Gateshead here we come…

Quick post about my next upcoming project. On Sunday 12th April I’ll be taking Sloth Racket, a brand new band featuring some of my favourite musicians (and favourite people!) to Gateshead International Jazz Festival. Anton Hunter, Sam Andreae, Seth Bennett and Johnny Hunter will be joining me to play some new music that I’ve put together especially for the gig; with a heavy emphasis on improvisation, of course.

We’re sharing the bill with the excellent trio of Rachel Musson, Julie Kjaer and Hannah Marshall, so it promises to be a great evening all round. Tickets are available from the festival website. Our gig is part of Jazz North East’s ‘Women Make Music’ series, supported by PRSF.

It wouldn’t be a new band without a gig at LUME, so we’ll be heading to Long White Cloud on Thursday 16th April for the London leg. Hope to see you there or at Gateshead!

In lieu of a band photo, here’s my sketch of a sloth making a racket.

sloth

Lovely evening at LUME…

Quick post with a couple of photos from the gig at LUME last night. Seth and I played duo, then we joined Backyard Chassis to make a quintet at the end. It was a LOT of fun. As ever, Dee Byrne was live-tweeting the gig and took the following:

sethcath 5.3.15sethcath and backyard chassis 5.3.15

Duo with Seth Bennett: 5th March

On Thursday 5th March at LUME, I’ll be playing a duo set with the excellent bass player Seth Bennett. It’s our first duo gig, and we’ve had some really nice plays so I’m very much looking forward to it. Do come along if you’re free: we’re sharing the bill with Backyard Chassis, which is a trio of Corey Mwamba (vibes), Adam Fairhall (lots of cool and weird keyboards) and Johnny Hunter (drums)! The venue is our usual LUME haunt Long White Cloud, 151 Hackney Road, E2 8JL. It’s two minutes’ walk from Hoxton overground. Here’s a photoshop of me and Seth to help you imagine the gig.

sethcath

A visit to the Freedom Loft Sessions…

Last week I went to the Freedom Loft Sessions at the Vortex – a free improv jam organised by a team of musicians including Orphy Robinson, Tori Handsley and Cleveland Watkiss. It was a lot of fun! I didn’t realise at the time, but they were filming all the sets, so here’s a video of the ad-hoc group I played with…

It was Seb Silas on tenor, Nikos Ziarkas on guitar, Winston Blissett on bass, Julie Kjaer on alto sax, Tom Ward on bass clarinet, and me on baritone sax.

Great night – I’ll definitely be going back!

Word Of Moth

After nearly two years of running LUME, Dee Byrne and I have decided that it’s time to collaborate on a musical project. We have taken the liberty of booking ourselves in for a gig at Long White Cloud on Thursday 12th February, roped in a couple of our favourite musicians, and named the project Word Of Moth – after a silly misreading while filling in a form (because, you know, we mainly do admin when we’re together).

Seth Bennett, who I first worked with in Anton Hunter’s Article 11 band last year, has agreed to be on bass. He’s great to play with! On drums will be Tom Greenhalgh, who I’ve heard in various different bands including the excellent Vole, but haven’t played with before. I’m very much looking forward to it.

Dee and I will both be bringing some compositions, and there will be lots of space for group improvisation too. If you’re free, come down and hear the results…

Happy 2015! And some gigs…

I’ve just updated my gigs page with some 2015 dates. Lots of fun stuff coming up, starting this Saturday 10th January, with the Raw Tonk Records in-store gig at the awesome tiny record shop Electric Knife in Kentish Town. Anton and I are playing a Ripsaw Catfish set, sharing the bill with Anton Mobin and Benedict Taylor, who also have an album out on Raw Tonk.

Notable things coming up in the first half of this year include the first outing of a new band, Sloth Racket, at the Gateshead International Jazz Festival on April 12th. The festival is happening at The Sage, Gateshead, and we’re sharing the bill with Rachel Musson, Julie Kjaer and Hannah Marshall as part of Jazz North East’s ‘Women Make Music’ series, supported by PRSF. Rachel and I are also giving a workshop on free improvisation…

In late May/early June, Dee and I are striking out with our bands for ‘LUME On Tour’. Entropi and Quadraceratops will play double bills around the UK, giving us a chance at the same time to meet lots of other promoters as LUME. We have applied to Arts Council England’s Grants For The Arts scheme and also to the PRSF Open Funding scheme for this, so we’re crossing our fingers that we can make it all happen! Entropi will also be launching their debut album, on the F-IRE Presents label, on the London date of the tour (7th June at the Vortex).

All the dates are on my gigs page, so head over and see what I’m up to. Hope to see you out there somewhere!

Shoaling, Saxoctopus and trio gig

Right then. After a flurry of Quadraceratops activity for LJF, it’s time to put the alto sax back in its case and get the baritone out for the rest of the year! Here’s what the end of 2014 looks like for me…

Ripsaw Catfish: Shoaling tour

Anton and I kicked off our collaborative tour last week, in the form of a totally off-the-hook encounter with Corey Mwamba, Dave Kane and Joshua Blackmore at LUME. We had a great time playing with them and it was a combination of people I’d love to get together again. We have high hopes for the rest of the Shoaling tour now. The dates and the shoals are:

29th November – Open Circuit, Parish Rooms, Ulverston. With Shaun Blezard.

30th November – Blank Canvas, Liverpool. With Mark Hanslip and Johnny Hunter.

13th December – Cafe Bar Marzano’s, Norwich. With Chris Dowding’s brass ensemble ‘Brass Monkeys’.

17th December – The Scope, Brighton. With The Static Memories.

Saxoctopus returns…

In between Shoaling dates, the eight-saxophone monster Saxoctopus is rearing its head for two gigs. We’re playing at the last ‘LUME Presents’ gig of the year at the Vortex, on Sunday 7th December in a double bill with the excellent Alphabets (Hannah Marshall, Nick Malcolm and Lauren Kinsella). Then on Tuesday 9th December we head to Derby to play at Corey Mwamba’s new series ‘The Family Album’. This will be fun….

Trio with Olie Brice and Corey Mwamba

With the octopus safely back in its tank (?), I’ll head directly to Daniel Thompson’s Foley Street concert series for the second meeting of the trio with Corey and Olie. The first one was very enjoyable indeed, so it will be really nice to do it again!

Hope to see you out there somewhere…

The London Jazz Festival is upon us!

It’s that time of year again, and I’ve got a few things coming up in the London Jazz Festival. They are:

18th, 19th and 20th November: a three night LUME festival special! I’m playing on the 18th (with Ripsaw Catfish) and the 20th (with Quadraceratops) plus referee-ing the Deemer/duck-rabbit double bill on the 19th. More info on the LUME blog post, and there are advance tickets on sale for all three gigs too.

23rd November: Quadraceratops are playing at the BBC Jazz On 3 festival edition of ‘Jazz In The Round’, at the Clore Ballroom, Southbank Centre. We’re kicking off the four-band bill at 2pm. This will be fun! It’s also being recorded for Radio 3, and will be broadcast at 11pm on Monday 8 December.

In between all that I’ll be trying to catch everyone else’s amazing gigs. See you out there!

NB: The Ripsaw Catfish gig is also the first night of our ‘Shoaling’ tour. We’re heading off around the UK in November and December, collaborating with lots of different improvisers. There’s some more info on the Sound And Music project page, and here’s a handy flyer.

shoaling flyer