SONNY SIMMONS QUARTET + BECK/DRURY + ARCHER MONK

Event information

SONNY SIMMONS is the disciple of Charlie Parker. The heir of John Coltrane and Albert Ayler. The partner of Eric Dolphy - Sonny Simmons stands tall. Coming out of Oakland, California in the '60s, Simmons has worked with McCoy Tyner, Charles Mingus, Anthony Braxton, Sunny Murray, Don Cherry, Andrew Cyrille, Bobby Few, Charles Moffett and countless others. Though not a die-hard avant gardist (he sticks in his own provocative way to the tradition), he was a leading figure in the '60s free jazz scene in New York, and his ESP-disk recordings are rightly regarded as classics of the genre. Since his re-emergence in the '90s he has continued to produce ground breaking recordings and live shows.

"The kind of gig where you can't believe that the musicians will be able to find fresh and exciting ideas after the first few demented bars - but the miracle repeats itself again and again until the end" was just one audience comment the last time this astonishing group played Freenoise.

"His music carries an impact exceptional even among players in this idiom: toughened by his R&B background, perhaps, he can deliver solos in the free idiom of power and strength" Richard Cook's Jazz Encyclopedia.

Mick Beck / Jonny Drury



Another new duo to come out of the seemingly inexhaustible Sheffield improv scene. The established and renonwed Beck and relative newcomer Drury create a sound that is at once truly explorative and powerfully succinct. Coming from opposite ends of the culture that is contemporary, avant-garde improv (Drury the rocker-punk-artist, Beck the free jazz shaman) the two meet to waltz and wrestle with their spontaneous noise output. Expect currents of angst and frustration through to transcendental harmony and love.

Martin Archer / Geraldine Monk



The seriously leftfield poetry of Geraldine Monk set to the perfect accompaniment which is Archer's extreme software scapes is a thing to behold. Booked immediately after the awesome set at the new Bank St. Studios (pictured) as the audience were still reeling.

Martin Archer is Sheffield's maverick electro-acoustic composer and runner of Discus and Geraldine Monk is a published contemporary poet.

"Archer's electroacoustic treatments and blends of instrumental timbres and textures are fascinating in their own right - a provocative mixture of the random, the alien and the familiar." - Bill Tilland. BBC Experimental Review.
Martin Archer

"I build atmospheric narratives gleaned from the coincidences of circumstance and the emotional geography of place. I want the physicality of words to hook around the lurking ghosts and drag them from their petrified corners." - G. Monk.
Geraldine Monk on Wikipedia