Welcome to Noisy Women Present
The Noisy Women Present is a multi disciplinary creative hub championing diversity and collective virtuosity.
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About Noisy Women
The Noisy Women Present is a multi-disciplinary creative hub championing diversity and collective virtuosity. We provide an inclusive, supportive space for women/non-binary performers across all disciplines.
Our concerts, workshops and events embrace improvised and experimental music, dancing, art and poetry. We believe in individual expression as part of a collaborative, liberating experience. 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.
We look forward to seeing you at our next event and welcome collaborations from like-minded performers.
Noisy People’s Improvising Orchestra
The concept of the Noisy People’s Improvising Orchestra came about through conversations between Faradena Afifi and co-founder Dominic Mulvey, a poet and artist who lived with schizophrenia and a chronic lung condition. Dominic used music art, poetry and being a Krishna devotee to maintain a healthy, balanced and fulfilled life full of friends, food and love. The inaugural concert of the Noisy People’s Improvising Orchestra took place on 15th July 2022 at St Pauls Church, Cambridge, 6 months after Dominic had passed, to celebrate his inclusive and open-minded approach to connecting with and socially including human beings through the arts. The orchestra, made up of 80 people of mixed ability, mixed culture, mixed gender and sexuality, included international musicians, vocalists, poets, dancers and visual artists. Also taking part were members of the Tuneless Choir Cambridge, a mental-health-focussed on-site art workshop, and. photographers and announcers with learning disabilities. The Noisy People’s Orchestra epitomises Dominic’s way of valuing and encouraging all human beings through the arts and continues to champion social inclusivity.
An Award for The Noisy Women Present
An Award for The Noisy Women Present
We have been awarded a fellowship by the Serpentine
as part of its Support Structures for Support Structures programme
Serpentine is delighted to announce the awardees of the Support Structures for Support Structures programme: Ashley Holmes, Janie Doherty, Roo Dhissou, Taey Iohe and Noisy Women Present co-founders: Faradena Afifi, Maggie Nicols, Gwendolyn Kassenaar and Marion Treby.
In its second iteration, the fellowship consists of an unrestricted grant given to each artist and collectives across the UK, a development from the first programme (2021) focused on London. Recipients will be provided with a network of support, and mentoring sessions at a timely moment in their careers.
The Noisy Women Present or TNWP is a collective of avantgarde artists, performers and musicians working with methodologies and traditions of improvisation that champion diversity and social inclusion. Their work supports and sustains a network of diverse communities across London and throughout the UK. TNWP is committed to resisting structures of exclusion that marginalise the work of non-binary, trans, multi-ethnic, neuro diverse and disabled women musicians, artists, and performers. The gatherings organised by TNWP involve women as performers, differently abled persons from a variety of class backgrounds, cultures, genders, sexualities, ages, disabilities and neurodiversities. TNWP uses multi-media technologies, dance, movement sound and art to elicit change through a collective practice of social virtuosity.
The criteria:
This award is given to artists and/or collectives:
· Who demonstrate exceptional imagination, and vision, working in the spirit of experimentation and innovation.
· Who are at the forefront of social practice, community practice and collaborative working, or are engaging in, stimulating and/or challenging the current debate in this area of work.
· Who have developed a significant body of work or made a significant impact on a social or community level over the past 3+ years and are regularly producing work;
· The Serpentine is particularly interested in new forms of praxis that are situated between disciplines, and challenging inherited modes and models of practice to develop different ways of working that may offer other imaginations for our current world and its crises.
· The Support Structures for Support Structures fellowship is for artists and collectives who are at a significant stage in their career. This includes those at the cusp of breaking through to greater recognition or those who have been sustaining this practice for many years without financial or institutional support.
In addition, the artists or collectives must meet the following eligibility criteria:
· Artists or collectives must be living or working in the UK and have done significant work in their cities or towns;
· There is no age restriction.
Read the press release in full at https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/about/press/support-structures-for-support-structures-2024/
Meet the artists
Founder of The Noisy Women Present, and The Noisy People’s Improvising Orchestra, Fara is also an initiator, connector and performer. Faradena is a person 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.
Marion is a performer, accompanist, teacher and independent scholar. She enjoys all types of music; classically trained, she now plays in folk bands as well with other improvising musicians. Her academic interests are inter-disciplinary and combine music and literature. She has an MA in Women’s Studies and her PhD thesis examined the use of music in the novels of the Black American woman writer Toni Morrison. She has also jointly published several articles on the polymath writer and composer E.T.A. Hoffmann.
Having spent much of her working life teaching music and literature, during lockdown Marion was introduced to the world of improvising music by Faradena Afifi and became a founding member of the Noisy Women. Through jamming online with Faradena and Maggie Nicols, Marion joined the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra (GIO). This led to performing with the London Improvisers Orchestra (LIO), including the International Online Improvising Workshop with Tony Hardie Bick.
A London-based, Dutch visual artist and performer, Gwendolyn is a curator of visual art. A graduate of Chelsea College of Art, her work is based on rhythm, music and dance, and captures the intangible poetry of the ephemeral moment. She is an established participant in the improvised music scene, regularly painting live improvised at the Vortex, Café Oto, Iklectik and Hundred Years Gallery. She collaborates with highly regarded musicians including celebrated Chinese percussionist Beibei Wang, Orphy Robinson MBE and legendary improviser Maggie Nicols. She co-founded new collective Noisy Women, whose launch featured in iconic magazine The Wire, and was recently interviewed on Soho Radio.
Gwendolyn’s vivacious artworks are instantly recognisable for their distinct use of colour. Her work has featured at the prestigious Menuhin Concert Hall, Toulouse Lautrec, Vortex Jazz Club, album covers and in private art collections in the UK and abroad. She has just held her first solo show and launched Limited Edition Prints.
@GwendolynKassenaar
https://www.instagram.com/gwendolynkassenaar/
https://www.facebook.com/gwendolynkassenaar/
Trumpeter Charlotte wears her love for free improvisation on her sleeve. Whether performing regularly as a soloist, or leading a variety of ensembles, including her Right Here, Right Now Quartet, she carefully carves out spaces for free movement of ideas and individual expression.
Charlotte refers to her instruments as ‘Sound Brushes’.
Her debut album, released in 2021 on Discus Music, ‘Right Here, Right Now’ is where you’ll find a vibrant selection of her soundscapes:
https://discusmusic.bandcamp.com/album/right-here-right-now-107cd-2021
She performed a duet with the mighty City of London as part of renowned trumpeter Dave Douglas’ 2022 Festival of New Trumpet Music:
Her music has been featured on BBC Radio 3, Jazz FM and BBC Radio 6; she’s been described as a ‘prolific’, ‘dynamic’ and ‘excellent improviser!’, by the likes of Corey Mwamba, Stuart Maconie and Jez Nelson.
Joanne is an Essex-based improvising vocalist via Groningen Vocal Exploration Choir and Faradena Afifi’s Noisy Peoples Orchestra and is now a member of The Noisy Women Present.
She has taken part in The Gathering, the LIO and is a regular participant of the London Improvisation Workshop.
Maggie joined London’s legendary Spontaneous Music Ensemble in 1968 as a free improvisation vocalist. She then became active running voice workshops with an involvement in local experimental theatre. She later joined the group Centipede, led by Keith Tippets and in 1977, with musician/composer Lindsay Cooper, formed the remarkable Feminist Improvising Group.
Maggie continues performing and recording challenging and beautiful work, in music and theatre, in collaborations with a range of artists (Irene Schweitzer, Joelle Leandre, Ken Hyder, Caroline Kraabel) as well as solo.
Nicky is a creative practitioner whose passions lie in dance, sound, words & nature. As a qualified & experienced Meditation Teacher, Embodied Movement Teacher & Sound Artist she is interested in these as a developmental practice & enquiry into what it means to be a human being in these times. Nicky has collaborated with many musicians, forming duos, bands, playing covers, original material & experimental movement & sound. She has performed at The Junction in Cambridge, The Strawberry Fair in Cambridge, Green Earth Awakening, Pink Fest & Playfest. Being someone who strongly believes in community, inclusivity & grass roots, Nicky is actively engaged in organising creative events and community building.
Nicky met Maggie Nichols at a workshop in Liverpool in the 90s which left a lasting impression of improvised creative practise. She reconnected with Maggie through The Noisy Women project in 2020 and has been mentored by Maggie since then. Nicky has participated in experimental, improv gigs at Cafe Oto in London, The Vortex in London, Winter Sounds in Canterbury & The Noisy People’s Orchestra in Cambridge.
Maham is a performer and composer/sound artist. She has a multi-lingual live and recorded repertoire, with sample-based, textural and hybrid arrangements. Whereas her recently released project, “Mitti”, entails alternative cross-genre fusion, her older and current words embody more digitally processed samples, and looping and beat-programming on Ableton.
Maham has worked and collaborated extensively, internationally, as a performer, composer and producer. She has also curated some live acts and events internationally. Maham has multiple awards and honours to her credit, including the International Songwriting Competition 2021 Honorable Mentions winner; female vocals winner at the Stars of Tomorrow music contest, India, 2022; she was also one of 10 global artists to receive the Geothe Talents’ Scholarship residency in Germany 2017. She has media presence on radio, blogs and in publications across 10 countries and currently lives and works in London, England.
A photographer who has embraced a flamboyant and colourful style. Since retiring and leaving the grey-suited life of the city behind, he has been developing his B&W (and colour) photography and more colourful style.
Being dyslexic as well, he looks at the world slightly differently from most people, using this ability to find an interesting take on what he photographs and hopefully produce images with a degree of originality.
Julian is a guitarist, bassist and composer based in London, currently studying for a Postgraduate degree at the Guildhall School of Music. Julian is interested in exploring new and unusual musical colours by making use of microtonality and polystylism in the context of improvised music. A graduate of Oxford University, he was highly active during his time as a student, leading the University Jazz Society house band, and playing in everything from a jazz orchestra to a classical guitar quartet. He has studied with pioneer Philipp Gerschlauer and other microtonal theorists/composers, and is a current student of the Julian Joseph Jazz Academy.
Current projects include adapting Arabic and Turkish traditional music and Ives quartertone piano works onto modified guitars, and performing with the London Improvisers Orchestra.
In her work as a performance artist Anne uses sound to explore a myriad of ways to express emotion and the way of being human. From her earliest influences in singing the Irish sean nós, an unaccompanied form of singing deeply rooted in her ancient Irish ancestral heritage of The Curragh in Kildare, Ireland. She has worked solo and with performance groups to create soundworks, and wherever she goes, Anne seeks out a local session of vocal unaccompanied singers.
Anne works with the body and vocal sound as a body psychotherapist, performance artist, singer-songwriter, poet, physical theatre and lover of the spoken word. Her body psychotherapy practice is in Cambridge, where she also sees people for sound healing sessions both online and in person. Visit www.annelryan.co.uk
“The making of art has no limits, either in the technical sense, or in subject matter.”
Bettina Schroeder is a London-based multidisciplinary artist. Her works include installation, painting, drawing, collage, sound art, music, video, poetry and live art.
Born in 1950, Bettina escaped with her family from the former East Germany, and grew up in the VW car town of Wolfsburg. She studied in Berlin and moved to the UK in 1982. She works from her London studio in Hoxton.
Bettina has exhibited internationally, including solo and group shows in Britain, Germany, Switzerland and USA and performs sound art and music events throughout Europe. Her more recent shows and performances include Sound: Installation: VIVA LA VIDA, Frauenmuseum Bonn, Germany (2024), Hundred Years Gallery, London, UK (2024), Glarus, Switzerland (2023), Words: üF-BEAT at Crouch End Literary Festival, London, (2024), Sound: MOPOMOSO, Vortex Jazz Club, London (2024), Installation: 50 JAHRE FRAUENSTIMMRECHT, POP UP MUSEUM, Glarus, Switzerland (2021), Sound: Album releases VERSUS, SHATTER RESISTANT, UP BEAT, (2021-22), Sound: Noisy Women at MOPOMOSO, Vortex Jazz Club, London (2023), LONDON IMPROVISERS ORCHESTRA, Stoke Newington, London (2022 – 24), Film: KUNSTWOCHEN FÜR KLIMASCHUTZ (Art Weeks for Climate Protection), GEDOK Karlsruhe, Germany, (2020), Painting: ARTBOX.PROJECT MIAMI 2.0, Miami, USA, (2019), Film: BAUHAUS Exhibition, Frauenmuseum Bonn, Germany (2019), Painting: A&D Gallery, London (2012- 19), Sound: Oooh Amsterdam – Improv & Spontaneous Art Festival, (2019), Film: ARTBOX.PROJECT ZÜRICH 1.0 at Swiss Art Expo, Switzerland (2019), and Sound: ‘SKRONKFEST LONDON’, New River Studios, London (2022).
In addition to her work with The Noisy Women Present, Bettina Schroeder is a member of the ‘Pataphysical Society’, London, The Tunnel art group, London, and music groups Rita Says and the Jerico Orchestra and The Beach Bullies. She also performs regularly as duo Schroeder/Smith and with the London Improvisers Orchestra.
Constance Cooper does not like a day to go by without music improvisation, which, however, came her way late. She spent the first half of her life as a microtonal composer, freelance classical pianist, and singer of Gregorian chant, Renaissance works. and contemporary works, thirty written for her. While completing her PhD in composition at Princeton University, she wrote microtonal pieces that include improvisation. One of these won the Gustav Mahler Prize (Klagenfurt, Austria). Another was supported by the New York State Council on the Arts, and recorded live in concert for the Cadence/Quixotic label.
She improvises weekly via internet with her quartet Nice Guys Without Borders, as the Cooper Kinzer Duo, and as a member of the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra. She will improvise live this spring and summer in Memmingen, Ljubljana, and Zagreb as well as joining The Noisy Women in Wales and at Leigh on Sea, UK. She lives in New York City and Ljubljana.
Mark McGivern is our new Head of Poetic Expression. Mark is a Cambridge-based poet whose work has been published in several anthologies and who has, with and without musical accompaniment, featured at many events over the past decade. Mark is also an event organiser. He has been running the successful Sunday Night Lives ensemble event at Cambridge’s The Flying Pig for many years, with mixed line-ups of music and poetry featuring less experienced performers alongside established acts. Mark is also a long-standing member of Cambridge’s Strawberry Fair volunteer committee as well as being one of the organisers of, and the compere for, the Cambridge Band Competition.
Described by The Wire as “one of the most technically adept and creatively daring artists to use the turntable as a musical instrument,” Mariam Rezaei is a multi-award-winning composer, turntablist and performer. Working at the nexus of experimental new music, free improvisation, mutant club musics and hip-hop, Rezaei uses a digital vinyl system, allowing her to manipulate an expansive range of samples in real time. Her work has been described as “genuinely ground-breaking” (London Jazz News 2022) and “high-velocity sonic surrealism” (The Guardian 2022). Praised by The Wire, Uncut and Bandcamp Daily, her latest release FRACTURED (Heat Crimes) is one of The Quietus’s cassette releases of 2024. In November 2022, she received the Paul Hamlyn Foundation #AwardsForArtists in recognition of her contribution to music composition. She previously led experimental arts projects TOPH, TUSK FRINGE and TUSK NORTH, and is writing a book on turntablism for Repeater.
In addition to her solo work, Rezaei’s projects include a Turntable Trio with Evicshen and Maria Chávez (making their US premiere at Big Ears 2025), supergroup The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (with saxophonist Mette Rasmussen, trumpeter/electronics Gabriele Mitelli and drummer Lukas Koenig), and orchestral compositions with Matthew Shlomowitz (6 Scenes for Turntable and Orchestra). She recently performed Anthony Braxton’s Ghost Trance Music with guitarist Kobe Van Cauwenberghe. Other collaborations include duos with Jennifer Walshe, Edward George, Farida Amadou, Valentina Magaletti, Lasse Marhaug, Evicshen, Lukas Koenig, Mette Rasmussen, Gabriele Mitelli, Okkyung Lee and Ali Robertson, Black Top with Pat Thomas, Orphy Robinson, Cleveland Watkiss and Leon Foster Thomas, and a quartet with DJ Sniff, Rex Chen and DJ SlowPitchSound at Taipei Biennial 2023.
“A spellbinding set by turntablist Mariam Rezaei, whose fingers and hands are a blur, darting back and forth across the decks so quickly it is as though she’d been sped up.”
Lucy Thraves Out.Fest review The Wire, 2024
Viv Corringham (New York/London) is a singer and sound artist, described as “a vital force in improvised music since the late 1970s” by BBC R3. She uses voice, electronics and environmental recordings, performing solo and with improvisers including Charles Hayward, Pat Thomas, Pauline Oliveros, Elliott Sharp, Mike Cooper, and Maggie Nicols.
She also leads sound-walks and, having studied with her, teaches Pauline Oliveros’s Deep Listening. This practice took her to Mexico, Germany, Spain and Hong Kong in 2024.
Much of her work is based on walking, either solo, as in her latest album “Soundwalkscapes” on Flaming Pines (2024), or with others. Her definitive contribution to sound art practice is her 20-year ongoing “Shadow-walks” which have occurred in 18 countries, are taught in sound art classes and have been the focus of articles in many books and journals.
vivcorringham.org
Steve has been a central figure in the British and international spontaneous music scenes for over fifty years, freely improvising on piano, objects, electronics and other things, with people like Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, Han Bennink and John Zorn. Long-standing groups have included Alterations (with David Toop, Terry Day and Peter Cusack), The Melody Four (with Lol Coxhill and Tony Coe, both RIP) and London Improvisers Orchestra.
He has written songs, composed for large and small ensembles, and scored short films, feature films, TV shows and commercials. He was part of the editorial teams of ‘Musics’ and ‘Collusion’ magazines, writes about music in various contexts, and was a senior lecturer in music at the University of Westminster.
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, Blanca Regina, 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 of around 500 releases as performer, arranger, free-improviser, composer, conductor and producer. He was awarded a Paul Hamlyn award for composers in 2012.
In 2021, Bloomsbury published Andy Hamilton’s book ‘Pianos, Toys, Music and Noise: Conversations with Steve Beresford’, and, in 2022, Siglio published ‘Call and Response’, which partnered photographs by Christian Marclay with notated improvisations by Beresford.
Yasuko Kaneko is a Japanese trombonist who performs in small groups and big-bands, playing various kinds of music. She also performs solo and with her own group, for which she also composes.
A graduate of Japan Women’s University,Yasuko completed her Masters at Chiba University Graduate School of Sciences. Through these experiences, she was affected by the relationship between music and science, the human senses and improvised music. These ideas continue to influence her workshops for improvisation, which are held in Japan.
She plays creative music across musical categories. She took part in the CDs ‘Satoko Fujii Orchestra Kobe’ (2006) and Bill Wells’ ‘Lemondale’ (2011). She is a member of Nariiki, an experimental collective of musicians led by pianist and composer Kevin McHugh, and also plays in the acoustic quartet Gato Libre, directed by Natsuki Tamura, whose CD was released in 2008. She has also played music for the Japanese improvised dance group ‘Manimani’.
In 2020 she joined the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra’s online sessions, where she met Faradena Afifi, Maggie Nicols and Marion Treby online. In 2022 she played with GIO live at the GIOfest XV in Glasgow. She has also composed for some GIO festivals and for Maria Sappho’s ‘VIR’ gig with GIO in 2024.
Ningrui Liu (Akira) is a transmedia artist working in and across the creative fields of film, music, performance, dance and spoken word. Originally from Shanghai, China, she was awarded an MA in Information Experience Design from the Royal College of Art in London. Her work ranges from feature films and documentary to interdisciplinary art forms, including set design and storytelling, in collaboration with experimental composers, musicians, and choreographers. She explores the frameworks and fictions we create to make sense of the world by fusing aspects of philosophy, science, and the occult.
Currently, Akira is collaborating with Noisy Women Presents, crafting visuals for live performances and pushing the boundaries of immersive, interdisciplinary art. Increasingly Akira is using her creative experience to develop her own performance, music and spoken word skills.
Past Gigs
The Noisies had a wonderful time at Wintersound Canterbury with The Free Range Orchestra. They were joined by Evan Parker and Kristin Fredricksson.
