Erotæme returns to Islington Mill with 'The Handover,' combining deeply rooted Arabic traditions with modern experimentation. The performance invites you to experience music for oud, synthesizer, and violin as it explores both the common and uncommon aspects of Egypt's ritual music.
A performance by The Handover is typically one stretch without break: a long build-up that lasts for the duration of the concert. Towards the end of the performance, all the tension is released in an exuberant, joyful climax, when wild improvisations are driven forward on top of exciting dance-rhythms from rural Egypt. The Handover elegantly combines the delicacy of classical Arabic music, the raw expressiveness of Egypt's countryside music, and the spontaneity of free improvisation, carefully obliterating the artificial separation between acoustic and electronic instruments.
Aly Eissa - Oud
Ayman Asfour - Violin
Jonas Cambien - keyboards
And yes as always free food! The Handover will be helping with an Egyptian menu for this event.
In The Handover, Aly Eissa, Ayman Asfour and Jonas Cambien explore the common and uncommon senses of Egypt's ritual music. It is clear that Aly Eissa's original composition is deeply rooted in Egyptian and Arabic traditions. At the same time, this band is one of the most progressive coming out of Egypt today. This is in big part thanks to Eissa, who has proven time and again to be not only an extremely skillful composer, but also a real visionary, combining tradition with modern experimentation.
Aly Eissa (b. 1993) is a self-taught oud player, composer, and improviser based in Cairo, Egypt. He was mentored by legendary composer Abdo Dagher and oud virtuoso Hazem Shahin. Eissa’s style is deeply rooted in the Egyptian classical and folk traditions and influenced by various styles. Since 2012, Eissa has been regularly performing his compositions solo and with ensembles for live audiences, creating versatile and twisted meditative atmospheres throughout the musical experience.
P.S. Survivors of his first two performances highly recommend Eissa’s music.
Jonas Cambien (b.1985) is a Belgian/Norwegian pianist, composer and improviser active in jazz, improvised and contemporary music. With a solid background in classical music, but as much a child of Oslo's freejazz and improvised music scene, his style passes seamlessly from Cecil Taylor to Ligeti, creating his own language on the way.
Most noted for leading Jonas Cambien Trio, featuring André Roligheten on reeds, and Andreas Wildhagen on drums, and the quartet 'Maca Conu', featuring Norwegian bass player Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, Danish saxophone player Signe Emmeluth, and drummer Andreas Wildhagen, Cambien has performed on major stages and jazz festivals in Norway and abroad, and has released several albums on the Portuguese label Clean Feed: ‘A Zoology of the Future’ (2016), ‘We Must Mustn’t We’ (2018), ‘Nature Hath Painted the Body’(2021) and Maca Conu (2024), all to critical acclaim. The American jazz critic John Sharpe picked ‘A Zoology of the Future’ as one of the 10 best jazz albums of 2016, and said about ‘We Must Mustn’t We’: ‘They sound like no-one else.’
Eroteme is a Manchester based concert series championing experimental music from the hinterlands. Home of the Uncategorizable. Foraging new sonic territories in electronics, improvisation and beyond.
ame (art music experiment) C.I.C is an artist-collective organisation supporting experimental art, sound art & music scene in north England.
SUBLIME FREQUENCIES is a collective of explorers dedicated to exposing obscure sights and sounds from modern and traditional urban and rural frontiers via film and video, field recordings, radio and short wave transmissions, international folk and pop music, sound anomalies, other forms of human and natural natural expression not documented sufficiently enough by various communication channels.