Coincidences - music of Michael Oliva
Since 2022 I have been involved in a expanding composition and sound project lead by composer and electronic musician Michael Oliva.
He has created a rich tapestry affected by inspirations in Indian music - specifically the Tanpura,
classical romanticism, and contemporary electronic sounds, as well the many musicians that he is collaborating with.
Describing co-incidences as 'sculpture viewed from radically different angles'
Coincidences 2 is 'A meditation on the Solar System, Harmony, Light and the Passing of Life'
and is taster for a performance as part of Orkney Science Festival.
'Sense of ourHum'
A series of eight 20 minute ambient drone tracks, each focussing on certain tones and their consequent overtones and harmonics. They are meant to be played at a slightly lower volume than usual and are designed for sleep, work, activity and meditation.
Drone & Field-recordings - released Feb 2022 on bandcamp with accompanying original drawings.
Talk
A composition & improvisation project with Mark Sanders - Drums
& John Edwards - Bass.
In 2018 we made some recordings which I released on Bandcamp in March 2021.
The focus of the compositions are on rhythm and melody,
most of the parts are interchangeable and can be played
by any of us at any time.
With accompanying original drawings.
Clouds was made for Takuroku - Cafe Oto's online label started during spring 2020. Clouds are recordings made in a friends spare room on half and full size cellos with re-tuned strings, not far from an open window on a quiet row of back gardens. In some of the gaps you will hear the chair creak, the rain fall, the children at a near by child-minders house. The slap and fall of strings, on fingers on wood.
In memory of Beth Hardisty. Rest In Peace.
This 20 minute track comprises a collage of both studio and field recordings using sounds of string and box instruments re-made and played by primary school children from discarded objects, recordings made between 2017-2019 in London, Berlin & the mountains of northern India and includes sounds of valley dogs, people practicing at open windows, children singing, railway works & solo cello pizz harmonics improvisations... (plus some other bits and pieces....)
"Tulse Hill" was released in 2012 by the wonderful Linear Obsessional Label run by Richard Sanderson. It is a series of improvisations on a cello with the strings de-tuned to new, sometimes micro-tonal pitches. This makes different resonances and creates pleasing tone relationships.
There are only 4 main pitches to be used (apart from pitches over the bridge), so the improvisation element is about discovering and following the natural and evolving rhythms as they unfold.
Alison Blunt - Violin/voice,
Ivor Kallin - Viola/violin/voice
Hannah Marshall Cello/voice.
The group formed at The Freedom Of the City Festival 2007.
We have released 2 albums, both of live performances.
We have been described in many ways by people.
Here are some descriptions:
"The British trio Barrel has created a set that is revolutionary, funny and breathtakingly audacious. To the uninitiated, this trio of string virtuosos might sound like musical terrorists. However, it is much more than merely a group of shock artists. Genuine creativity and musical innovation is at the heart of the music on this album; as is extreme humour that takes its cue from Dadaism. In fact it is as if the trio has swallowed the great painter Salvador Dali whole and regurgitated him here with chilling accuracy, rendering his melted imagery with its own sense of musical liquefaction" Raul de Gama Rose
"Decades of instrumental practice along and against the tradition blended inside an intermutual jargon that takes something from the classic and the absurd in equal doses. Heterogeneous composites causing inflammatory euphoria." Massimo Ricci
" The sheer strangeness of it all is astonishing, it resembles a groaning wooden ship floundering against cellophane rocks in a choppy sea of sighing taut wires, officers bellowing wordless commands from the bridge, gusts of wind fluttering its tattered sails. Catch them live if you can, a performance earlier this year at Boat-Ting was, for me, one of the live highlights of 2013 so far, an awesome display of improvisation every bit matched by this fantastic album" Ears for Eyes Blogspot
"Barrel sound unlike anything else. Flurries of notes and clunky bridge nudge noise flutter around gracefully drunken descends, three dowager duchesses sliding down the banister in a rain of ripped confetti." - Stewart Lee
HALFTONE
- a previous DISCUSSION ABOUT MAKING AN OBJECT
Released November 6, 2020
Halftone is:
Caitlin Alais Callahan (double bass)
Tina Hitchens (flute)
Yvonna Magda (violin)
Hannah Marshall ('cello)
Recorded and mixed by Nick Earle in Bristol, January 2019
Album artwork by Hannah Marshall
Album design work by Matthew Grigg, with huge thanks
In memory of Keith Tippett, with love
check out other halftone recordings on bandcamp
Music with Veryan Weston...& others
Crossings is a rhythm and composition project led by Veryan Weston on key station. The music is complex and alive from the inside, structurally very intricate with many parts that suddenly come together and change as quickly. "..It is a stunningly effective study in time and contrast, mirrored in an even subtler fashion on the aptly titled “Kalimba Setting”. Who’s got the melody anyway, Weston’s “kalimba” or Marshall’s wonderful pizzicato? Maybe, it’s actually given to Sanders’ hi-hat, which we hear transforming, almost without awareness, from exquisite echo and foil to rhythmic pillar..." Marc Medwin - AUGUST 2020 | THE NEW YORK CITY JAZZ RECORD
Released on Red Note records by Luc Ex who was the bass player in this band, Sol6 is a group initiated by UK pianist Veryan Weston and Luc Ex. It has an unusual instrumentation which leans towards chamber music, with a ‘punky’ energy and high spirited open improvisations .
Mandy Drummond - viola/voice
Hannah Marshall - cello/voice
Ingrid Laubrock -saxophone/voice
Tony Buck - drums/percussion
Veryan Weston -piano/voice
Luc Ex- ac. bass
"The music is restless and inquisitive and moves between astringent lyricism and fractured high-voltage grooves, making few concessions to norms" - Chris May
Tuning out is the recorded document of a very unusual and memorable tour of churches around the UK that still house original tracker action organs. These organs can be manipulated in real time performance to create amazing tonal clusters, microtonal shifts that sound like early electronic music. Jon Rose and I joined Veryan , by adding into the mix our own explorations of pitch using deliberately unusual resonance frequencies., and combining in sympathetic and re-tuned strings.
"If I may echo my old pal Samuel Beckett, this is the dog’s bollocks" - ReR Group
Veryan Weston - piano
Ingrid Laubrock - soprano & tenor saxophones
Hannah Marshall - cello
I started playing with both Ingrid Laubrock and Veryan in around 2008 to play and learn some pieces by Steve Lacy (which we ended up using in Sol5&6- see above). We soon found that playing free was also something special. This record is from a live recording in Horta Cordal festival in Barcelona by Jordi Salvado. "monumental in its cohesiveness and conviction...with the result a resoundingly superb album."
- Phil Zampino
Satoko Fukuda - violin
Hannah Marshall - cello
Veryan Weston - piano
Digital studio recordings made in Pinewood, near London by Steve Lowe, in 2007.
"Sequenced as they are, the pieces almost sound like sheaf book of variations on a single hive-like theme, feeding one into the next while retaining individual identity....The communication is close and constant, sometimes leading to claustrophobic overlaps, but more often yielding a marvellous telegraphing of ideas with spatial considerations preserved intact.... What's most pleasingly confounding though is how often the three musicians precipitate each other's intentions under split second conditions" - Derek Taylor
Duos
Terry Day - Bamboo Pipes
duos with: Rhodri Davies, Charlotte Hug, Hannah Marshall, Phil Minton & John Russell.
"I feel the bamboo pipes are suited to stringed and electronic instruments, therefore it was logical to play with Charlotte, Hannah and Rhodri. What was unknown for me was Charlotte’s vocalisations and Hannah’s passion, both of which took me by surprise and added another dimension to the performances. Equally, I didn’t realise how hard Rhodri plucked, struck and attacked the strings - but I do like the unknown and the surprise of improvisation. My reaction is to seek new sounds, texture and articulation on the pipes or otherwise" - Terry Day
More quartets, quintets, sextets
Alan Wilkinson (reeds), Lee Boyd Allatson (drum set), John Russell (guitar), Hannah Marshall (cello), Pascal Marzan (guitar) and the sounds of Dalston.
Music performance as a social document: This recording showcases the players' interactions not only with combinations of each other, but also with the ambient sound captured in real time from outside the venue.
“Art may be practiced in one way or another, so that it reinforces the ego in its likes and dislikes, or so that it opens that mind to the world outside, and outside inside…” John Cagecreditsreleased January 14, 2019
"DIALOGUES WITH STRINGS" - Trevor Watts (Alto/sop saxes)/Veryan Weston(Piano)/Hannah Marshall (Cello)/Alison Blunt (Violin)
all compositions PRS/MCPS
Recorded at Café Oto in London on April 23rd 2017 by James Dunn.
Mixed and Mastered at ARC Studios, Hastings. UK. by Trevor Watts. Photograph by Mark French. Cover Design: Małgorzata Lipińska. Executive Producer: Maciej Karłowski
Released December 1, 2016
CHRIS CUNDY bass clarinet & contrabass clarinet
FYFE DANGERFIELD piano
MAT MARTIN guitar
HANNAH MARSHALL cello
DOMINIC LASH double bass
MARK SANDERS drums and percussion
Additional percussion on Following Hazel played by STUART WILDING
All music written and produced by Chris Cundy. Recorded and engineered by James Towler at Wincraft Studios, Gloucestershire UK on 2nd and 3rd June 2015. Mixed by Mike Cross and Chris Cundy. Mastered by Mike Cross. Cover artwork by Chris Cundy.
The ensemble is based on a collaboration between English and Danish musicians. It comprises two of the most sought after musicians from the British avantgarde scene, Hannah Marshall and Alison Blunt and Danish Lisbeth Diers, Pernille Bévort, Julie Kjær and Signe Bisgaard, all well-known faces on the Danish jazz scene.
NEIL METCALFE (flute), ALISON BLUNT (violin), HANNAH MARSHALL (cello), TONY MARSH (percussion).
A sequence of improvisations recorded in the warm natural acoustics of St Peter’s Whitstable. This quartet plays music created in the moment. From a starting point of contrasting histories, energies and aesthetics, they weave together, forming a tapestry of colours and dynamics.
"Throughout the recording, the ensemble acts as a palette of expansive light and shade, of fragments merging into unisons, the only concern being the expression of the whole" - Brian Morton
Alexander Hawkins - Piano / compositions
Javier Carmona - Drums/percussion
otto Fischer - Guitar
Hannah Marshall - Cello
Orphy Robinson - Steel Pan / percussion
Dominic Lash - Bass
Recorded At – Red Gables Studio. Credits: Cello – Hannah Marshall Double Bass – Dominic Lash
Drums / Percussion – Javier Carmona
Electric Guitar – Otto Fischer
Layout Design – Ewan Rigg
Liner Notes – Steve Beresford
Photography By [Cover Photography] – Edu Hawkins Piano – Alexander Hawkins
Producer – Trevor Taylor (2)
Recorded By – Dick Hammett
Steel Drums – Orphy Robinson
The London based sextet with members from five different countries launched their debut eight track album 'Three Mothers Part 1' on Monday (February 9th 2015). Influenced by artists such as Bjork and Pixies, The Vultures are a fine example of a band trying to push the limit as far as it can possibly go.
Ben Etchells - vocals and song writing
Comprising of three part vocals, cello, violin, viola, bass and drums – London sextet The Vultures say they’re on a mission to “breath fresh life into rock n’ roll”. The concise conclusion to their story is an avant-garde medley of Serge Gainsbourg influenced story-telling and Baroque musical arrangements.
