Gondwana records label founder Matthew Halsall returns to Berlin for a special concert at Gretchen this October to celebrate his latest live album.
The recordings on Oneness date fromJan, March and September 2008 and were born from a period of experimentation as Halsall first began to explore the music that would provide the inspiration for his spiritual jazz recordings Fletcher Moss Park and When the World Was One.Theyalsooffer an intriguing snapshot into the birth of Halsall’s Gondwana Orchestraandfeaturemany musicians who would go on to become a key part of Halsall’s musical journey,such as harpist Rachel Gladwin, bassist Gavin Barras and saxophonist Nat Birchall. Therecordings sat in the Gondwana Records vaults for over a decade before Halsall felt it was the right time to share them.
Thesessions that make up Oneness capture Halsall in the process of building a new band, reaching out to various musicians he’d discovered and admired on the Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds music scene. “I really liked this idea of bringing lots of musicians together from different backgrounds and was fascinated with how they would allreact to each other and the tanpura drone box seemed to bring everyone togetherreally well, it was kind of like a nice meditative icebreaker exercise for everyone to loosen up, before we got stuck into the more composed tunes I’d created, some of which ended up on the Sending My Love and Colour Yes albums”.
Matthew Halsall LIVE
Monday, 18th October 2021 | 20:00 CET
Gretchen | Obentrautstr. 19-21 | 10963 Berlin/Kreuzberg
gondwanarecords.com | Event @ Facebook | gretchen-club.de
Photo credit: Sorrel Higgens
