Music in the Museum: Jazz
Join us for Music in the Museum: Jazz as The Culture Trust Luton in partnership with Focus of Jazz presents the very best of jazz.
A music performance taking place in the stunning Drawing Room, surrounded by the museum's unique art collection and with spectacular views overlooking Wardown Park.
Line up:
Paul Jolly with Sothiac
An exciting and unusual project from clarinettist and saxophonist Paul Jolly and renowned Italian group ‘Sothiac’. They will be joined by visual & performance artist Gwendolyn Kassenaar.
‘The vocals are astounding as they soar creating swirling, achingly beautiful wreaths of sound... It is an experience listening to this music, the vocals powerful, exploratory, the electronics and percussion temporal yet permanently present and the bass clarinet offering melodic phrases which counter the spiritual vocals with a sense of grounding. It is quite extraordinary how listenable this is, the sense of the lost, wandering spirit over grounded bass, and the knowledge that because this music inspires the imagination, everyone will have different images when they hear it.’
Sammy Stein ‘The Jazz Collective’
Running Time: 120 minutes
Please note: You do not require a physical ticket to attend this event. Please just show us your booking confirmation email upon arrival - either on your smart phone or a printed copy.
About the Musicians
Paul Jolly
Paul Jolly: After meeting the pianist Mel Davis in 1962, Paul began to explore jazz and improvised music. In 1969 he joined the People Band an improvising group formed by Davis and percussionist Terry Day. This association still lasts and has impacted on all his approach to creativity. Past projects - include two years as Musical Director for the Intriplicate Mime Company, European tours with the People Band, Big Chico, Mummy and Loverly and working with local rock groups including cult 70’s band Sweet Slag and appearing in the award winning Mike Figgis movie ‘Stormy Monday’. Recent appearances include performances at Kings Place, the Vortex, Café Oto, Shunt Lounge and the Exploratorium in Berlin. He also works with the Monk influenced band ‘SNC’, his own quartet ‘PJQ’ and contemporary group ‘House of Five’. Latest album projects include a duo with the poet Paula Rae Gibson, and with pianist Mike Adcock and ongoing work with percussionist Steve Seal and touring with Ben Higham’s group ‘The Brass Monkeys’.
He currently works with the group Sothiac, with whom he co-produced the critically acclaimed Lino Budano short film ‘Superlauna’ which was showcased at the 2021 Venice Biennale.
Sothiac
Sothiac: A group formed between Italian vocalist Pat Moonchy and multi-instrumentalist Lucky Liguori. Pat has performed across the globe as a solo artist and with various collaborators including Todd Tobias and Alfa Neu. She has studied shamanism and her discovery of the tanpura - a long necked Indian stringed instrument - was integral to the development of her vocal technique. Past bands include Doublegänger with Lucio Liguori, (grandson of free drummer Lino Liguori), Gopala and collaborations with many experimental musicians as well as solo projects. Lucky Liguori is a multi-instrumentalist and electronic sound creator. The duo have played with many different musicians in many different settings. Resident in both London and Italy, they have toured China, Europe and Japan. Their most recent albums are Sothis (2016) and Erebia Christi (2017) which blend elements of free jazz, landscape, industrial_noise and psychedelic/doom. Over the last twenty years they have played with Faust, Sawada, Angelo Avogadri, Lino Liguori, Angelo Contini, Dirk Dhonau, Lars Nicolaysen.
A performance of the duo featuring Paul, just before lockdown, led to this new collaboration and project. Recorded during lockdown their album Superluna is available on iTunes and a vinyl version, with an additional track, is scheduled for release in November 2021.
Gwendolyn Kassenaar
Gwendolyn Kassenaar is a Dutch visual & performance artist based in London. A graduate from Chelsea College of Art, she collaborates with dancers and musicians. In her live art performances she improvises in the moment, transcending to express the ephemeral in her quest to fuse visual art, rhythm, colour, sound and movement.
In recent performances she painted a 6x4m mural live in just over an hour in Shoreditch; she created live art with a dancer in a 65cm narrow shop window (both commissioned by OTZ Gallery). She mixed in poetry during a multi-disciplinary performance in the Hundred Years Gallery and she collaborated with Maggie Nicols to launch the new Noisy Women Present series.
Her art has featured in various London exhibitions (Toulouse Lautrec for London Jazz Festival 2021), private art collections and album covers. An active participant in the London jazz scene, she is resident artist at Freedom (Vortex Jazz Club), Skronk and Melifera (HYG). She continues to experiment with close collaborators such as multi-instrumentalist Faradena Afifi, dancer Petra Haller and Chinese percussionist Beibei Wang.
Visit @GwendolynKassenaar on instagram/Facebook to view latest art and performances.
