While we get on with planning our 2026 season, may we recommend the following local event featuring a couple of names you’ll be familiar with…

Elvin Brandhi – Rachel Musson – enys mottet (+ More)
Saturday 3 January 2026 7:00 PM – 10:00 PM
Centre for Science and Art, 13 Lansdown, Stroud, Gloucestershire GL5 1BB

Making her Stroud debut, Elvin Brandhi is an improvising lyricist, producer, and sound artist hailing from Bridgend, Wales. Constructing deeply creative electronic music via an innovative approach to sound design and sampling.

A prolific artist with an eye-watering track record, not only as part of the father-daughter duo ‘Yeah You’ but also in collaborations alongside the likes of Daniel Blumberg, Lord Spikeheart, Nadah El Shazly, Mariam Rezaei, Sara Persico, and many more.

A live show that is, in equal measure, wholly unique as it is electric.

Support on the night comes from improvising saxophonist and composer, Rachel Musson, delivering a rare, solo, pedal-infused performance. A heavyweight in improvised music with a breathtaking and transcendent approach to liveness.

As well as multidisciplinary artist enys mottet – A live entity whose music warps industrial sound design with autotune melancholy – making sense of visual vignettes in real time.

Saturday 3 January 2026
7:00 PM – 10:00 PM

Centre for Science and Art
13 Lansdown, Stroud,
Gloucestershire GL5 1BB

Ticket link

18th November 2025 – John Bisset and Phil Minton

John Bisset is a guitarist, born in Manchester 1960. In 1977 he was a co-founder of the Manchester Musician’s Collective, whose members included Trevor Wishart, Tony Friel (cellist/bass player with the Fall) and Simon Holt. This eclectic mix of musicians was rich and wondrous; setting the pattern for Bisset’s trajectory, working in improvisation, songs, visual arts, and facilitating events and collective activity.He has collaborated with countless artists, notably: Rhodri Davies, Maggie Nicols, Mark Sanders, Pat Thomas, Jem Finer, Burkhard Beins, and more recently Olga Ksendzovska, Julia Brüssel, Iris Colomb, George Garford, Milana Sarukhanyan & Dan Johnson.

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. More recently, Phil has on going Duos with Carl Ludwig Hübsch, Guylaine Cosseron, Hugh Medcalfe and Szilard Mezei.

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.

John Bisset and Phil Minton
Tuesday 18th November 2025
facebook event page
➽ Booking Link

James Opstad is a bassist and composer based in Stroud, UK. Once a regular fixture on the London jazz scene, his wide ranging musical interests and unique versatility have since seen him perform in a broad range of styles and settings. As a member of the experimental music ensemble, Apartment House, he has featured on numerous recordings for the Another Timbre label and performed at venues including Wigmore Hall and Café Oto. Other collaborations have included the free-improv trio, duck-rabbit, the Balkan folk band, Paprika, and the Nuevo Tango ensemble, Fugata Quintet, as well as performances with the classical guitarist, Miloš.

As a composer, James works closely with a tightly-knit group of performers that include Apartment House, Heather Roche and the GBSR Duo. His recent works explore intricate layerings of tempi and are rooted in a fascination with time, timbre and counterpoint.

James is also passionate about early music and in his free time can be found playing the viola da gamba.

Matt Davis has been active in improvised music since the mid 90’s, playing throughout Europe and Japan in many different collaborations and small and large group ensembles including Zeitkratzer and La Sospechosa dance company.

From 2003 he has directed ‘Field’ – a live art/performance project, which investigates Space and has collaborated with geographer Doreen Massey, author of For Space.

His sound/music work continues to include acoustic improvisation (trumpet and preparations) which could be described as textural, sound based pieces. Along side this is an electromagnetic set up: performance based improvisations which use electromagnetic fields from custom-built cracked electrical devices and field recordings of electromagnetic residue and interference, as well as drawing on the immediate situation/space of the performance. These elements are explored as spatial, acoustic phenomena and for their potential as organic and/or feral musical elements.

David David / Matt Davis & James Opstad
Tuesday 21 October 2025
facebook event page
➽ Booking Link

Seth Cooke Filling noise with space – artefacts and artifice – live performances involving feedback & resonance – occasional drums & electronics.

Matthew Grigg Guitar, amplifier. Bristol UK based musician, dealing predominantly with improvised musics.

“..somehow treads an impossible line between fragile beauty and gnarled anger” – The Wire

“I have no idea how Grigg plays his instrument, but it is barely recognisable as a guitar.” – FdW, Vital Weekly

Robin Foster, Based in Bristol, Uk his work encompasses ideas relating to performance art, improvisation, physicality, sound art and noise music. Through the performance practice Rummaging, he uses objects to explore ideas relating to viscerality in performance, and the relationship of humans to the things with which we surround ourselves.

Seth Cooke + Matthew Grigg & Robin Foster
Tuesday 12 August 2025
facebook event page
➽ Booking Link