16-time Oscar-nominated film Sinners might flirt with the fantastical, but they definitely got one thing right: there’s a profound spirituality associated with live music. It is this mystical quality that new monthly live event series Conjuring, created by London-based multi-instrumentalist Tony Njoku, aims to celebrate – featuring unique, one-time live improvisation sessions from different musicians each month at Brixton’s Club Cheek.
“Be it exploitative algorithms or staunch capitalists and tech lords mining our insecurities for profit, there are a lot of things that are destroying culture and isolating people from each other right now,” says Njoku of his decision to found the event. “I believe improvisation in music is a great way of practising deep connection with other people, it helps remove any buffers that might distance you from others and really brings you into your body and the moment. I’m hoping this event series becomes a sort of simulacrum for cultural change.”
It was from this feeling that Njoku landed on the name Conjuring, which he believes captures these spiritual and communal functions of live music. “For me, music is a form of healing, [a way] to invoke, ‘conjure’, channel, or manifest deep emotional, ancestral, and metaphysical states,” he explains.
Conjuring’s inaugural event takes place on March 19, featuring performances from Dazed cover star Xiaoqiao, British-Malaysian-Chinese composer and multi-instrumentalist Lucinda Chua, saxophone improv wiz Ben Vince, and London-based Palestinian composer and oud master Saied Silbak. “These are all musicians who know their instruments quite deeply,” Njoku explains of the lineup. “I’ve seen all these guys play and always leave their performances learning something new about the instruments they played.”
Each improvised session will be based around a separate theme, with March’s event revolving around the idea of ‘rituals’. The performance will then be recorded and published as part of a long-term public archive and radio show on Resonance FM, with select cuts set to be released on Njoku’s newly-founded label Studio Njoku.
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