Press room

Just Announced

• Visible Cloaks with Yoshio Ojima & Satsuki Shibano (Sat 18 Ap 2020)
• MoodSwing: Joshua Redman, Brad Mehldau, Christian McBride and Brian Blade (Thu 9 Jul 2020)
• Taj Mahal & Jon Cleary (Fri 17 Jul 2020)
• Gustavo Santaolalla (Sat 18 Jul 2020)

Visible Cloaks with Yoshio Ojima & Satsuki Shibano
Sat 18 Apr 2020, Milton Court Concert Hall, 8pm
Tickets £20 plus booking fee

Portland-based electronic duo Visible Cloaks, featuring musicians Spencer Doran and Ryan Carlile, return to Milton Court Concert Hall as part of the Barbican’s contemporary music programme this April, following their appearance at Transcender in 2017, supporting cult Japanese percussionist and composer Midori Takada. This time they bring their collaboration with ambient composer Yoshio Ojima and pianist Satsuki Shibano – two trailblazers of the Japanese avant-garde music and art scenes of the 1980s and 1990s.

The four artists first met in 2017, at the tail end of Visible Cloaks’ first Japanese tour, which led them to work on their collaborative album serenitatem (2019). Leading up to the studio sessions, Doran and Carlile sent Ojima processed sound sketches recorded while on a European tour, which Ojima would add to and return. Visible Cloaks would then fold these edits back into the original compositions, which they then brought to the exploratory recording session in Tokyo.  During their week together, the quartet made use of a number of creative strategies: “echoing sound together,” as Ojima puts it.

The collaboration between Ojima, Satsuki, and Visible Cloaks is both musically and conceptually inseparable from the technology that made it possible.

Visible Cloaks' minimalist music is inspired by the distinctive electronic soundscapes emerging from Japan in the 1980s. The duo first came to attention with their mixes Fairlights, Mallets and Bamboo, described as investigations “into Fourth World undercurrents in Japanese ambient and pop music, years 1980 – 1986”. Utilizing software-based composition rooted in randomization, MIDI-translation and chance operations, the duo has established an improbable humanist mode of music from esoteric processes.

Produced by the Barbican

MoodSwing: Joshua Redman, Brad Mehldau, Christian McBride and Brian Blade
Thu 9 Jul 2020, Barbican Hall, 7.30pm
Tickets £30 – 49.50 plus booking fee

Generation-defining jazz musicians and long-time collaborators saxophonist Joshua Redman, pianist Brad Mehldau, bassist Brian Blade and composer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist Christian McBride return to the Barbican this summer to revisit their classic 1994 album, MoodSwing.

Performing tracks from the record, along with new material, the jazz supergroup reunites for this very special show. MoodSwing broke the mould for jazz recordings in the 1990s, creating a sound that reached beyond cerebral arrangements and delivered contemporary jazz with emotion and expression.

Produced by the Barbican in association with Serious

Taj Mahal & Jon Cleary
Fri 17 Jul 2020, Barbican Hall, 7.30pm
Tickets £20 – 30 plus booking fee

American blues musician Henry Saint Clair Fredericks aka Taj Mahal is a singer-songwriter and film composer who plays the guitar, banjo, harmonica and many other instruments. His work has done much to reshape the definition and scope of blues music over the course of his more than 50-year career, by fusing sounds from the Caribbean, Africa and the South Pacific. In this special Barbican double-bill he appears alongside British-born New Orleans-based funk and R’n’B musician Jon Cleary who has recorded nine albums to date and has been touring globally with the bands of Taj Mahal, John Scofield, Dr. John, and Bonnie Raitt.  Cleary has also led his own group, The Absolute Monster Gentlemen, for over two decades now.

Produced by the Barbican

Gustavo Santaolalla
Sat 18 Jul 2020, Barbican Hall, 7.30pm
Tickets £25 – 35 plus booking fee

This evening at the Barbican is a rare UK appearance by Argentine musician, film composer and producer Gustavo Santaolalla, who will be performing music from across his 40-year career with his ensemble.

Combining Andean folk influences with his rock guitar roots, Gustavo Santaolalla creates sparse yet emotive compositions through minimal use of instrumentation. Best known for his work composing film scores, including Brokeback Mountain and Babel – for which he won Best Original Soundtrack Oscars in consecutive years – and also the soundtrack albums for Amores Perros, 21 Grams and Motorcycle Diaries.

Gustavo Santaolalla returns to the Barbican following his headline appearance here in 2007 with his ground-breaking electronic tango group, Bajofondo Tango Club. He has also been the producer for acclaimed Latin American musicians such as Café Tacvba, Julieta Venegas, León Gieco and Juanes.

Produced by the Barbican in association with Como No!