Toshi Tsuchitori – Drums
Evan Parker – Saxes
John Edwards – Double Bass
Tickets: £7/ £5
Toshi Tsuchitori currently working with the international renowned team of the English theatre and film director Peter Brook. (https://youngvic.org/whats-on/battlefield)
Toshi Tsuchitori was born in Japan in 1950. He was an avant-garde / free jazz percussionist in the 1970s, but more recently he is working with ancient Japanese music.
From the 1980s to 2002, he recorded four works that explore ancient Japanese instruments: “Dōtaku: Ancient Japanese Bronze Bells from Yayoi Period (b.c. 400 – a.d. 250)”, “Sanukaito: Stone Sounds of the Paleolithic Era in Japan”, “Jōmonko: Pottery Drums of Jōmon Period (b.c. 3000 – b.c. 2500)” and “The Sounds of Prehistoric Painted Cave: Playing in the Cave of Cougnac, France”. In 1988, he created the Ryuko Gakusha Art Center with Harue Momoyama. He has worked with Milford Graves, Derek Bailey and Steve Lacy. He continues his extensive research on Asian and African music and dance to this day.
Evan Parker was born in Bristol in 1944 and began to play the saxophone at the age of 14. Initially he played alto and was an admirer of Paul Desmond; by 1960 he had switched to tenor and soprano. A trip to New York, where he heard the Cecil Taylor trio (with Jimmy Lyons and Sunny Murray), prompted a change of mind. What he heard was “music of a strength and intensity to mark me for life … l came back with my academic ambitions in tatters and a desperate dream of a life playing that kind of music – ‘free jazz’ they called it then.” In 1966 he moved to London, became a frequent visitor to the Little Theatre Club, centre of the city’s emerging free jazz scene, and was soon invited by drummer John Stevens to join the innovative Spontaneous Music Ensemble which was experimenting with new kinds of group improvisation.
After taking up the bass, around 1987, John Edwards co-formed The Pointy Birds who went on to win awards for their music for The Cholmondeleys and Featherstonehaughs dance troupes. The group appeared at festivals in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Moers, Leverkusen, Copenhagen. Around 1990, Edwards played his first gigs with London improvisers such as Roger Turner, Lol Coxhill, Maggie Nicols, Phil Minton.
Since 1995 John Edwards has become a “mainstay” of the London scene, playing with just about everybody, an activity that has seen him clocking up between 150 and 200 gigs a year. He has become regular player with Evan Parker, in many groupings, and with Tony Bevan, Veryan Weston, and Elton Dean, often in collaboration with Mark Sanders on percussion. He has become a more frequent player on the European (and festival) scene, appearing at Taktlos, Ulrichsburg, Nickelsdorf, Budapest, New Zealand and in the USA. He continues to work on solo performances.
