NEIL LEONARD & SARA RODRIGUES

Sara Rodrigues, Neil Leonard

Sismógrafo presents a concert by Neil Leonard and Sara Rodrigues on July 4th, when the United States of America will be celebrating their Independence Day. Having travelled respectively from the ex-colonised and the ex-coloniser, Great Britain, the two artists find themselves united in this new space and time. Deciding to come together to poetically reconsider the present, the poignant saxophone meets the voice, which then gradually finds the gesture. The concert features a solo saxophone/electronics set by Neil Leonard and a new collaborative work by Leonard and Rodrigues.

He has refused / the morning's first beam
kept among us, in times through the clouds
When our land is illumined
celebrated through the mists
of the deep guns, bells, bonfires, and dread silence reposes
combined with others to half conceals, half discloses

Leonard is a composer, saxophonist and interdisciplinary artist. His work ranges from solo concerts for saxophone/live electronics, to works for orchestra, audio/video installation and sound for dance, theater and performance. His compositions/performances were featured by Carnegie Hall, Boston Globe Jazz Festival, Musicacustica (Beijing), International Computer Music Convention (Montreal), Tel Aviv Biennial for New Music, Moscow Autumn, Auditorium Parco della Music (Rome), Museo Riena Sofia (Madrid), Panama Jazz Festival, Jazz Plaza International Festival (Havana). Leonard’s ensemble featured Marshall Allen (Director of Sun Ra Orchestra), Bruce Barth, Joanne Brackeen, Don Byron, Uri Caine, Kenwood Dennard, Robin Eubanks, Oriente Lopez, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Badal Roy, Jamaaladeen Tacuma. He has collaborated with Juan Blanco, Richard Devine, Bill Frisell, Phill Niblock, Robin Rimbaud aka Scanner, Amnon Wolman. Leonard composed the music for Relatives, by Tony Oursler and Constance DeJong that was featured by the Whitney Biennial and the ICA, Boston. Leonard's work with visual artist Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons spans twenty-five years. Their collaborative performance, film, video and installations were featured by the Havana Bienal, 49th and 55th Venice Biennale, Museum of Modern Art (NYC), purchased by the National Gallery of Canada and presented by Dakar Biennial. Leonard is the Artistic Director of Berklee College of Music's Interdisciplinary Arts Institute. He is currently on the Fulbright Specialist Roster and is a Research Affiliate at M.I.T. program in Art, Culture and Technology.

Sara Rodrigues was born in Porto, Portugal and currently lives and works in London. Having a degree in Fine Art from London Metropolitan University she is currently studying contemporary composition and sonic art at Goldsmiths University. Her work is multi-disciplinary, encompassing audio/video composition, performance art and installation. Exhibitions include Arbeit Gallery, London, Galerija Miroslav Kraljevic, Zagreb and Quadrado Azul, Porto/Lisbon, having also taken part in the 2014 ‘1a Avenida’ residency in Porto. Recently she was invited to perform a composition for the final event of ‘The Rest is Noise’ yearlong series, Upstairs at the Ritzy, and her sonic piece ‘Fragments of a Composition’ was selected in May for the launch of the PureGold festival at the Southbank Centre. Sara has performed with various artists including in Amalia Pica’s exhibition at Herald St. Gallery, recently collaborating with artist Tamara Kuselman for a show at Guest Projects, and performing with artist/musician Jenny Moore for the Late at Tate Britain events. Sara is one of the co-founding members and the new director 2015/2016 of the New Music Ensemble at Goldsmiths and is continuously composing and presenting work with the collective. She is also the founder of ‘The LivingRoom’ projects with curator Cristina Ramos, a nomadic space dedicated to the curation of multi-disciplinary arts in non-gallery spaces, exploring and blurring the boundaries between the display and the work itself.