led to studies with many of Japan’s leading teachers. Since 2001 she has travelled regularly outside of Japan, performing and recording with many of the leading figures of European experimentalism, including Lawrence Casserley, Steve Beresford, John Russell, Hans Koch, Alison Blunt, Mia Zebelka, Jean-Michel van Schouwburg, and Gianni Mimmo. She has collaborated with Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra, and recorded with US drum legend Matt Wilson.
“I am trying to make a kind of different universe, interweaving and exchanging with different processes, values, and ways, with all people, not just the musicians, but also painters and dancers.”
Charlie Collins is a creative percussionist, free polyrhythmic drummer, and sound artist, based in Sheffield, UK. His work continues to explore the boundaries between pure sound and rhythm, frequently incorporating metal percussion and improvisation. During the 1970s he was involved in the nascent “Industrial” scene, recording for cult labels Industrial, Fetish, and Doublevision, while his lifelong interest in East Asian percussion and rhythm technique is displayed in current work with komungo player Eun-Jung Kim, pianist Yoko Miura, visual artist Bongsu Park, voice artist Ami Yamasaki, composer Ryoko Akama, and Butoh dancers Tsukasa Kamidate and Mushimaru Fujieda.
He is one of a handful of musicians to have played both Derek Bailey’s Company Week and Top Of The Pops.
Faye MacCalman is a performer, composer, improviser, and songwriter based in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. Freewheeling through genre boundaries, inspired by minimalism, folk, and out jazz, she has been known to fuse experimental songwriting with off kilter patterns, surreal atmospheres, and heartfelt melodies.
She was a Jerwood Arts fellow in 2022 for her AV installation ‘Invisible, Real’, combining anonymously collected real life experience of mental illness with projections, sound art, and live solo performance, while “Redraw the Circles”, a New Creatives North commission addressing classicism in music, was premiered by Huw Stephens for BBC Music.
Faye is bandleader of award winning trio Archipelago, while her numerous collaborations include Scottish composer/performer Anna Meredith, indo-jazz composer Arun Ghosh, and all embracing English folk legends The Unthanks.
Derek Saw has worked in free improvisation and at the cutting edges of composed music since his move to Sheffield, UK. He initially worked with the Sheffield Free Music Group and in the mid eighties he co-founded the respected Hornweb quartet, while also organising his own Rhythm Division, which included drummer Paul Hession. More recently he has worked with thereminist Beatrix Ward-Fernandez on her Trio project, and collaborated with internationally acclaimed artists Sonny Simmons, Gino Robair, Linda Sharrock, Anton Mobin, Yoko Miura, and Eun-Jung Kim.
