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Speech Muse
The Horse Hospital
Colonnade, London WC1N 1JD
January 14th, 2026, doors 7:00
Speech Muse is a concert series that invites wordsmiths and musicians to play with words. For this first iteration of 2026, we are joined by Charles Verni, Imani Mason Jordan, Phil Minton, and Beatrice Ferreira. Plus, entertainment from Reuben <3
Charles Verni is a musician based in London. Their work uses humour and genre experiments as a means to try and come to terms with popular song, digital audio, and the voice. Their latest album “I’m Crazy” was released by Vienna-based Plot Toy on CD and digital, with other projects including “I Was Today Years Old” and the radio play "Not That Deep.” Recent live performances have taken place at Scaling, Malmö, and Hillside, Berlin, with radio highlights including mixes and original audio for NTS and BBC Radio 4 Extra.
Imani Mason Jordan (b. 1992, London) is an interdisciplinary writer, artist, editor and curator interested in poetics and performance. Imani has written numerous articles, reviews, essays, poems, plays and love letters, some of which they have published. Since 2016, they have developed a keen interest in poetics, oration, experimentation and practices of reading aloud, from which they have synthesised a performance practice that centres writing and collaboration as well as using the speaking voice as an instrument. After completing their MA in Forensic Architecture at Goldsmiths in 2019, their pamphlet OBJECTS WHO TESTIFY was published by Taylor Le Melle at PSS. Imani is currently working on their debut poetry collection, THE BOOK OF SLASH POEMS and their solo performance work TREAD/MILL. Recent performance/audio projects include: EARTHLY ACCOMPLICE (2023) with Felix Taylor at MACBA, Barcelona & Crosness Pumping Station, London; ATLANTIC RAILTON: LIVE (2021) with Ain Bailey at Serpentine Pavilion, London & WELCOME NOTE IN A WELCOME SPEECH (2019) with Libita Sibungu at Gasworks, London & Spike Island, Bristol. Imani is Director of PAPERFLESH PUBLISHING, a multi-genre small press and editing studio for the intellectually rigorous, politically minded black writer. Imani has curated various exhibitions and public programmes alongside Rabz Lansiquot as Languid Hands (2019-) and SYFU (2018).
Phil Minton comes from Torquay in the UK. He played trumpet and sang with the Mike Westbrook Band in the early 60s- then in dance and rock bands in Europe for the later part of the decade. He returned to England in 1971, rejoining Westbrook and was involved in many of his projects until the mid 1980′s. For most of the last forty years, Phil has been working as a improvising singer in groups, orchestras and situations, in various locations worldwide. Some composers have written pieces that especially employ his extended vocal techniques and improvisations. He has a quartet with Veryan Weston, Roger Turner and John Butcher and ongoing duos with all the above. Phil also sings with many other musicians including Audrey Chen, with whom in the last ten years, he has performed worldwide. Since the eighties, his Feral Choir, where he voice-conducts workshops and concerts for anyone who wants to sing, has performed in over twenty countries. More recently, Phil has on going Duos with Carl Ludwig Hübsch, Guylaine Cosseron, Hugh Medcalfe and Szilard Mezei.
Beatrice Ferreira is a Canadian American composer and string improvisor currently based in London. With a style described as ‘atmospheric, surreal... [and] occasionally unnerving - perhaps better to say haunted’ (Spectrum Culture), she draws upon mimetic materials to destabilize our perceptions of extramusical sound. With over a decade of experience writing for solo, concert, and theatre settings, Beatrice has established herself in the contemporary music scene as a skilled yet playful voice. Her works
have premiered at Southbank Centre, Snape Maltings, Barbican Centre, and National Sawdust. In addition to her work as a composer, she is an experienced string improvisor. Past work has included collaboration with Montreal projects Alex Rand and The Weather Holds. Beatrice holds an M.A. from Guildhall School of Music and Drama in Opera Making and
Writing, and a B.Mus. in Composition from McGill University’s Schulich School of Music. She has been named finalist in SOCAN (2021), BMI (2020), and ASCAP Morton Gould (2018) Young Composer Awards.
Plus, a very welcome return from Speech Muse royalty, the inimitable singer and all-round legend, Reuben!
Reuben is funny, energetic, kind, knowledgeable, chatty, understanding,
hard working, and giggly. If you’ve been to Speech Muse before, you
might have hard the pleasure of hearing him singing songs like Björk’s All is Full of Love and Laurel Halo’s Light + Space.
Mechaya
מחיה
A Night of Contemporary Klezmer Music featuring Chaia and Francesca Ter-Berg; two solo sets followed by a duo
The Foundry Collective, 1 Victoria Rd, North Acton, W3 6FA
January 4th, doors 19:30
Chaia
is an electronic composer working at the intersection of Yiddish
culture and electronic club music. She weaves archival Yiddish samples
with techno and ambient frameworks, creating hybrid folk-electronic
compositions that situate ancestral sound within global and liberatory
rave culture. In live performance, she weaves together accordion,
vocals, and samples - inviting audiences to engage with ritual,
intergenerational trauma, and the echoes of ancestral memory.
Chaia was raised in the klezmer tradition and mentored by Yiddish music
pioneers Hankus Netsky, Jeff Warschauer, and Basya Schechter. She now
works closely with Yiddish archives to identify, highlight, and catalog
Yiddish material for her electronic work. These include the YIVO
Institute for Jewish Research, The Yiddish Book Center, Yiddish Song of
the Week, and the personal archives of Netsky and the Hoffman Family.
Chaia’s work has been supported by New York State’s Council for the
Arts, the Brooklyn Arts Council, The Goethe Institute, and the Center
for Traditional Music and Dance.
Francesca Ter-Berg
is a cellist and composer known for her unique style which blends
Klezmer, Improvisation, and electronic synthesis. Her debut EP (Phantom
Limb Label achieved Best Experimental Music on Bandcamp + Quietus Best Releases of 2021). Her
critically acclaimed duo Fran & Flora (“Border-defying” – Mojo,
“vibrant, mournfully expressive, and creatively imaginative” – Line Of
Best Fit) released their 2nd self-produced studio album Precious
Collection in April 2024 on Hidden Notes Records (The Guardian Top 10 Folk Albums of 2024).
She
tours and records with Imogen Heap, Tom Skinner, Portico Quartet, Ziah
Ziah and prominent klezmorim including Grammy award winner Frank London,
Zoe Aqua and Craig Judelman. She
has spent many years developing her Klezmer style, adapting the cello
to explore all aspects of the music from accompaniment, tenor lines and
bass to melody and simultaneously singing. Francesca writes for film and TV, commissions include the Turner Contemporary and Margate NOW Festival. She performs
and teaches at Klezmer festivals globally including KlezMore Vienna,
KlezFest London, Yiddish New York and is a Professor of Electronic &
Produced music at Guildhall School of Music & Drama.
Tickets
Plunder Blunder Asunder
Plunder Blunder Asunder is a night of Sample-based Music, Musique Concrete, and Retro Electronic music at iconic venue The Horse Hospital. Featuring
The Estonian Electronic Music Society Ensemble,
Langham Research Centre,
lagtime seedling, and King Monolith.
November 25th, doors 7:30
The Horse Hospital,
Colonnade, WC1N 1JD
TicketsThe Estonian Electronic Music Society Ensemble (EMA) is an ensemble founded in 2017, dedicated to playing electronic chamber music. The aim of the ensemble is to transcend technological barriers and to develop sensitive music making, responsiveness and acute listening by exploiting the incredibly rich sonic possibilities of different electronic instruments. The ensemble consists of six musicians – Doris Hallmägi, Ekke Västrik, Mihkel Tomberg, Taavi Kerikmäe, Tarmo Johannes, Theodore Parker. The ensemble has performed at the festivals Afekt 2017 and ISCM/Eesti Muusika Päevad 2019-2024. The Estonian Electronic Music Society’s ensemble has been appreciated for its flexibility and musicality, which is otherwise easy to lose in electronic music between knobs and sliders. The ensemble’s instrumentation ranges from Buchla and Serge synthesizers to computer-based live electronics.
Langham Research Centre came together in 2003 with the purpose of using a studio as their instrument: a studio with microphones and also, crucially, several ¼” tape machines. From the start they were interested in manipulating sound on tape and in focusing on one sound source, or a small number of sounds. Their inspiration and enthusiasm are driven by the soundworlds produced by maverick composers working in the middle of the 20th century. Like an early music group’s use of historic instruments, LRC continue to work with obsolete equipment including tape recorders, gramophone cartridges and sine wave oscillators, to perform authentic versions of 20th century classic electronic repertoire by John Cage, Alvin Lucier and others. Their new studio album, “Tape Works (Vol. 2)” is released by Nonclassical on 26th February 2021. The album leans towards the Parisian musique concrète scene, with an emphasis on the spatial identity of environmental, architectural and mechanical field recordings. It follows 2017’s “Tape Works (Vol. 1)”, which compiled the group’s earliest tape experiments alongside longer-form concert works.
lagtime seedling plays their laptop using google chrome windows and youtube.com and alt + tab.
King Monolith is a sound artist, engineer and musician from London, who unites all three disciplines in his sculptural practise. Inspired by the effect of monumental public sculpture, simultaneously ignored and mythologised, he works with heritage musical instrument parts through assemblage and automation to explore their enduring symbolic and sonic power.
Poster by Matej Siska.
Tengal + Elvin Brandhi’s Forage Friction, Khabat Abas, Ilana Blumberg, Luigi Monteanni, Kenichi Iwasa
The Horse Hospital, Colonnade,
WC1N 1JD
Wednesday November 12th, doors 7PM
TicketsA unique night at iconic Bloomsbury venue The Horse Hospital, dealing with themes of war, healing, and materiality. Three short films, live music, and a performance piece.
Elvin Brandhi + Tengal present Forage Friction, an immersive, experimental sound/cinema art installation, film, and performance project exploring foraging practices of pre-colonial and pagan traditions within conflicted histories. Situated in a spiritual alloy of pre-colonial cosmologies, the project follows the narratives of plants: their uprooting, transformation, and role in forming communities through ritual acts of collective healing. Using a sensorial approach to expanded cinema with sonic pieces, Forage Friction constructs a cinematic topography where human, ecological, and spiritual systems are entangled.
Elvin Brandhi and Tengal will perform a live score accompanying the film, followed by a Q&A.
Luigi Monteanni presents “T2S” (Terror to Skull). T2S explores Neurorealist Listening: phenomena where listening triggers auditory paranoia via deception, disruption, and sensory stress techniques, from military cognitohazard psyops (e.g., Havana syndrome, Operation Wandering Soul) to frequency intermissions and hijacking. This composition investigates the paradox of asemic impulses transformed into harmful sonic experiences by autogenous speculative significations: signals become auditory manifestations of possible concealed dangers.
Knitwear designer Ilana Blumberg will perform a live set, playing the knitting machine as a musical instrument. Blumberg, from London, spends all day with knitting machines. She invites you to the unseen world of the machinist.
Khabat Abas will screen Bombshell Cello, a film documenting the process of creating a cello using a bombshell. Bombshell Cello is a new cello cut out of a bombshell Abas found in the bazaar of Sulaymaniyah, Iraq, in December 2019. The transformation of the military object into an art object shows the deconstruction of the symbols of culture and violence. As a cello, the shell material has been transported internationally, which would otherwise have not been possible. The sound of the instrument can represent the sound that affected our senses through listening during war time, how we perceived sound, and how it shaped both society and individuals.
Following the screening, Khabat Abas and Elvin Brandhi will play a duo set.
Kenichi Iwasa is a London based improviser and multidisciplinary artist from Japan. Also known for his legendary event Krautrock Karaoke night, he has collaborated with visual artists and musicians such as Beatrice Dillon, Maxwell Sterling and Linder Sterling.
THELIGHTS + r4g + MöbiusKlay
The Mews Coachworks,
NW10 5QR
Sunday November 9th, doors
4:30
A debut from elephant stomp duo THELIGHTS, guitarist/hamoniumist r4g, and rapper Möbius Klay.
THELIGHTS are a duo from London, formed in the COVID pandemic. Their debut album, Ancient Cinema, independently released in 2025, is a dynamic, stirring project; their audio-visual live act is both grounded in social commentary, and hints at a cosmic order which can only be expressed through music.
r4g is a London based artist working primarily with performance, assemblage and sound. She treats her works as textural and metaphorical palimpsests, exploring themes of attachment, memory and human consciousness. Her current experiments in sound and music see her build evolving soundscapes, superimposing cyclical moments of reverberating harmonium, guitar and keening vocal melodies.
Möbius Klay is a rapper based in London.
Sexmob + Eastmond / Quill / Solomons-Wise (trio) + Pentu / Joanna Ward (duo)
The Foundry Collective, 1 Victoria Rd, W3 6FA
Friday November 7th, doors 7:30
TicketsSexmob has exploded all preconceived notions of what jazz band can be. On 2023 release The Hard Way, the music skews decisively electronic, as producer Scotty Hard’s beats and soundscapes provide slide trumpeter and founder Steven Bernstein, saxophonist Briggan Krauss, bassist Tony Scherr and acoustic/electric drummer Kenny Wollesen all the stimulus they need for further composition and fearless reinvention.
Support from Sam Eastmond (trumpet), Fergus Quill (bass), and Noam Solomons-Wise (drums).
Sam Eastmond is an improvising trumpeter and composer known for his expansive large ensemble projects which span vast and eclectic swathes of stylistic inspiration. Bassist Fergus Quill is a composer, improvisor and bandleader. Noam Solomons-Wise is a drummer studying at Royal Academy of Music.
Pentu + Joanna Ward (duo)
Pentu is a producer and guitarist whose music explores soundscapes that mirror the splintered emotional realities of living in an online world. Pentu’s latest release was described as ‘music for the endlessly scrolling modern mind’, incorporating silences, drones, YouTube samples, metal and shoegaze textures.Joanna Ward is a composer, performer, and writer. She often works with pre-recorded audio, video, and in collaboration with other musicians and artists. As a vocalist and performer, Joanna is interested in contemporary and experimental repertoires as well as songwriting and improvisation.
Faradena Afifi + Steve Beresford + Ansuman Biswas (trio), Reuben, Special Guests
27 Mortimer Road, NW10 5QR
Tuesday October 28th, Doors 18:30
PAYF Tickets on the door
Faradena, a British Afghani community musician, full time T’ai Chi teacher and
practitioner, is influenced by nature (especially birdsong), improvisation and musical form that involves unusual rhythms. ‘Flash of Blue’ recorded at Three Circles Studio in Saffron Walden, is Faradena Afifi’s debut solo EP of evocative and moving songs about life, love and death. The title song Kingfisher, plus Last Call,
are both originals. Scarborough Fair, Drowned Sailor and Bruton Town are Faradena’s unique interpretations of traditional folk songs. Her poignant, expressive and delightfully agile vocals are complemented by her thoughtful
arrangements for cello, viola, violin, piano and percussion, all played by Fara. She is joined by Steve Beresford, the EP’s producer, on piano for Last Call.
Steve Beresford has been a central figure in the British and international spontaneous music scenes for over fifty years, freely improvising on the piano, electronics and other things with people like Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, Han Bennink, John Zorn, London Improvisers Orchestra and Alterations (with David Toop, Terry Day and Peter Cusack). Steve has worked with Christian Marclay on various Marclay mixed media pieces. He has also worked with The Slits, Najma Akhtar, Stewart Lee, Ivor Cutler, Prince Far-I, Alan Hacker, Tania Chen, Louis Moholo-Moholo, Faradena Afifi, Ray Davies, Mandhira De Saram, The Flying Lizards, Zeena Parkins, The Portsmouth Sinfonia, Ilan Volkov, Rachel Musson, Vic Reeves, Lore Lixenberg, Valentina Magaletti and many others. Beresford has an extensive discography as performer, arranger, free-improviser, composer, conductor and producer, and was awarded a Paul Hamlyn award for composers in 2012.
Ansuman Biswas was born in Calcutta and trained in the UK. He now has an international practice encompassing music, film, live art, installation, writing and theatre. He is interested in hybridity and interdisciplinarity, often working between science, art and industry, for instance, or between music, dance and visual art. With skills in a number of different fields, he has developed a dynamic practice which traverses, translates and transposes across various kinds of borders. An example of this border-crossing is his mapping of Vedic and Buddhist thought to modern debates in science and philosophy, which then find expression in film or performance.
Reuben is:
Funny
Energetic
Kind
Knowledgeable
Chatty
Understanding
Hard working
Giggly
Maryia Kamarova + Daniel Dariel (duo), Pheobe riley Law, Amias Hanley
Sunday October 26th
Doors 7:30
The Foundry Collective
1 Victoria Road
W3 6FA
Tickets
Please note that this event will now take place at The Foundry Collective in North Acton.
Maryia Kamarova and Daniel Dariel explore the audible analogies between physical materials and synthesized textures, navigating in sonic environments on the edges of tangible and virtual realms. Daniel works with digital instruments for synthesis and sampling, Maryia creates autonomous creature-like objects by assembling electronics and found materials. Daniel Dariel has been playing in numerous projects, mostly with drums and electronics. He is part of the Third Type Tapes label and les ateliers claus, a venue for experimental music in Brussels. Maryia Kamarova's practice is situated at the intersection of performing arts, scenography, sound and installation art. She is a co-founder of PYL collective and is currently a member of Q-O2 art team in Brussels.
Pheobe riley Law is an installation artist working across sound, performance, sculpture, photography, and moving image. She creates dialogues between bodies, borders, and devices to reveal new forms of relation. She is particularly interested in non-human actors, inanimate objects, and how human activity is shaped by systems of boundary. creation. Through playful inversions, she highlights the object-hood of humanity and the agency of the "inanimate". Her latest performance installation, Vegetal Empathy, is a speculative simulation of the garden, exploring our entanglement with more-than- human entities through data, micro-listening and acts of tending.
Amias Hanley is an artist working at the intersection of sound, technology, and ecology. While their broader practice is grounded in auditory-led research through composition, installation, and sound sculpture, their performances embrace sound as an experimental and listenable medium. Often drawing on site, atmospherics, electromagnetics, found objects, and field recordings, their performances sometimes explore thresholds, aimlessness, and the possibilities of sound.
Elvin Brandhi + Khabat Abas + Ryoko Akama
96 Robert Street
NW1 3QP
9th October
7pm
Tickets
Bill Dixon 100
HQI, 195 Wood Lane W12 7FQ
5th October 2025, 3pm
On what would have been Dixon's 100th birthday, we will begin with an open rehearsal led by Sam Eastmond. The Bill Dixon Living Trust have sent us a Dixon composition called Index, which was until recently thought lost. Dixon considered it one of his most important, and yet it was never played live or recorded properly. Sam has selected a group of musicians, the Index Orchestra, to teach the score to, and attendees will be able to listen in to the orchestra learning Index.
This will be followed by a panel discussion reflecting on Dixon's life and legacy, moderated by Ethan Cohen, and featuring Eastmond, Evan Parker, Orphy Robinson, and Kevin Le Gendre. We will also discuss the political questions Dixon continued to ask throughout his life, most notably at the seminal October Jazz Revolution festival of 1964, such as how Black musicians could organise against a racist American music industry in such a way that they were treated fairly and paid properly.
A quartet, led by Sam, including Will Glaser, Alex Bonney, and Fergus Quill, and including Parker and Robinson as soloists, will then play several Dixon compositions. Finally, the orchestra to whom Sam taught Index will be invited back to the stage to perform an orchestral rendition of the piece.