Tickets for Yoko Ono’s Meltdown Festival (which runs from the 14-23rd of June) will be on sale to the public this Thursday 11th April at 10am.

Geoff Winston gave us a few words on who he is most looking forward to seeing:

---

Not yet a subscriber of our Wednesday Breakfast Headlines?
Join the mailing list for a weekly roundup of Jazz News.

---

 

“Having just seen the programme for Yoko Ono’s Meltdown season at the South Bank (can this really be the 20th Meltdown?) there are some immediate stand-outs in the smaller venues and some obvious crowd pleasers that will fill the RFH.

I’m particularly intrigued by the pairing of guitarist Bill Frisell and songstress Marianne Faithfull, Patti Smith’s evening of words and music, and the noise guitar duo, Body/Head – that’s Kim Gordon and Bill Nace – with extraordinary percussionist Ikue Mori. There’s also a chance to hear Thurston Moore with an, as yet unnamed, group of British improvisers.

Frisell joins Faithfull to continue a musical friendship that has already seen concerts in Linz and Paris earlier in the year. Frisell’s atmospherics, his style of playing and referencing, which has the mesmerising permanence of quicksand, should be a terrific foil to Faithfull’s trenchant, no-holds-barred lyrics and vocals.

Patti Smith has also been touring her combination of musical offerings – often with daughter, Jesse Paris Smith on piano and guitarist Tony Shanahan – and solo readings, which can encompass poetry as well as excerpts from her biography. In the tiny Purcell Room this will be an evening of close engagement, a chance to become immersed in the personal world which she expresses with such raw immediacy.

And raw immediacy is the lifeblood of Body/Head, the visceral, guitar-led welling of vocals and twin guitar distortions – possibly with film backdrop – who will team up with Ikue Mori, electronic percussionist/improviser and Gordon’s drummer of choice, who will be playing drums live for the first time in 25 years. This will be an intense evening at the QEH!

As will Thurston Moore’s guitar sortie at the same venue. Always threatening to cause the walls to crumble in live performance, his commitment to collaboration is exemplary. He hooks up with the improvising jazz network just as comfortably as those in poetry and on the fringes of rock and sound exploration – and delivers quality every time.”

Full Details and tickets HERE