Xu Shaoyang - Free Improvisation Piano Residency

Xu Shaoyang Free Improvisation Piano Residency (support from Ivor Kallin & Rudy Quinn)

Xu Shaoyang - Free Improvisation Piano Residency

Artist Profiles:

Xu Shaoyang has mastered a beguiling sophisticated-naive style overflowing with humanity and beauty and that's what makes this Chinese musician so special.

He is a collaborator of the rather splendid cult errant pop group Maher Shalal Hash Baz, and like the Japanese collective his songs pick apart conventional ideas of musicality by embracing fragments, happy accidents and the spirit of amateurism.

Over the years he has performed with musicians such as Lee Ranaldo, Ana Da Silva, Tenniscoats, Eric Chenaux, Jens Lekman, Oneida, Tomoko Sauvage.

After years in Canada, Japan, and Scandinavia, Xu currently resides in London, England.

Ivor Kallin usually plays viola with the London Improvisers Orchestra, bass with the Glowering Figs, electric violina with the Electrio quartet.He has a couple of solo releases on the ScatterArchive, one featuring viola and voice, the other featuring voice on a Hebridean beach and some improvised songs on a piano.The latter led to a recent performance at the Pool in Stoke Newington, not on a beach, but on a piano, for the first ever public performance on such an instrument, given that he can’t actually play the thing, and assuming it’d be his last.But, another piano performance at the Hundred Years Gallery followed, and here he is turning up to play the piano in Swiss Cottage, expecting librarians to plead with him to keep quiet. When he’s not busy not practising the piano, he presents the Ambrosia Rasputin Show on Resonance FM every Sunday lunchtime.

Rudy Quinn fills spaces with pleasing tones and approximated melodies. His music is usually performed in small domestic spaces, and this will be the first time it is played for a public audience.