Sunday 31 July 2022, 2pm
Special matinee show from the trio of Steve Noble, Yoni Silver and John Edwards, launching their debut LP, HEME, which was recorded at OTO during lockdown in April 2021.
Building on Steve Noble and Yoni Silver’s previous work together as a duo on HOME, they are joined by the inexhaustible talents of double bass player John Edwards. Steve and John are no strangers to each other and, with Yoni’s talents for invention with the bass clarinet, the trio have pieced together a freshly textural and teasingly explorational set of tracks. Noble's powerful and shape-shifting percussion underpinning and interlocking with Edwards’s bass, pushing the sound into fresh territories.; Silver’s masterful and ever innovative clarinet weaving and breaking new ground for the trio to explore.
Steve Noble is London's leading drummer, a fearless and constantly inventive improviser whose super-precise, ultra-propulsive and hyper-detailed playing has galvanized encounters with Derek Bailey, Matthew Shipp, Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith, Stephen O'Malley, Joe McPhee, Alex Ward, Rhodri Davies and many, many more.
In the early eighties, Noble played with the Nigerian master drummer Elkan Ogunde, Rip Rig and Panic, Brion Gysin and the Bow Gamelan Ensemble, before going on to work with the pianist Alex Maguire and with Derek Bailey (including Company Weeks 1987, 89 and 90). He was featured in the Bailey's excellent TV series on Improvisation for Channel 4 based on his book ‘Improvisation; its nature and practise’. He has toured and performed throughout Europe, Africa and America and currently leads the groups N.E.W (with John Edwards and Alex Ward) and DECOY (with John Edwards and Alexander Hawkins).
One of the leading figures of the Israeli free improvisation scene - bass clarinetist and multi-instrumentalist Yoni Silver's music ranges from just-audible bass clarinet improvisations to full on noise, semi- composed pieces for varying ensembles, and computer music.
John Edwards is a true virtuoso whose staggering range of techniques and boundless musical imagination have redefined the possibility of the double bass and dramatically expanded its role, whether playing solo or with others. 
Perpetually in demand, he has played with Evan Parker, Roscoe Mitchell, Sunny Murray, Derek Bailey, Joe McPhee, Lol Coxhill, Louis Moholo, Peter Brötzmann, Mulatu Astatke, Jonny Greenwood and countless others.
"I think John Edwards is absolutely remarkable: there’s never been anything like him before, anywhere in jazz." - Richard Williams, The Blue Moment
