Phil Minton is Coming! (Plus John Butcher and More - Ironworks Feb 8-10

Coastal Jazz and Blues is putting on the 19th annual Time Flies improvised music festival at the Ironworks starting February 8th. Dates are a little unclear on their website, but there are a couple of standout improvisers from the UK coming - most excitingly for me, Phil Minton!!!!! (That's his official site - Ubu Web samples of him performing are here). To the anointed, Minton is (to be cute about it) the Elvis of vocal improv: he's recorded with Fred Frith, Bob Ostertag, Maggie Nichols (whose website is momentarily eluding me), the Dedication Orchestra (who have no website), and performed with fellow improvisers Jaap Blonk, Koichi Makigami, David Moss, and Canada's Paul Dutton (another favourite of mine). It's a very, very strange genre of music, straddling the boundaries of improvised music and sound poetry, mostly involving people making, well, weird sounds with their mouths; since Vancouver New Music's Vox Festival, a couple of years back (described here by Alex Varty), I've been hooked on it, particularly when I get a chance to see it performed live. Minton is among the most passionate of the form's practitioners, physical, expressive, and, one suspects, possessed of a sharp wit and somewhat perverse sense of humour. I was a little too intimidated to confess my fandom when last he was here, to be honest, and am glad of another chance. John Butcher, a fellow Emanem recording artist and saxophone player, will also be in attendance at this festival, possibly even performing with Mr. Minton. Anyone who wants to see some truly adventurous musical exploration should definitely make it down to the Ironworks... just not sure which nights yet.

Blogger is buggy at the moment - I'm having no luck accessing my past writing on Maggie Nichols or Mr. Minton - so this will have to suffice. (Funny - the last time Minton was in town I actually had to sneak out early to make a Subhumans show at the Brickyard; now it seems like he may well be playing the same night as the Furies/DOA double bill, February 10th!).