John Coltrane’s handwritten outline for “A Love Supreme”

Join us at the first Strange Umbrellas of 2017 in London. It is this Saturday, February 18, at Lewisham Arthouse - 140 Lewisham Way, London, SE14 6PD.- The Nearest station is New Cross, 5 minute walk to the venue. This fascinating mixed media show features: Charles Hayward & Karel Doing Charles Hayward and Karel Doing both work at Lewisham Arthouse and will perform together: a palindromic composition of manual labour both in sight and sound.

Jack Goldstein & Mandhira de Saram Jack Goldstein is a musicologist at Goldsmiths, a keen free-improviser and the founding member of the experimental pop quintet, Fixers. He curates a regular night of experimental music and performance, Strange Umbrellas, with Steve Beresford and Blanca Regina. For this event he will play in a duo with the violinist Mandhira de Saram. This is a the first time they will play together!

Richard Sanderson (amplified melodeon) Richard Sanderson will be improvising on a melodeon (diatonic button accordion) and effect pedals. His music plays with expectations of such a melodic instrument, mainly used in traditional folk music- forcing it to do things it was never intended to do, using sustain, wah, distortion and pitch change, whilst also respecting the tradition it, and where he comes from.

James Malone (guitar) & Steve Beresford (electronics and objects) Longtime free improviser on objects and electronics Beresford meets relative newcomer Malone, playing acoustic guitar beautifully.

COMEDY 'Bürger from the Hell’ by Norbert Bürger Who is Bürger from the hell? Bürger from the hell lives in a flat in the Lerchenfeld part of Freising, a small town close to Munich. He has inherited this flat from his grandmother, and considers himself the toughest rock guitarist of his generation. After his studies in classical zither at the Richard Strauss Conservatory, he switched to rock guitar in order to meet more girls. With the help of YouTube, he has carefully collected all sorts of tricks, attitudes and poses from the great rock legends. Bürger from the hell can completely concentrate on the development of his career as a rockstar, thanks to an unusual coincidence: the rocker from the ‘burbs is (thanks to an administrative error) sponsored by mistake by a foundation for hygiene products. Alongside building model aeroplanes and looking after his allotment, he therefore has plenty of time to prepare his big step into the limelight… And now, the moment has arrived. Bürger from the hell is ready to present his public with a grand rock show, that will exercise your ears and your sides, from laughing so hard! Accompany the bourgeois devil on his way to the pinnacle of rock, and experience live how Bürger from the hell turns the stage into a whirling cauldron, with the help of a guitar, a loop machine and his beatbox. Wordplay and razor-sharp banter will also lead you alone the previously undiscovered path between cabaret and rock concert.

FILMS ‘Sleepers‘ by Adam Chodzko (2016) ' Seeing someone sleep always provokes a level of uncertainty; perhaps this is more than sleep? Are they dead? Seeing a still image always provokes a level of uncertainty; ('Perhaps, I see movement?') The sleepers’ ‘withdrawal’ into another world, of dreams, also activates and destabilises our ability to empathise, despite our attempts to observe their slumbering state. The stillness and silence of a sleeping person, and a still photograph, creates a vacuum for the viewer, provoking a consciousness of sound. Sound here fragments outwards from the image and is drawn towards it, trying to connect with it, to “bring it to life” but never fully adhering to the image. Holes pierce the thin flat membrane of 35mm film, pouring in light ( -' time to wake up'? - ) allowing a journey through one image and into another. Equally, as digital imagery is increasingly in motion our expectation from our screens is of activity and not stillness, as restless as we are'

'Citizen of despair' by Blanca Regina (2017) video-performance

' We enter the creation and the performance from listening and dialogue. Blurring, erasing any border. In the suitcase the skein of crossed threads of the disciplines are what we work with. Where there are borders, the physical, real and virtual themselves blur and spread. The artist without limits, the sound, the light, the senses, the full and empty glass. From this multidimensionality, we approach the search for expression in several languages. The exchanges are infinite. Knowledge has no limits, it is infinite .... The limits are transferred to the stage space, where the fourth wall is broken and proscenium arch disappears; where the artist is both technical and performer. Duality, disappearance, mask, projection. We unfold in space, sounds, images, data. Contemporary issues infect and contain us. The borders have to disappear, they do not make sense, they only make us limit ourselves in categories, labels, formats that do not define us and that separate us from the whole...' 'W.I.P.‘( 16mm film ) by Pierre Bouvier Patron (2017) W.I.P (2017) is a visual experimentation on 16mm film. Hand painted, the film explores shapes, colours and the possibilities of perception. Strange Umbrellas #16 will give this film, still a work in progress, its first screening.

John Coltrane – A Love Supreme

A Love Supreme is an album by the jazz saxophonist and composer John Coltrane. He recorded it in one session on December 9, 1964, at Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, leading a quartet featuring pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones.

A Love Supreme was released by Impulse! Records in January 1965. It ranks among Coltrane’s best-selling albums and is widely considered as his masterpiece.

John Coltrane – bandleader, liner notes, vocals, tenor saxophone

Jimmy Garrison – double bass

Elvin Jones – drums, gong, timpani