Noisy Women Present join forces with Phil Minton’s Almost Instant Feral Choir for an evening of radical improvised music. Including Faradena Afifi (solo) and Jo Morrison, Jenni Roditi, Phil Minton (trio).
Poster: Aurelie Freoua
Doors 7pm
Tickets £8-12
With Faradena Afifi, Steve Beresford, Iris Colomb, Charlie Foloronsho, Chris Freeman, Aurelie Freoua, Leanne Holroyd, Ningrui Liu, Jo Morrison, Maggie Nicols, Carys Mai, Majik Ogunwa, Jenni Roditi, Anjalika Sagar, Nini Sakhri, Bettina Schroeder, James Smith, Nicky Smith, Julian Woods, Gina Fergione & more!
There will be a solo from Faradena Afifi & a trio from Jo Morrison, Jenni Roditi, Phil Minton & in the first half.
The Feral Choir project is a series of vocal workshops with non-professionals, leading up to performances. It originated in the late 1980’s when I was asked to do some workshops with ‘non-singers’ in the Musik Centrum Stockholm. The success of these led me to develop the idea further. The choir consists of a three day workshop and performance, not only for singers but for anyone who takes a delight in the freedom to experiment. I encourage participants to take a vocal leap and explore all vocal possibilities through exercises and improvisations, over the workshop period, leading to a concert.
Feral Choir workshops and performances have subsequently been held in many different places around the world including Berlin, Centre for Performance Research Cardiff, Musickzentrum Munich, Tokyo, Angelica Bologna, City Festival Lausanne, Institute for Living Voice Antwerp, Baltimore, Nante, Brest, Oxford, Paris, Oakland, Melbourne, St. Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Bristol, Pau, Florence, Le Man, Trondheim, Rotterdam, Ghent, Zurich, Nancy Vandoeuvre, Poitiers, London, Amsterdam, Warsaw, Brugge, Strasbourg, and Aberystwyth.
Some of the choirs have been made up of professionals, sometimes actors and musicians, but many have been amateur groups with no previous musical interest or experience. These have been particularly rewarding, as has the work with teenagers in Belgium and Holland, and the responses from the participants have been overwhelmingly positive.
The Noisy Women Present is a multi-disciplinary creative hub championing diversity and collective virtuosity. Our concerts, workshops and events embrace improvised and experimental music, movement, art and poetry. We believe in individual expression as part of a collaborative, liberating experience.
In 2024 TNWP were awarded a fellowship by the Serpentine Gallery as part of its Support Structures for Support Structures programme. These are awarded to artists at the forefront of social practice, community practice and collaborative working.
Our associated ensemble, the Noisy People’s Improvising Orchestra, explores these ideals on a grander scale, and welcomes performers with neuro-diversity and learning differences.
Please get in touch if you’d like to book us for performances and/or workshops.
Faradena Afifi is the founder of The Noisy Women Present, and The Noisy People’s Improvising Orchestra, Fara is also an Initiator, Connector and Performer. Faradena is a peirson with neurodiversity who has mixed Afghan/British heritage. She is a T’ai Chi Chuan practitioner/instructor, folk singer and improvising community musician who plays bowed string instruments, piano and percussion. She also specialises in healing music and T’ai Chi-based exercises for people with learning differences and brain injuries/conditions.
During lockdown 2020, through jamming online with Maggie Nicols, Fara joined the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra (GIO) and the Improvising Ensemble (IE). This led to performing with the London Improvisers Orchestra (LIO), and with Maggie Nicol’s Creative Liberation Orchestra in Stockholm 2021 and various musicians since. She co-leads the International Online Improvising Workshop with Tony Hardie Bick, the online sister of The London Improvising Workshop, originally started by Eddie Prevost.
When not teaching or performing on stage, she is out busking with Cambridge musician Banjo Nick.
Jenni Roditi (b.1961), composer, vocal improviser, founder and practitioner of Vocal Tai Chi (2012) and TIC! The Improvisers’ Choirs (2015). Open sessions continue. Her new piece The Brimming Stone for the New London Chamber Choir (SATB), violin, viola, cello, double bass, piano, organ, gong also integrates four improvisers from the OffBeat Trio with Special Guest Alistair Smith (piano, cello, voice and harp) through ‘dovetails and responses’. Arts Council England is currently assessing the project for a grant to record the music and launch as a new CD. Fingers crossed.
jenniroditi.uk
Jo Morrison is an experimental vocalist & improvising performer with a penchant for cat toys, costume & masks. She’s part of various New Music ensembles & also creates solo work which is currently based around an interest in glossolalia & medieval mysticism from the christian tradition. As well as performing at Essex venues such as The Old Waterworks, Hot Box, The Commons & The Fishermen’s Chapel, she has also played at SKRONK, Cafe Oto, Hundred Years Gallery, Colour Out Of Space Festival, Safehouse Peckham, Battersea Arts Centre, Iklectik & many other independent spaces. Joanne was part of the 2025 cohort at TOMA (the other MA), an alternative art school based in Southend.
Instagram @joannemorrison72