An evening of European collaborations with the Anglo/Austrian Barcode Quartet launching their CD 'You're It' and London-based cellist Hannah Marshall performing a duo with Spanish pianist Josep-Maria Balanya.  

BARCODE QUARTET Annette Giesriegl (A) voice and electronics Alison Blunt (UK) violin Elisabeth Harnik (A) piano Josef Klammer (A) drums and electronics

Barcode Quartet started life in Alpenglow, a festival collaboration in 2010/11 that took place in both London and Graz between improvising musicians in Austria and the UK. A diversity of approach and character forms Barcode Quartet, the collision of these in performance creates the score. “Recorded live at Kunsthaltestelle Streckhammerhaus, Frohnleiten, Austria, July 1st, 2011 this CD is an outstanding record of the musical creativeness Barcode Quartet produces onstage." George Haslam of SLAM Productions.

“The live performance, recorded at Kunsthaltestelle Streckhammerhaus festival in Austria, finds the Austrian-English quartet at work as a messenger of total and radical improvisation. Although the proposal sounds apparently tough, the music has something really warm and vibrant about it due to the experience of the musicians in this field. They are all experienced with contemporary music, without necessarily having a jazz background, and they know the art of improvisation and interaction.”…“No shortage of surprises in every passage…exciting, radical, passionate.” Vittorio le Conte.

JOSEP-MARIA BALANYA / piano Born in Barcelona, he studied in his home city and Switzerland. Pianist, performer, composer, sound artist. He has presented different multimedia projects with piano, soprano and sonorous poets, electronics, processed image, dance. Balanyà has enjoyeds several grants for musical creation in Germany and Switzerland. His catalogue enshrines more than 115 works, all of them with a significant part of improvisation. Among them there are pieces for percussion on sculptures, pieces for fine art tools and for sonorous objects, all works that can be labelled as acoustic experimental art. Balanyà has published ten CDs and presented his works at festivals and radios in many countries of Europe and America.

“...A Spanish artist that lives all his temperament and inspiration with the piano as if everything happened in the instant.” Reinald Hanke

Josep-Maria Balanya website HANNAH MARSHALL / cello Born in London. Hannah Marshall improvises with a wide spectrum of musicians. Since studying John Stevens’ Search & reflect in 1998, and before that, classically at The Guildhall School, she has continued to searched for ways to explore the possibilities of her instrument and the dynamics of spontaneous music, in bands, improvising ensembles, ad hoc groups, and with individual musicians. She plays with Veryan Weston and Luc Ex’s jazz punk group Sol6, Alex Hawkins Ensemble, Haste, John Russell’s Fete Qua Qua, string ‘terrorists’- Barrel, The Shoreditch Trio, and with Swiss objects and percussion duo Diatribes. She performs regularly in UK & Abroad collaborating with as many different musicians as she can, including: Fred Frith, Kay Grant, Thomas Lehn, Phonotopy, Gianni Mimmo, Dom Lash, Nicolas Guazzaloca, Terry Day, Alberto Braida, Fabrizio Spera, Roger Turner, Liam Noble, Tim Hodgkinson and the late drummer Tony Marsh.

“sublime technical abilities...she reinvents melodic lines, provides spectacular harmonic intervention” Raul D’Gama Rose

Hannah Marshall website