hastings arts

hastings fishing trip - improvised music festival at St. Mary-in-the-castle

click here to see stills from the event

The Performers

Thursday 3rd July - price at the door £5 (£3 concessions).

8:00 pm: Phil Minton (voice) and Roger Turner(drum kit).


8:45 pm: Sylvia Hallet (violin, saw, bicycle wheel) and Clive Bell (assorted wind instruments).

10:00 pm: Lol Coxhill (soprano sax) and ex "The Damned", Lou Edmonds (Bass Steal Banjo).

Friday 4th July - price at the door £5 (£3 concessions).

8:00 pm: Marcus Cummins (alto/soprano sax) and Paul May (drum kit)

8:45 pm: Paul Shearsmith (assorted found and made instruments) and Guy Evans (as Shearsmith).


10:00 pm: Trevor Watts (soprano/alto sax) and Veryan Weston (piano).

Trevor Watts, Phil Minton and Lol Coxhill are names synonymous with the contemporary music world since the 60’s.

The life and work of Lol Coxhill was celebrated in the Channel Four / Concord Films film "Frog Dance" directed by Richard White and screened in the UK in 1986.

Trevor Watts was also there right at the start of what was to become British Improvised Music with the "Spontaneous Music Ensemble which he co-founded with John Stevens (who was the subject of a recent BBC Radio 3 online documentary and tribute). Veryan Weston is one of the most influential and exciting pianists working in the modern idiom.

Paul May and Marcus Cummins are from a younger generation. They play acoustically but Paul’s drumming is educated in part by the contemporary rhythms of the electronic age.
Paul Shearsmith and Guy Evans work together in the group Echo City. The members invent their own instruments, sometimes on site, before giving a performance.

Paul is also a member of the Fuji, a trio recently featured on Andy Kershaw’s programme on Radio Three. They fuse American blues music with Japanese lyrics and sensibilities.
Sylvia Hallet plays violin, bowed bicycle wheel and saw, as well as using tape effects. With wind player Clive Bell, she creates harmonious images of different music from far away places and distant times.

Multimedia Package

The event will be film documented and recorded. The film production crew, riding on the good will spirit of this "anything can happen" improvisional event, and because of offers of help from around the world, will also be trying to live stream the concerts on the internet. This means perhaps that music fans in Japan or Mongolia, for example, could log onto the web and watch and listen to the concerts live, free of charge. This would be a media first for this form of music, a media experiment on experimental music in a sense and we are very excited at the possibilities this might bring for widening the audience for this vital and alive musical artform. Further details can be obtained at http://www.thefishingtrip.whistlingmule.com

The Venue

The event will take place at St Mary In The Castle (Click the link for directions). St Mary's was built as a church during the reign of queen Victoria and after many years of disuse was only recently brought back to life as a. It now serves a purpose as Hastings’ most important performing Arts Centre. Restored features such as the beautiful stained glass backdrop behind the stage help to give performances at St Mary's a special atmosphere.
The Auditorium has a capacity of 540. Also there are bar and cafeteria facilities.
The venue is non-smoking.

Social Programme

Although Improvised music traditionally attracts a niche market it is our intention to widen this niche and attract members from a broad cross section of society. To this end, we are offering a concession admission fee of £3, available to members of various societies and clubs as well as pensioners, students and the unemployed as well as our use of new technology to give voice to this exciting, unpredictable but “living” jazz art form.

click here to see stills from the event