Joe McPhee, renowned jazz and free jazz saxophonist and trumpeter (and frequent visitor to Cafe Oto), has gathered around him a dynamic trio of younger musicians under the tag MONSTER. At the grand young age of 85, McPhee has drawn [...]
On the final night of Joe McPhee’s sell-out residency at Cafe Oto, prior to a rip-roaring duo set with John Edwards, his recently published autobiography was presented in a relaxed, in-conversation with eminent music writer, Richard Williams. The in-conversation is [...]
With almost eighty years under his belt – as well as his microphone at random moments – Iggy Pop absolutely delivered. In a viscerally powerful one-and-a-half hour set with exceptional arrangements from his stellar seven piece band, he dug right [...]
Marc Ribot doesn’t follow the rules. He bends them. His single, solo acoustic set, played on his wear-worn,1937 Gibson with its iconic sunburst top, had the feel of a coiled spring being released. Fluid, fluent and unpredictable with surprises at [...]
It’s always a joy to see the Australian trio, The Necks, in the intimate surroundings of Cafe Oto. It has been at Dalston’s Cafe Oto and at the Vortex, across the road, where the Necks put in the groundwork to [...]
There was something magical about Tracey Thorn’s and Ben Watt’s return to live performance together as Everything But The Girl after a 25-year hiatus. The intimate MOTH Club in Hackney was the perfect setting for their two-day residency, with its [...]
Amina Claudine Myers is one of those rare musicians where the music of the blues, gospel and jazz stretching out at its most adventurous is in the blood, and this came over no better than in her solo live performance [...]
Brunhild Ferrari, a significant – and until recently unsung – pioneer of Musique Concrète, has been gaining recognition in the past decade as a composer in her own right. Brunhild Meyer (b.1937) was drawn in to the realm of cutting [...]
There is a serenity about the music of Gavin Bryars, thoughtful, reflective and resonant. Bryars is both master of the deep-down double bass, from radical 60s jazz and further afield, and a composer of engaging and often meticulously researched works, [...]
Two monumental, apocalyptic works, Octavia E. Butler’s dystopian novel, Parable of the Sower, and The Book of Revelation, the final book of the New Testament, were explored in two unique performances by formidable groups of musicians and vocalisers assembled by [...]
