Category Archives: gigging

Quad at The Salisbury

We had a very enjoyable evening at the Salisbury on Sunday. The jazz night there is always well attended so there was a nice crowd, and it was also the first Quadraceratops gig with an open fire. I might work on this as some kind of winter rider requirement: nothing like a fireside chat before going on stage. This gig was also probably our last one with Jason Simpson, who has been playing bass while Dave O’Brien is away travelling. Thanks Jason! And thanks to Jazz @ The Salisbury for having us.

I’m working on some new music for the band at the moment, and also getting into more gig promotion, of which there will be news soon…

Quadraceratops and The Button Band at the Hackney Cut

On February 8th I ventured into the world of gig promoting and put on a double bill at the Hackney Cut. Quadraceratops were joined by The Button Band for a really nice evening of music, pizza, cake eating and general hanging out at a venue that boasts the address ‘Fish Island’. Sadly not open for public gigs any more (nothing to do with us!) the Hackney Cut is a great space and was also home to Dee Byrne’s ‘Jazz at the Hackney Cut’ weekly night.

We recorded and filmed the gig, and I’ll post some videos on here soon subject to the usual video-editing delay. Audio and I have a much better relationship though, so there are some recordings up on my Soundcloud page:

A big thanks to all the musicians, and also to Gideon Conn for producing the button/dinosaur flyer artwork that got so many compliments as I pushed it into people’s faces to promote the gig. The process of putting on a gig was moderately stressful but is definitely something I’d like to do more of. Plans are being hatched as you read this…

 

December 2012 gigs retrospective: MSQ on the road

I’ll continue this afternoon of cataloguing the end of 2012 with a look back to the Madwort Sax Quartet gigs in December. We left London behind and set off on a mini-tour of The Midlands and The North: not bad for the second thing the band ever did! Arguably, as it was a pair of gigs, this should be referred to as a series, but due to the travel involved I’m going to stick my neck out here and call it a mini-tour….

The first stop was Derby and Corey Mwamba‘s ‘One Note Sunday’ night at the Flowerpot. We played two sets to an extremely interested and appreciative audience. Again, it was a cool thing to have this happen at the band’s second ever gig. The idea with One Note Sunday is that people go along to hear something new…as in, not even something they’ve listened to online in advance to see if they like it, but something brand new to them. Risky tactics, you say! Yes. But, what it means from a performer’s perspective is that the people who show up are definitely going to be there to check out the music…and that feels great! We had a good gig there. The sign below was posted by the bar but was totally redundant.

Tom recorded the gig and filmed it. He’s posted a series of four videos on YouTube: the tracks are Shard, S (by Larry Ochs/Rova), Maps and Islands In The Green. Shard and Maps were new tunes that Tom wrote in time for the December gigs.

After Derby, we had a day off before travelling to Manchester to play at Efpi Records’ Freedom Principle night at Sandbar. It was nice to go back and play there again after the Quadraceratops gig for them in June, which was a lovely night. With the quartet, we shared the bill with the Anton Hunter trio. I have to say, perhaps egotistically, that my favourite part of this gig was when we combined the two bands and played some of my music! Anton had clocked that if we merged the two bands we would have a sort of hybrid almost-Quadraceratops septet and he suggested we did a couple of my tunes. With, well, basically no rehearsal. More risky tactics! I like to think of it as the Madanton Worthunter Quartrio. Four saxes, guitar, bass and drums! It was FUN, and pretty anarchic. There’s a video of it, and I’ll post it up here once I get my head around cutting the video into tracks….

November 2012 gigs retrospective

A freezing cold, snowy February day like today seems the perfect time to sift through the various photos, videos, and recordings I’ve amassed over the past three months. I’ve had a lot going on but not much time to write about it until now, so here goes.

Quadraceratops were lucky enough to play in the 2012 London Jazz Festival, which was the highlight of my Autumn. We supported Get The Blessing at the Jazz Cafe in Camden on the 17th November, playing to our biggest audience so far. It was also the biggest venue we’ve played, so the whole evening was slightly surreal and a lot of fun. Ricky Day kindly took on audience-eye-view photography duty on the night, and I’ve put up an album of his shots of the Quadraceratops FB page, plus the couple in this post. A big thanks to Dom Servini, who DJed at the gig, for booking us to come and play.

The following week we had a gig at ‘Jazz at the Waterline’ in Dalston. This is a night run by my friend Dee Byrne (although she has subsequently moved it to the Hackney Cut, due to what is hopefully the Waterline’s temporary closure). The back room of the Waterline is a cosy, intimate space and it was a nice gig for trying out some new music. I had recently finished a composition called ‘Flying South’, so it got its first outing on that night.

The Waterline gig was possibly also the first time that the band name has appeared on a blackboard (above) which I enjoyed. In addition, Dee took some photos on her phone including this one, below, and the trippy one on my ‘Gigs‘ page. Someone was clearly enjoying adding weird effects…hopefully inspired by the music!

I’d like to say a massive thanks to the ‘November lineup’, who put in a lot of work, switched around instruments a bit and played great on both gigs. They were (and indeed are):

Tom Ward – baritone sax (in role as a trombone while Magnus was away)

Andrew Woolf – tenor sax (in role as Tom Ward)

Chris Snead and Dave Orchant – trumpet (one on each gig)

Jason Simpson – bass

Kit Massey – keyboards

Luke Christie – drums

A nice gig in North London; a nice gig in South London

So, the surprise gig mini-cluster happened and it was a lot of fun. Here follows a brief writeup with the obligatory grainy phone photos.

The Madwort Sax Quartet gig at the Salisbury on Sunday came out of the blue, when another band had to drop out. With only a few days to go we found ourselves on the bill with the Euan Palmer Quartet, who were coming down from Birmingham for the gig. Tom called a rehearsal on Sunday afternoon, then we all ate a Thai curry and headed up to the venue. I was a little bit concerned about audience numbers, as we’d only had a couple of days to roll out the aggressive marketing campaign (I even attempted a group text – accidentally sent it twice), but actually I needn’t have worried because there was a nice turnout. The Salisbury gig seems to have a regular crowd now (people were saying that our gig was a typical one in terms of numbers), and it was great to play to a room of ‘randoms’ along with some of our friends who’d come to check out the band. The set went well and the audience seemed to be into Tom’s music. The group definitely works in a live context, which is good to know (!) – and this was without straying into the realm of group improv. We found that we’d internalised all the tunes from the recording in July – they were definitely still ‘in there’ after a month off. All in all, a successful debut I reckon! Tom seemed really pleased.Next up was last night’s Quadraceratops SE Collective gig at the Amersham Arms, down in New Cross. I had originally planned to have some new material ready for this gig, but didn’t manage to finish anything in time. It ended up being a good thing though, in a way, as we spent some rehearsal time the day before working on opening out the existing tunes. Again, I was worried we might play to an empty room, but was proven happily wrong for a second time! There was a very friendly little crowd complete with load clapping and whooping, and the band seemed to go down really well. I even had some ego-boosting compliments about the writing afterwards. The SE Collective guys are a lovely bunch and the back room at the Amersham, usually pretty huge, becomes a nice intimate venue thanks to a velvety jazz curtain. Also, the sound on stage was great, without any mics. Best gig so far I think, and gig number four. Here’s Kitty Ward’s photo of us, our music helpfully illuminated by the atmospheric and homely stage lamp…Luke and Dave are there too; you just can’t see them.

I’m in the middle of sorting out the next few Quadraceratops gigs, so I should have something to post up about one of them soon. I’m also going to be getting down to work on some new tunes, to extend the set and give us a bit of flexibility. Nice as our adopted Zappa tune is (‘Blessed Relief’), it would be good to have two full sets of my own stuff. So. Onwards!

 

Quadraceratops at the Jazz Meet

Last night we assembled the band to play at Floripa for The Jazz Meet. We were up against the Olympics (including the beach volleyball event I think!), so there weren’t so many people around for the first set, but an enthusiastic bunch turned up for the second set and seemed to like what they heard. Rob Coley played all sorts of jazz and funk delights during between sets –  a perfect soundtrack to catching up with some friends and family who had come down to the gig. Sadly I didn’t take a single photo, not even of the giant parrots on the venue walls, so this post is image-less, but if you pop down to Floripa for a cocktail you’ll see the tropical vibes they’ve got going on. It’s a nice room to play in and we had fun – big thanks to Rob and The Jazz Meet for having us along. There was even some mailing list sign-up action, so I should get on with setting that up.

The next Quadraceratops gig is going to be at the Amersham Arms in New Cross, for SE Collective. They’ve been hosting weekly Tuesday night gigs for about a year, putting on loads of great bands from South East London and beyond. It will be really nice to play there, so come down if you’re around…our gig is on Tuesday 4th September.

The Magic Trio’s first gig! And some indie/folk library larks…

What a week! It’s taken me a few days to get around to updating the blog, but last week saw me running around like a mad woman brandishing a toy glockenspiel…well, no ‘like’ about it really, as that’s exactly what I was doing some of the time.

Before we get onto that though, last week also saw the first ever Magic Trio gig. We played at the Wenlock and Essex in Islington as part of a night hosted by Edge Music, a lovely bunch who have started putting on new music nights around town. We shared the bill with a jazz quartet and an avant garde recorder group – a first for me! Our set was lots of fun and the audience seemed to like it too. Jeff was on serpent and ophicleide, Tom played bass clarinet and I was on baritone sax. The set was mainly my compositions, with one from Tom (more like a suite really – ‘The Birds of Stoke Newington’ – soon to be heard in a slightly different form played by his sax quartet). The night had a really nice, relaxed vibe, which was perfect for trying out new music in a new ensemble. Our next gig is hopefully at a street party hosted by Jeff’s neighbours (yay!)…more on that soon. I look forward to more trio activity later in the year too!

So, back to the toy glockenspiel. It was played very beautifully by Quadraceratops keys player Kit, as part of a recording for an album of library music I’ve been working on over the past few months for JW Media Music. They wanted a kind of ‘indie/folk’ sound, so I rounded up a band featuring brass, accordion, mandolin, ukulele, violin, piano, bass and drums. It was the first time I’ve done something like this, and it was interesting to get my teeth into the writing, thinking about how genre is constructed through rhythm, tonalities and instrumentation etc….plus, the session was a good laugh and it was fun to play with an ensemble featuring some cool instruments I don’t usually work with. Accordion in Quadraceratops anyone?!

Ceratopsians head North! And a homebrew EP emerges.

Last night the members of Quadraceratops converged in Manchester (from various other gigs around the country) for a really nice gig at Sandbar. We were hosted by Efpi Records at their Freedom Principle night, which I thoroughly recommend you check out if you ever find yourself in Manchester on the first or third Tuesday of the month. Everyone from Efpi and Sandbar were super friendly, and a lovely audience turned out to hear the band. It was a perfect second outing for the Quad and a great night all round!

Over the bank holiday weekend I also decided it would be a good idea to make a live EP from some of the tunes we played at the Forge gig, and so with the help of a team of ‘volunteers’ (read: unsuspecting family members) I made a short run of CDs to take to Manchester. They went down really well, with six out of the ten copies (I was short on materials!) snapped up at the gig. More are now available, along with downloads, at our new Quadraceratops Bandcamp page…head over and see what you think.

All in all, a thoroughly good long weekend without a river pageant in sight. I look forward to a return trip sometime, perhaps as some kind of northern mini-tour…*schemes*.

 

A lovely night at the Forge…

I don’t think I’ve ever booked a gig in so far in advance. It was actually August 2011 when the Forge gig was confirmed, at which point I was just starting to entertain the idea of getting a new set of tunes together and seeing if the band from my final Guildhall exam fancied reforming. When we played on Thursday night, it felt simultaneously like it had been a long time coming and like it had been booked only a few days ago!

Warning: this next paragraph will gush a bit. Essentially, I had a fantastic evening! After a long (self-inflicted) Winter of Writing that ended up extending into a Spring of Still-Haven’t-Finished-Writing, it was so good to actually play the music. On top of that, it felt brilliant to play the music to such a friendly and receptive audience. Plus, the evening itself was extremely smooth-running and I found I was able to relax and chat to friends who’d come along – a situation I don’t think I’ve been in for ages. In summary, here’s to many more gigs like it!

The recording is on its way, but in the mean time here’s an audience-eye-view photo by Darren McCarthy. We’re off to Manchester next week, and I’ve also just confirmed a date with The Jazz Meet, who are going to host us on July 29th at their lovely weekly event in East London. See you out there!