Intercessions 2

The Intercessions series explores an unusual musical format which intersperses short passages of written music by contemporary, classical or baroque composers with passages of free improvisation, separated by short silences. This will be the second Intercessions event. The format produces startling and extreme contrasts of style, but beyond this it can also result in subtle influences that impact on the process of improvisation, casting sudden shafts of illumination on to the extemporised responses of the musicians. The lively acoustic of Shoreditch Church generates a very special atmosphere in which shifts of mood and musical form can touch the listener in unexpected ways, granting the instruments a sumptuous tonal richness.

Intercessions – written music from:

Astor Piazzolla, J S Bach (Satoko Fukuda, violin)
John Cage (Noel Taylor, clarinet)
György Ligeti (Niko Meinhold, piano)


Intercessions- the improvisers

Free Improvisations & extemporised responses performed by:

Niko Meinhold, grand piano
Satoko Fukuda, violin
Noel Taylor, clarinet
Guillaume Viltard, contrabass
Mark Sanders, percussion


About the musicians:

The disparate backgrounds of the quintet masks a shared sensibility, finely tuned to the nature of the occasion. Satoko Fukuda is an award winning classically trained violinist who has performed all over the world under the auspices of the Concordia Foundation, but she is also that rare creature – a classical musician who can improvise her socks off. Here she is joined by Niko Meinhold, a composer and pianist from Berlin, trained in everything from jazz piano to 12 tone improvisation. Niko recently stunned a Café Oto audience when he was the guest performer for a ‘piano concerto’ with the London Improvisers Orchestra. Noel Taylor, on clarinet, is the instigator of this series, bringing together musicians that he has performed with in completely different situations for this specific project. Guillaume Viltard has put down some outstanding performances in the past months, both as a soloist and with the Tony Marsh Trio. He plays with his whole body in a highly physical style that moves from the abstract to the lyrical. Finally, the percussive brilliance of Mark Sanders – high priest of the illuminati of fine UK drummers that grace the jazz and improv scene.