NEWS: Breathe in Me – Kate Halsall, Dextro, Faye MacCalman @ Little Buildings

A bill of invention and astral allure lies in store at Little Buildings this Friday 30^th September, aligning three likeminded artists pursuing very different modes in sonic design. Bringing her 2021 album Breathe in Me to life on the live stage, experimental pianist Kate Halsall is joined by ambient/drone musician Dextro and multi-instrumentalist jazz explorer Faye MacCalman. In a suitably free-spirited format, all three artists will perform solo, before concluding their sets with an intriguing meeting-of-minds improv session.

Sure to prove an immersive live prospect, Breathe in Me, Kate Halsall’s maiden solo project, began life as a commission for 2018’s Sound Festival by composers including Diana Salazar, Pippa Murphy and Rose Dodd. Featuring music for piano, reed foot pump and Indian harmonium, it’s a work of electronically augmented beauty and stark minimalism, whose title track (composed by Murphy) scooped the EVM Award for Electroacoustic/Sound Art Work at the Scottish Awards for New Music. More recently, Halsall has used her residency at Sage Gateshead’s Summer Studios to work on Understory – an audio-visual project themed around evolutionary niches, specifically the low-level plants growing in the space between forest canopy and floor. Primed for an early taster, perhaps?

The brainchild of North East-based Scot Ewan Mackenzie, Dextro’s melange of lush electronics, spectral guitar drone and live percussion has long provided one of the local circuit’s most engrossing live propositions. Hugely impressive opening for the likes of Loscil, Nathan Fake and Adam Betts, this more open format nevertheless offers greater scope for Mackenzie’s craft to shine on its own terms, as well as venture into unknown terrain in a novel collaborative setting. Faye MacCalman, meanwhile, boasts an extensive résumé in both improv and collaboration – though lately it’s her own work, as well as exploits in leading the outstanding jazz trio Archipelago, which have taken precedence. Balancing acumen and ingenuity, her solo performances traverse genre via an ingenious fusion of electronics, sax and clarinet – a wholly unpredictable yet reliably captivating prospect, and an essential note on which to kickstart the evening. Don’t miss a minute!

Breathe In Me: Kate Halsall, Dextro, Faye MacCalman takes place at Little Buildings, Newcastle on Friday 30^th September.