The Noise Upstairs LOCATIVE AUDIO ENSEMBLE: (Provisional List)

Keith Jafrate is a saxophonist and writer who has performed throughout England, and toured in North America and Europe. He gained a reputation in the 80’s as a jazz-poet with his band Sang, and has since specialised in creating lyrical, spacious and bleak settings for his own texts. Working somewhere between jazz, improv and contemporary music, he has composed for bands from duo up to octet, writing challenging and beautiful vocal parts and bringing together musicians from a variety of backgrounds to perform his work. He is a member of jazz/electronica trio orfeo 5, half of the improvising saxophone duo Wolf Scarers, and formerly a member of sax quartet Hornweb. He is also the lyricist for folk group Army of Briars, whose CD of the same name was released by Discus in 2008.

Richard Knight has been using mixers since a young age, but only realised their potential as expressive instruments within the past few years. During this time he has amassed a formidable collection of audio mixers and investigated their curious musical possibilities. He's interested in using their potential for improvisation, precisely structured 'techno' music and the diverse area between.

Dave Birchall was born in Leicester and started playing the guitar there in 1995. He moved to Manchester in 1999 and still live here. His work as a musician has been in several areas: in improvising within and without structures and in writing and arranging music. At present he am focused on working on developing ideas for improvising with guitar. He has also worked with zines, promoting gigs and in education.

Hervé Perez plays the landscape and the urban environment alike – metal bridges and wooden floors, wisps of water clapotis and wind pipes…
It started with rattling the railings and the next thing you know you are drumming public benches. An offence well worth the penalty of eternal silence. Confined in the motifs of muffled footsteps and veiled hushes. absence of thoughts. field recordings of emptiness. an architecture of sound sculpted to reveal the harmonic imprints of sacred spaces and those corruptly filed in the forgotten folds of consumed phat.

Rodrigo Constanzo is a Spanish-American performer and composer living in Manchester, England. He is an avid improviser and performs regularly using home made electro-acoustic, and modified electronic instruments. He has performed at the FUTURESONIC and Manchester Jazz Festivals in Manchester, the SOUND Festival in Aberdeen, and the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. He has released several CDs including an improv duo CD with Pierre Alexandre Tremblay, and most recently, I AM YOUR DENSITY, a large ensemble improv composition which includes the graphic score with it. He is currently working towards an MA in Electroacoustic Composition at the University of Manchester and involved in several projects including Takahashi’s Shellfish Concern, an improv based performance-art group. He also co-runs The Noise Upstairs, an improv collective and label which puts on monthly nights and quarterly workshops in Manchester and Sheffield.

Ben Cottrell is a composer and saxophonist. He studied on the prestigious Joint Course between the University of Manchester and the Royal Northern College of Music, where his principal study was contemporary classical saxophone. Ben is the musical director of the Beats & Pieces Big Band, which he founded in 2008 as a vehicle for his own compositions and arrangements, and since then the band has established a reputation as one of the UK’s most exciting emerging jazz groups. In March 2011, Beats & Pieces were named as the winners of the European Young Artists’ Jazz Award, one of the continent’s major jazz prizes for emerging musicians, held as part of the Burghausen International Jazz Festival in Germany.

Simon Prince is one half of the improvised flute & piano duet "Our Liberated Winter" & is a saxophonist in the group "Wolf Scarers, who will perform at The Noise Upstairs in July. He directs Oldham Youth Contemporary Music Group & is currently working on a contemporary ensemble take on the music of Eric Dolphy.

Mauricio Pauly is a Costa Rican composer and electric bass player based in the UK. He is co-director and founder of the Distractfold Ensemble and of the Altavoz Composers. He performs with the Manchester-based trio, A Greater Horror and teaches at the Royal Northern College of Music. His music has been performed by ensembles and soloists including L’Arsenale, JACK Quartet, Asamisimasa, ACME, Ikarus Chamber Players, Vertixe Sonora and Francesco Dillon, among others. He received a Staubach Honoraria commission for the 2010 Darmstadt Courses. Upcoming premieres include: Dal Niente Ensemble at Darmstadt 2012; and Eunoia Quintett at the Luxembourg Philharmonie Talea Ensemble at the Harvard University; Karin Hellqvist at the Ultima Festival in Oslo. A studio recording of his latest string quartet by the JACK Quartet will be released at the end of the year. In 2011, Mauricio was awarded the Costa Rican Authors and Composers Association Composition Prize.

Anton Hunter - guitar. Anton co-runs The Noise Upstairs, a Manchester and Sheffield-based improvisation night and performs regularly with improvisational groups including Takahashi's Shellfish Concern. He is also interested in the blending of improvisation and composition, and explores this boundary in his quartet HAQ and, more recently, the Anton Hunter Trio. With The Beats & Pieces Big Band he won the European Young Jazz Award 2011. Web here

Rob McWhirter is a guitarist, teacher and a composer. He has performed in various musical settings from Metal, Prog rock, big bands - even prostituting himself as a part of a function band, but now focuses on Jazz and contained improvised music. Rob spent a lot of his time teaching, either running workshops or one to one he has recently reduced this to concentrate on composition.