The Squid's Ear Magazine


Ist (Davies / Fell / Wastell): Lodi (Confront)

Since 1995 the string trio of Rhodri Davies, Simon H. Fell & Mark Wastell have created sparse, introspective improvisation, performing here at the Contemporaneamente festival in Lodi, Italy.
 

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Personnel:



Rhodri Davies-harp

Simon H. Fell-doublebass

Mark Wastell-violoncello


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Label: Confront
Catalog ID: ccs 05
Squidco Product Code: 13375

Format: CDR
Condition: New
Released: 2005
Country: Great Britain
Packaging: Clipack
Recorded in concert at Contemporaneamente 2002, Tempio Civico dell'Incoronata, Lodi, Italy.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"How did IST begin? By happenstance rather than calculation. In 1995, Simon H. Fell performed with an unknown harpist by the name of Rhodri Davies in Huddersfield, where Rhodri was at university. At around the same time, an unknown cellist called Mark Wastell contacted Simon to ask whether they might play together - in private, not with a view to doing gigs. Graciously, Simon agreed. Later that year, when Rhodri relocated to London, Simon brought him and Mark together and the three of them began to play. What immediately became apparent was that IST (as the trio would soon be known) had a unique chemistry, and their often quiet, sparse, introspective but tensile music, strewn with ghost notes, was different from that of any other improvising string group.

The IST concerts that followed were among the first performances of Mark's career, and, remarkably, the Anagrams To Avoid session was recorded on the day that Rhodri and Mark met. This was the beginning of their extensive joint involvement in various informal line-ups for both concerts and recordings, and with longstanding groups such as Broken Consort and The Sealed Knot.

Fast forward to 2002. In September of that year, IST was invited to perform at the Contemporaneamente classical music festival in the town of Lodi, Italy. The concert took place in the frescoed nave of an octagonal medieval church, the fabulous acoustic of which served the musicians, and the recording, well. In a 2006 interview with Tomas Korber, Wastell said this was "the best concert that group ever played".

In ideal circumstances, IST gave perhaps their finest performance, and Lodi contains every second of it. The recording is dedicated to the late Peter Kowald, who, the previous evening at Contemporaneamente, had played his final European concert.


Though IST was formed as long ago as 1995, the group has a scant discography. Anagrams To Avoid, a 1997 LP release on the USA-based SIWA label, was joined later that year by Consequences (Of Time And Place) (Confront). The following year, Ghost Notes was issued by Bruce's Fingers to coincide with a short tour by the group, during which, as well as improvising, they interpreted scores by Earle Brown and Karlheinz Stockhausen. In addition to four improvisations, the CD included compositions by Phil Durrant, Stace Constantinou, Guto Pryderi Puw, Carl Bergstr¯m-Nielson, Simon H. Fell and Mark Wastell. Since then, IST has played on the Company In Marseille double CD (Incus, 1999) with guitarist Derek Bailey and hoofer/raconteur Will Gaines, and contributed tracks to the following compilations: Total Music Meeting 2001: Audiology - 11 Groups Live In Berlin (All, 2002) and Freedom of the City 2003: Small Groups (Emanem, 2004)."-Confront


Artist Biographies

"Rhodri Davies was born in 1971 in Aberystwyth, Wales and now lives in Gateshead in the northeast of England.

He plays harp, electric harp, live-electronics and builds wind, water, ice and fire harp installations. He has released four solo albums: Trem, Over Shadows, Wound Response and An Air Swept Clean of All Distance.

His regular groups include: a duo with John Butcher, Common Objects, HEN OGLEDD: Dawson - Davies, a trio with David Toop and Lee Patterson, Cranc, The Sealed Knot and a trio with John Tilbury and Michael Duch.

In 2008 he collaborated with the visual artist Gustav Metzger on 'Self-cancellation', a large-scale audio-visual collaboration in London and Glasgow.

New pieces for solo harp have been composed for him by: Eliane Radigue, Phill Niblock, Christian Wolff, Ben Patterson, Alison Knowles, Mieko Shiomi and Yasunao Tone.

In 2012 he was the recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Grants to Artists Award."

-Rhodri Davies Website (http://www.rhodridavies.com/words/)
3/13/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

Simon H. Fell (b. Dewsbury, Yorkshire, 13 January 1959) is a bassist and composer; he is primarily known for his work as a free improviser and the composer of ambitiously complex post-serialist works.

Fell began playing double bass in 1973. From 1978 to 1981 he read English Literature at Fitzwilliam College of Cambridge University,[1] an interest that led to ties to many of the poets associated with the Cambridge scene (a later work, Music for 10(0), involves settings of texts by the poet/music journalist/provocateur Ben Watson).

Fell's most notable early group was a group with drummer Paul Hession and saxophonist Alan Wilkinson, a free-jazz trio that was exceedingly fast and furious even by the standards of that genre. Their work was primarily released as cassettes and CDs on Fell's label Bruce's Fingers, including Bogey's and the group's only studio album, foom! foom! Their most sonically extreme statement, however, was the grainily recorded The Horrors of Darmstadt (Shock). (Its title is a sarcastic quotation from a BBC announcer concerning the avant-garde Darmstadt School of composers.)

Other groups in which Fell is or was a member include the free jazz trio Badland (led by saxophonist Simon Rose; initially the drummer was Mark Sanders, with Steve Noble subsequently taking over the role), the improvising string+percussion ensemble ZFP (with Carlos Zingaro, Marcio Mattos and Mark Sanders), and SFQ, a quartet/quintet with changing membership, though clarinettist Alex Ward has been a constant. (Fell's 2001 version of his 70-minute SFQ composition Thirteen Rectangles was broadcast twice by the BBC and subsequently nominated for the 'new work' award in the 2002 BBC Jazz Awards.) In sharp contrast to the uproar of Hession/Wilkinson/Fell, the trio IST (with Rhodri Davies and Mark Wastell) was one of the seminal groups in the development of the ultra-quiet aesthetic now generally called "EAI" or "electroacoustic improvisation". Fell has also performed in many other ensembles, including the London Improvisers Orchestra and Derek Bailey's Company Week.

Fell's major sequence of compositions is titled Compilation (to date, four such projects have been issued). Despite the governing title, these are not collections of previous material but new, large-scale works. The musical language makes overt use of serialist procedures (such as tone rows, retrograde structures, &c), as well as many other techniques: extensive studio layering, overdubbing and reordering of material (so that seemingly "live" performances may be the result of carefully edited-together improvisations and/or notated material), and use of aleatoric techniques to "degrade" or distort precomposed structures into new shapes. Free improvisation, rock and jazz all form key parts of the musical language; one section of Compilation IV even includes a simultaneous hommage to Karlheinz Stockhausen and Henry Mancini. The cast of musicians drawn on for these pieces usually includes a mix of classically trained players, jazzers and free improvising musicians, as well as wild cards like the noise guitarist Stefan Jaworzyn. While virtuoso players such as Evan Parker and John Butcher are essential to the projects, Fell often deliberately makes use of amateur or student musicians, too, not as a makeshift but as an intentionally democratizing and less predictable element.

Other large-scale composition projects include:

• his compositions for The London Improvisers' Orchestra (Papers, Happy Families, Kšln Klang, Ellington 100 (Strayhorn 85), Morton's Mobile, Too Busy and Three Mondrians) (1998-2004)
• Kaleidozyklen, a 60-minute piece for improvising double bassist and orchestra (2000)
• Thirteen New Inventions, a major solo piano piece commissioned by Philip Thomas (2005)
• the concert-length BBC Radio 3 commission, Positions & Descriptions (for 18 musicians & prerecorded materials), premiered at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (2007)
• a 1-hour suite for sextet, The Ragging Of Time, commissioned by the Marsden Jazz Festival (2014)
-Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Fell)
3/13/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Mark Wastell Born 1968; cello.

Much of Mark Wastell's relationship with his chosen instrument is concentrated on the tactile, textural and sonic possibilities of both violoncello and bow. He is increasingly interested in working with extreme elements drawn from frequency, timbre and pitch.

His early activity was consciously and subconsciously influenced by a variety of improvising musicians including John Stevens, Barry Guy, Phil Durrant and John Russell. Subsequent exposure to contemporary composers lead to a greater understanding and appreciation of the works written for strings by Feldman, Cage, Nono, Lachenmann and Sciarrino. The use of live electronics and music concrete by Tudor, Parmegiani, Xenakis and others was another important early influence.

Wastell's current instrumental material primarily focuses on using abstract principles of space and texture - encompassing elements of new London silence, pro-instrument minimalism, new complexity and electro-acoustics. Because of the very nature of his chosen instrument, he tends to favour 'chamber' style ensembles and is a member of a number of regular groups:

• Chris Burn's Ensemble, with John Butcher, Rhodri Davies, John Russell, Matt Hutchinson

• Derek Bailey's Company - with, for example, Will Gaines, Simon H. Fell and Rhodri Davies

• Evan Parker's String Project, with Peter Cusack, Hugh Davies, Rhodri Davies, Phil Durrant, John Edwards, Kaffe Matthews, Marcio Mattos, John Russell

• Assumed possibilities, with Chris Burn, Rhodri Davies and Phil Durrant

• The Sealed Knot, with Burkhard Beins and Rhodri Davies

• Necessaire with Alessandro Bosetti, Ignaz Schick and Burkhard Beins

• IST with Simon Fell and Rhodri Davies

• Quatuor Accorde with Tony Wren, Phil Durrant and Charlotte Hug

• Broken Concort, a duo with Rhodri Davies

Mark Wastell has also performed with many other leading musicians including John Zorn, Keith Rowe, Peter Kowald, Hugh Davies, Roger Turner, Veryan Weston, Lol Coxhill, Mark Sanders, Axel Dorner, Hans Koch, Phil Minton, Max Eastley and Steve Beresford.

As a soloist he has played at the Micro-classical Festival (London 1996), LMC Festival (London 2000) and the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (2000). He has travelled extensively with various groups, performing on tour and at festivals in the USA, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Sweden, Denmark and Greece. Other work includes the launch in 1996 of his own record label, Confront Recordings. Wastell is also joint co-ordinator of the concert venue All Angels, together with Rhodri Davies."

-European Free Improv (EFI) (http://www.efi.group.shef.ac.uk/musician/mwastell.html)
3/13/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.


Track Listing:



1. Untitled 01 19:27

2. Untitled 02 13:05

3. Untitled 03 12:52

Related Categories of Interest:


Improvised Music
European Improv, Free Jazz & Related
lowercase, micro-improv, sound improv
Stringed Instruments
London & UK Improv & Related Scenes
Free Improvisation
Trio Recordings

Search for other titles on the label:
Confront.


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ist (The Improvising String Trio) of Rhodri Davies (harp), Simon H. Fell (bass) and Mark Wastell (violincello) performing at The Natural Music Club in London, 1997, using unorthodox techniques in indeterminate systems and free improvisation for fascinating results.
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