Curious Ear

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Thursday 18th April

Alex Ward’s Item 4

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The Alex Ward Item Series was launched in September 2017 at Cafe Oto with the debut performance by ITEM 10, Ward’s first foray into the world of composition for large ensemble. Now follows the second group in the series – ITEM 4, a quartet consisting of Alex on clarinet and guitar, Charlotte Keeffe on trumpet and flugelhorn, Otto Willberg on double bass and Andrew Lisle on drums. All the members were also participants in the Item 10 performance (the Item Series being conceived as a pool of musicians from which various sizes of ensemble can be drawn for different musical ends), and are amongst the most idiosyncratic and distinctive improvisers on the current UK scene. In writing for the group, Alex’s aim was to exert as minimal limitation on the players’ interaction and invention as possible, while still giving rise to a music distinct from that which would come about through pure improvisation – in this case, the means to achieving this was a conception of compositional materials as akin to emotional landmarks in an otherwise wide-open terrain… concentrates of melodic/harmonic information whose structural and affective characteristics resonate through the musical whole without controlling or defining it. This is the first perfromance of the group outside London.

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