“Is it all Black and White?”
Free Electro-Classical Music and Arts Micro-Festival.
Dilston Grove, Southwark Park August 16th 2014 4pm – 8pm

In the beautiful surroundings of Dilston Grove in Southwark Park, this free event features a number of short Music and Visual performances, providing new and inventive sights & sounds in an unconventional, family-friendly environment. The festival seamlessly fuses the genres of Classical music with Electronic.

Musicians Autorotation, Kirsten Morrison and Jo Quail will be joined by Green Army Choir. Each performer brings a unique but accessible music to the stage. Visuals and Projections will be provided by VJs Craig Yamey & Leon Trimble. Musical segues will be provided by The Soap Company.

Non-alcoholic beverages and refreshments will be available at affordable prices.

Curated by Robyn Sellman & Igor Olejar from Deptford’s Electro-Acoustic act Autorotation, this micro-festival will create an experience that is original, diverse & interesting. An evening that will stimulate on many different levels.

A new breed of composers and musicians are skilfully combining the genres of Modern classical, Pop, Baroque and Dance music with the result that is simultaneously experimental, traditional, sensory, state of the art, melodic, exotic & highly approachable. “Is it all Black and White?” intends to showcase this new breed.

Dilston Grove, with its bare reverberant concrete walls and an otherworldly atmosphere, provides a great backdrop for sonic performance and is also an inviting canvas for the visual artists who use film and projections synched to the live music. In addition to projecting onto the chapel walls, the VJs will also project into the audience, thus turning everyone present into a living, moving canvas.

This Micro-Festival is free to attend and open to anyone.

Southwark park is just opposite Surrey Quays Overground station or easily accessible by Canada Water on the Underground.

The event is part-funded by the Arts Council of England.

For more information, please go to http://autorotation.org/festival

LIVE PERFORMANCES:
Autorotation
Kirsten Morrison
Jo Quail
Green Army Choir

LIVE VISUALS AND PROJECTIONS
Leon Trimble
Craig Yamey

More information on the performers:

Jo Quail – Cellist/Composer. (www.joquail.co.uk)

Jo is a much sought after composer and cellist who has worked with Roger O'Donnell (The Cure), Rose McDowell (Strawberry Switchblade) and most recently John Ashton (Psychodelic Furs) on his soon to be released album Satellite Paradiso. Jo writes courageous and emotionally demanding instrumental music which explores the limits of the instruments' fingerboard and delves into loop station vortices fearlessly and passionately. Jo's own album Caldera was released on June 30, 2014.

Kirsten Morrison – Soprano/Composer. (www.kirstenmorrisonmusic.co.uk)

Kirsten is a composer of multiple BBC TV & radio show themes as well as film, commercials and more notably theatre and opera. Most recently her opera Songs of Alchemy was performed at the Arcola Theatre, London whilst, at the same time, the BBC transmitted the series The Plantagenets for which Kirsten wrote the music. Incredibly, Kirsten still manages to find time to play keyboard for Lene Lovich and recently returned from a tour with the band in Italy.

The Soap Company – Producer/DJ/Remixmaster (www.the-soap.co)

The strangely modest Mr. Anthony Barrett is the founder and main producer/DJ for The Soap Company. As the former Artist Liaison for legendary the Virgin Record Store in Oxford Street, he had plenty of opportunity to learn how to approach and deactivate the often volatile, nervous nature of highly strung well-known musicians. This has left him with the ability to coax the very best performances out of every artist he's worked with, but sadly, there simply isn't enough room on this page to list them all. You'll have to go to his website. There, you will also find links to many collaborative releases including his most recent I Keep Dreaming About You.

Chromatouch – VJ (www.facebook.com/pages/Chromatouch)

Leon Trimble (aka Chromatouch) is an artist who is forging a new form of artistic & scientific activity together using streaming, layering and reinterpreting multiple live art forms. He has built a reputation for entrepreneurship with video projections and interaction fusing the latest technologies in a way that creates a new form in the moving image, seamlessly. Previous works have been for such rock dignitaries as Goldie and Jethro Tull. He also lectures to the regions' students on the art of VJ-ing.

Craig Yamey – VJ/Designer/Vocalist/Songwriter (www.craigyamey.com)

Craig is one of those guys who's just so artistic it's hard to describe him. Other than designing consumables for most of London's museums and galleries including Houses of Parliament, British Museum, The V&A , ICA and Greenwich Maritime Museum, Craig seems also to find time to write music and perform with various bands. For this event he has moved into his photographic mode and will be displaying his ability to use Motion Dive, a programme which allows the projection and manipulation of static or video images in real time.

Green Army Choir

For this event only, members of the City of London Choir, CLC, (www.cityoflondonchoir.org) have been brought together to perform new, yet unsung pieces written and arranged especially for the event. The CLC choir members are familiar with most of London's prestigious concert venues such as The Barbican, the Royal Albert Hall, The Royal Festival Hall, Cadogan Hall, St. Paul's Cathedral despite being a non-professional chorus. CLC has an enviable reputation as well as a wide repertoire and several recordings on Naxos and English Music Record labels.

Autorotation - (www.autorotation.org)

Autorotation is an electro-acoustic band originally formed in Toronto, Canada, by Igor Olejar & Robyn Sellman formerly under the name Bleep. They have managed to continuously maintain a unique blend of natural acoustics and pure digital electronica through Igor's immense computing knowledge and manipulation of all things musical and digital, whilst Robyn has held up the natural acoustics flag by doing things the old way – vocally and manually via the use of more traditional instruments. Autorotation has mostly found success within film and TV although they are often seen at festivals and venues in London and other parts of Europe. There are 4 releases on their own TeknoStan Record label as well as numerous recording on several different labels in Europe and North America. Autorotation is now joined by Laura Tanner – a songwriter & producer who has studied percussion to degree level and works as a music therapist. Laura straddles the gap between acoustic and digital by being able not only to embellish Igor's already complex rhythms but also by matching and enhancing Robyn's voice with her own.

Organisers of this event, Autorotation hope to display and illustrate the talents and innovative skills of all of the day's performers in the unique and reverberant setting of Dilston Grove.