A week of exploration

On the 25th of February, we have our third formal performance as ORE, featuring our special guest, Alex Sramek. We are so pleased to be playing in Bristol and at such a great venue as The Cube Cinema, an old favourite of ours.

In the run up to our gig we will be spending some time in the studio exploring our collaboration with Alex and his contrabass clarinet, the sound of which is something to behold. We will be developing some ideas for our performance, recording some bits and getting out and about to odd venues to explore the effect of our surroundings on our sound, and for some pop-up performances. These will mainly be around Birmingham and Worcester and might be over before you even get there…but if you want to be kept informed about what we are up to, please check our updates on Twitter.

We hope to see you at some point on this journey. We are very excited to have Alex over from the US to work with us. This is a rare combination and we hope you will come to hear / witness it in Bristol on the 25th February, or at least one of our pop-up performances beforehand.

Special guest

We like to collaborate with like-minded musicians, which is why we were delighted when Alex Sramek got in touch with us towards the end of 2011. It was obvious from the first conversation that we should make some noise together. Alex plays contrabass clarinet and has been described by The Clarinet as “The world’s loudest clarinet player”. He also shares our love of long, low drones and improvisation.

Alex is coming to the UK in February for the SABRe (Sensor Augmented Bass clarinet Research) event at Keele University. It seemed like an obvious opportunity to get some stuff done together, culminating in a live performance together at The Cube Cinema in Bristol on the 25th – lovely poster below, designed by another Alex.

We are currently trying to organise something to take place in Birmingham while Alex is over, alongside some recording time, pop-up performances (well, not that pop-up with two tubas and a contrabass clarinet), playing in some odd spaces, etc. If you’d like to suggest something you want to see / hear us do during the last couple of weeks in February, please get in touch or post a comment below.