2009 : John Butcher

2009 according to John Butcher

2009 had an uncommon start with a recording session for David Sylvian’s installation “when we return you won’t recognise us”, destined for the Canary Islands. Unfortunately, the next uncommon event was food poisoning, which meant canceling a trip to Gothenburg with Eddie Prevost. After a couple of weeks I’d recovered enough for a late-night curry in Leeds (after a duo concert with EX guitarist Andy Moor) but I didn’t feel like taking up the offer to perform Stockhausen’s “Goldstaub” in Berlin (which must be preceded by 4 days of fasting).

Musical life in London has benefited greatly from the arrival of Cafe Oto in Dalston. Wonderfully run by Keiko Yamamoto and Hamish Dunbar, it features a spread of new, improvised, composed and unclassifiable music most nights of the week, and is a great environment in which to listen, play and meet. I particularly enjoyed joining Beresford, Christian Marclay and the Korean cellist Okkyung Lee for an evening, and also taking part in the two day Incus Festival. This was organised by Karen Brookman, in the spirit of Derek Bailey’s “Company”, and was built around musicians associated with his Incus label. 80 year old tap dancer Will Gaines was the deserved highlight.

Another feature in London is the annual “Freedom of the City” festival. On the first day, Christian Wolff played some of his fascinating “Exercises” from the 1970s, and then joined AMM, me and Ute Kanngeisser for an hour long improvisation.

It was good to renew some playing relationships with musicians I meet much too rarely, such as in duo with Fred Frith and Otomo Yoshihide, but also to develop further the duos with John Edwards, Eddie Prevost, Gerry Hemingway, Gino Robair and Steve Beresford.

In June, Alois Fischer invited “The Contest of Pleasures” to collaborate with sound artists Jean Pallandre and Laurent Sassi in Ulrichsberg. Over a few days we recorded in stone quarries, cow sheds, rubbish dumps, forests, factories and cafes and constructed a multichannel concert from the recordings and the live wind trio. This trio (with Xavier Charles and Axel Doerner) also made it to Stockholm in December (for Frim’s Sounds09 festival), where a further pleasure was listening to a new quartet playing the music of Eve Risser and Sofia Jernberg.

It’s almost 100 years since the publication of Luigi Russolo’s “The Art of Noises”. I’m a slightly reluctant composer, but was intrigued enough by the concept to write a piece for Luciano Chessa’s reconstructed Intonarumori (Futurist “noise-intoners”) for the Performa Biennial in New York.

John Butcher