Claudia Ulla Binder
In 1984 Claudia's duo with violinist Ma Lou Bangerter was invited to tour with my trio with Phil Durant and John Russell. Various playing encounters have continued through the years, including the 80s quintet Kwatz, but recently a more regular duo has taken off.
2010 concerts included Berlin's Exploratorium and the Unerhört Festival in Zürich - reviews varied.
Butcher stands as still as a statue, analysing a single sound to find the smallest nothingness, listening coolly like a doctor who hears a heartbeat with a stethoscope. This is especially appealing in combination with Claudia Ulla Binder, who cultivates a floating lyricism at the grand piano and, even when producing cascades of sounds, never appears violent.
Christoph Merki, Tagesanzeige
Those looking for this kind of musical liberation, must renounce the pleasures of life and can be assessed almost necrophiliac.
Neue Züricher Zeitung.
visit:
Claudia Ulla Binder.
Under the Roof
Recorded at Radio DRS2, Zürich, Switzerland on 21 & 22 August 2008.
Claudia Ulla Binder - piano
John Butcher - soprano and tenor saxophone
full info ::
nuscope
read :: Free Jazz :: Point of Departure :: all about jazz
Tony Buck / John Butcher / Burkhard Stangl
LMC 16th International Festival of Experimental Music, London 2007.
I first played with Stangl, in Polwechsel, in 1997 and am very happy to have collaborated with him in a number of projects since leaving that group. In particular Stangl's Extended Heritage.
For the 2007 LMC Festival I invited Neck's drummer Tony Buck to join us in a trio.
The best came last. The trio's music had vitality and a sense of purpose. It took improvisatory risks, displayed individual virtuosity and collective alertness. It was genuinely exciting and it sounded really good. Buck is a wonderfully oblique energiser, relentlessly attending to texture and percussive colour as he generates momentum. Stangl's clenched or splintered chords, pedal-swell and dramatic attack proved a great foil for Butcher's intensity, inventiveness and cliche-free expression.
Was this 'experimental'? Well, it had life, and in the arts that's often what that term has essentially meant, in opposition to reified forms, commodification or mindless repition. WIRE - Julian Cowley.
Bill Hsu
CNMAT, Berkley, California.
Bill Hsu is a musician who builds software and works with electronics in performance. He is a teacher and researcher in the Department of Computer Science at San Francisco State University.
In 2003/4 he and Butcher worked at Steim and Kraakgeluiden on developing software for timbre recognition within Butcher's playing styles. This has now evolved into a performance duo. In 2006 they spent a week at the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie (ZKM) in Karlsruhe - undertaking further research and giving a concert.
Phospheme: (Butcher / Hsu / Robair) performs sound/animation interactions - so far at ATA and ZKM.
visit: Bill Hsu
read: Using timbre in a computer-based improvisation system (pdf download).
watch / listen: Flayed Flock :: Shimmer
Christof Kurzmann
© uli templin - nickelsdorf, austria. 2005 John Butcher first worked in duo with lloopp player Christof Kurzmann in 2002, when he was invited to Berlin during Kurzmann's artist-in-residency at Podewil. Two years earlier, they had both taken part in a performance of Burkhard Stangl's opera Venusmond, in Chicago.
Recent concerts include the Nickeldorf Konfrontationen in Austria, and Ausland in Berlin.
visit:
Christof Kurzmann
The Big Misunderstanding between Hertz and MegaHertz
John Butcher - acoustic and feedback saxophones
Christof Kurzmann - lloppp and pick up
Cover painting by Esther Stocker
Read: allmusic
:: All About Jazz :: Dusted
Paal Nilssen-Love
Butcher and Nilssen-Love met for the first time when Paal opened up for John's concert at Blå, Oslo in 1999. Their first duo was in 2002, when Paal organised a small tour in Scandinavia. Music from 2 of these concerts is out as Concentric.
Interestingly, Matt Hutchinson - synthist in Chris Burn's
Ensemble - played with Paal's father, Terry Love, in the 1960s.
In April 2006 John was invited to play two concerts with the Sten Sendall Trio - with Paal and Johan Berthling - and this quartet visited the Vancouver Jazz Festival in summer 2007. Their first concert has been released as the CD Strokes.
Strokes
Sten Sandell - piano & electronics
John Butcher - saxophones, acoustic/amplified/feedback
Johan Berthling - bass
Paal Nilssen-Love - drums and percussion
Read :: David Grubbs' Sleeve Notes
:: Dusted
Concentric
John Butcher - saxophones
Paal Nilssen-Love - drums and percussion
Read :: Bill Meyer's Sleeve Notes
:: Paris Transatlantic :: all about jazz
"Not so much sheets of sound, but entire kingsize mattresses rain down." Wire.
Mark Sanders
Freedom of the City, London, May 2010.
Sanders' and Butcher's paths have been crossing for almost 20 years, but with comparatively little playing together until the last few years.
This has mainly been in duo, with one concert released on the Treader Duos.
In 2010 they performed at London's Freedom of the City.
The whole weekend was reviewed by jazzmann.
read :: all about jazz
Treader Duos
Recorded in February 2008 in concert in London, England.
1
JOHN BUTCHER: tenor or soprano saxophone
MARK SANDERS: drums
2 ALEX WARD: clarinet
ROGER TURNER: drums
3 JOHN TCHICAI: tenor saxophone or bass clarinet
TONY MARSH: drums
Akio Suzuki
© Osamu Enomoto
Strange Fruit, Oiso, Japan: November 2002.
John Butcher and Akio Suzuki first played in duo at Strange Fruit, at the invitation of Hisashi Terauchi,
in the coastal Japanese town of Oiso in 2002.
In 2006 Arika invited them for a RESONANT SPACES tour of 6 unusual playing spaces in Scotland and the Orkneys.
Each night they performed solo - and then came together for a short duo.
After another gap of 4 years, they again met in London at John Russells's 2010 Fete QuaQua - and amongst various group encounters managed to revisit their duo.
Otomo Yoshihide
© elena márquez - barcelona feb 2010
Butcher and Otomo have played five times in duo.
Twice in Japan (2002 and 2004) and once at Cafe Oto in London (2009).
In February 2010 they met for two Spanish concerts; in Madrid and Barcelona.
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