Butcher-Otomo Duoブッチャー-大友デュオ

Live: John Butcher x Otomo Yoshihide (2set live) Artist information: John Butcher  John Butcher's work ranges through improvisation, his own compositions, multitracked saxophone pieces and explorations with feedback and extreme acoustics. Originally a physicist, he left academia in 1982, and has since collaborated with hundreds of musicians - including Derek Bailey, John Stevens, Gerry Hemingway, The EX, Polwechsel, Gino Robair, Rhodri Davies, John Edwards, Toshimaru Nakamura, Paul Lovens, Eddie Prevost, John Russell, Mark Sanders, John Tilbury, Christian Marclay, Andy Moor, Phil Minton, and Steve Beresford. He is well known as a solo performer who attempts to engage with a sense of place. His first solo CD, Thirteen Friendly Numbers, also includes compositions for multitracked saxophones, whilst later releases focus both on live performance and amplification and saxophone-controlled feedback. Resonant Spaces is a collection of site-specific performances collected during a tour of unusual locations in Scotland and the Orkney Islands. In 2011 he received a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Artists. His compositions include pieces for the Austrian group Polwechsel, the Australian Elision, the Rova and Quasar Saxophone Quartets and Penny Wands for reconstructed Futurist Intonarumori. Two larger scale commisions have been premiered at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival - somethingtobesaid(2008) for the John Butcher Group and Isola (2012) for Cranes & Freighters. Recent collaborative projects include Anemone with trumpeter Peter Evans, The Contest of Pleasures with Axel Dörner and Xavier Charles, Way Out Northwest with Torsten Muller and Dylan van der Schyff, and The Apophonics with Gino Robair and John Edwards. Butcher values playing in occasional encounters - ranging from large groups such as Butch Morris' London Skyscraper and the EX Orkestra, to duo concerts with Otomo Yoshihide, David Toop, Kevin Drumm, Christof Kurzmann, Thomas Lehn, Fred Frith, Okkyung Lee, Matthew Shipp and Akio Suzuki. John Butcher Photo by William E. Woodcock. John Butcher & Otomo Yoshihide Photo by Kazue Yokoi John Butcher Photo by William E. Woodcock. John Butcher & Otomo Yoshihide Photo by Kazue Yokoi [johnbutcher.org.uk](http://www.johnbutcher.org.uk/) Otomo Yoshihide  Otomo Yoshihide spent his teenage years in Fukushima, about 300 kilometers north of Tokyo. Influenced by his father, an engineer, Otomo began making electrical devices such as a radio and an electronic oscillator. In junior high school, his hobby was making sound collages using open-reel tape recorders. This was his first experience creating music. Soon after entering high school he formed a band which played rock and jazz, with Otomo on guitar. It wasn't long, however, before he became a free jazz aficionado, listening to artists like Ornette Coleman, Erick Dolphy and Derek Bailey; and hearing music, both on disk and at concerts, by Japanese free jazz artists. Especially influenced by alto sax player Kaoru Abe and guitarist Masayuki Takayanagi, Otomo decided to play free jazz. In 1990, Otomo started what was to become Ground Zero. Until it disbanded in March 1998, the band was at the core of his musical creativity, while it underwent several changes in style and membership. Since Ground Zero, Otomo has embraced minimal improvisation, film music and the jazz/big band conceptions of his New Jazz Quartet/Quintet/Orchestra. photo by Koh Okabe [Otomo Yoshihide JAMJAM diary](http://d.hatena.ne.jp/otomojamjam/)