​Nice boda en @wotton_house_hotel con Harry, Ela y Juanma #tigermusicentertainment 🐯rah!!! 🎷🎤 @ De Vere Wotton House

​A not so Latin coffee...(Latte) 🥛🍼#fiestalatina 💃

AN EVENING WITH DAME K AND GUESTS IV
Saturday 6 April, 8pm
Tristan Bates Theatre, London    

Dame K - the alter ego of actress, poet and playwright Kathryn O'Reilly - will host a fourth evening of live music and spoken word, this time at the Tristan Bates Theatre in Covent Garden on Saturday 6 April at 8pm.

Dame K's vignettes on urban life and relationships are raw yet lyrical, playful and often funny. She'll perform them with her regular Dame K collaborators, 90s chart and soul diva Eddy, who has sung with Omar, Misha Paris and others; and composer-producer Tas from Purple Room Studios. Together they make a fusion of dance music, poetry, rap and soul.

O'Reilly says "The idea is to bring talented artists together to collaborate in making a banging live art evening. There is always an electric atmosphere, as we stir, move, inspire and entertain you. Come and chill with us."

Also appearing at An Evening with Dame K and Guests IV will be actresses Lorna Stuart and Eloise Joseph, and saxophonist Rory Duffy and special guest female British rapper Shay D.

Kathryn O'Reilly won the LAMDA poetry competition two years in a row, and has performed as a featured artist for Apples & Snakes, the leading organisation for performance poetry; and at the Lyric Hammersmith's Lyric Lounge, various festivals, for charities, Black History events and International Women's Day events, and also at justice conferences and City Hall for the theatre company Clean Break.

She is also a successful actor, most recently receiving acclaim for her performance in Max Stafford-Clark's revival of Our Country's Good, which is at London's new St James Theatre until 23 March. She has appeared regularly with Stafford-Clark's Out of Joint company, as well as touring with ATC and on TV series including Lewis and The Bill. While on tour with Our Country's Good she hosted post-performance poetry nights, co-opting members of the cast.

An Evening with Dame K and Guests IV:
A chilled evening of poetry, music and other performance

Saturday 6 April
Tristan Bates Theatre, 1A Tower Street, WC2H 9NP
Tickets £7
Box Office: 020 7240 6283 | www.tristanbatestheatre.co.uk

http://www.damek.org.uk/

A couple of recent photos that I snuck off Facebook...

Just thought I'd upload a sneaky preview of what I'm currently working on:
http://www.roryduffymusic.co.uk/5/post/2012/08/central-point-uncut-v1.html

​So here we are in May... and, as ever, the diary is filling up with some lovely gigs and exciting projects to look forward to. Here are a few highlights...

On Tuesday 08.04.12, we had the Diáspora (www.diasporamusic.co.uk) gig at St Mary's Church Prestwich, which was a great opportunity for us to try out some of the new material with the full eleven-piece band, featuring Alyss Rose and James Vielma on vocals.

On Monday 14.05.12, I was fortunate enough to play sax with Sarabanda, a brand new salsa band set up by pianist Sara McGuinness (www.myspace.com/soneando) for their monthly residency at the Hideaway in Streatham. The group also features vocalists Nana-Clara Aldrin-Quaye and Yuri Moreno and Elpidio Alegria (bass) and Emeris Solis (congas).

On Thursday 17.05.12, I joined jazz vocalist Claire Benjamin (www.clairebenjamin.com) for an evening of music and comedy. It was the first outing with my new keyboard, and we had a full house, which was a great atmosphere. Corks and Forks is a friendly bohemian wine bar / organic restaurant in Kentish Town, where Claire will be hosting her jazz cabaret every month on a Thursday. We are recording later in June, and a possible monthly residency in Camberwell is also on the cards... Watch this space!

This weekend, on Saturday 26.05.12, I am delighted to have been invited to play with actress Kathryn O'Reilly (www.kathrynoreilly.co.uk) a.k.a., Dame K (www.damek.co.uk) for a special evening of music, poetry and spoken word.

The evening will take place at The Tea House Theatre, Vauxhall and it will feature Dame K and a host of actors, musicians and poets (see below poster). On sax, I will be doing a free improvisation with Dame K adding some collaborative MC poetry. On piano, I will be playing some incidental music as a couple of actresses fall off a ferry boat (as you do). For my solo piece, I will be performing a jazz standard (tune will be decided on the day). There will be lots of other things to see and it will be a really special evening. The evening is the first of a brand new regular / semi-regular showcase with a creative community featuring special guests.

​Amongst all of this, I have been busy arranging twenty or so 'rat pack' charts for a private event that we are doing on Monday 04.06.12, in Surrey. The ensemble will feature myself on alto saxophone, Jacob Shaw (tenor saxophone), George Wrench (trombone), Nick Mead (trumpet), John Cervantes (piano), Will McGee (bass) and Jon Desbruslais (drums). There is talk and further plans for this to be the beginning of a new venture - more details TBC.

On Wednesday 06.06.12 and Thursday 07.06.12, come and catch us Reading, playing with Italian guitarist Giovanni Capiocco from Dalston Gypsy Jazz Trio (www.myspace.com/dalstontrio) with whom I have been working on some acoustic Latin and Bossa Nova material, as well as some of my own songs. We will be playing in the Oracle Shopping Centre between 12-6 on both days.

On Saturday 09.06.12, I'm heading up to Warrington to play with the SpeakEasy jazz trio featuring Ed Norris on vocals (http://www.ednorris.co.uk/). The gig at Oaklands Hotel will include a nice range of easy swing and jazz classics.

On Friday 22.06.12, I will be taking the Diáspora to an event at the beautiful setting of Cranage Hall near Crewe, Cheshire. The gig will feature Alyss Rose and James Vielma on vocals, Andrzej Baranek (piano), Demetris Kanaris (bass), Rick Farrow (drums) and Gavin Hibberd (trumpet) - a truly talented and knock-out lineup!

Finally, on Thursday 28.06.12, catch La Tinto Bros (www.latintobros.com) at Matt & Phred's Jazz Club in Manchester. The gig will feature James Vielma on vocals/percussion and Daniel Alvarado on vocals/guitar. There are salsa dancing classes from 19:00, and the band come on at 22:00; it is FREE entry and we always manage to get a good crowd in, so it will be a great vibe. Come on down for some salsa music/dancing, tasty cocktails and arguably the finest pizzas in the North West!

Apart from gigs, I have been very excited to be commissioned to write music for the feature film 'Central Point' with Spanish film producer Andrea Chaos (http://becomingproducer.blogspot.co.uk/) who is currently working on the Discovery Channel, amongst other things. For more information on this developing project, please see the Facebook group - Central Point.

As ever, I am working on new songs for Diáspora / solo projects. A night out with Diáspora in Clapham is on the cards, with vocalists Zee Filho and Roberta de Francia, with whom we are performing in Worcester in September. Amongst this, I have been busy writing rat pack arrangements faster than I can say 'Michael Buble' at any spare moment that I can get, so life is very interesting at this point! You never know what experiences the next phone call might bring!

Hey guys!

Just updating you with my latest news...

Diáspora (www.diasporamusic.co.uk) remains my main concentration, as ever. Since Christmas, we have been joined by 2 fabulous new vocalists, Roberta Ana De Francia from Italy and Zee Filho from Brazil. I have been working with them on some new material which we will be performing at venues in London soon!

March 29 will mark the band's 3rd year, and what better way to celebrate than with a long awaited return to Matt & Phred's Jazz Club in Manchester, where we will be premiering 4 new songs ('Conundrum', 'Lullaby', 'Superstarlight' and 'Sign of Love') as well as our funkyfied new arrangement of the jazz classic 'Moondance' with the 6-piece band. This gig will feature the imitable Alyss Rose on vocals, with keys master Andy Stamatakis-Brown, our very own Latin American import Will McGee on bass, and 2 new percussionists Jack McCarthy (kit, timbales) and Venezuelan conguero Arturo Aranguen (congas) - all musicians who I have had the pleasure of playing with in the past, and look forward to playing with at Matt & Phred's.

As always, I'm still working on some writing, whenever I get the time and space (usually during the weekends!)... There are three new salsa compositions in the pipeline, one of them will be entitled 'Reggae-Reggae-Reggaeton'. The other two ('Follow Me' and 'Creeping') are both timba style compositions in 3-2 clave, which will be great fun to play!

In May, the Diáspora 11-piece band will be playing at St Mary's Church, Prestwich (still awaiting confirmation - sign up to the mailing list at www.diasporamusic.co.uk). This gig will feature Alyss Rose and James Vielma on vocals, Misha Gray on piano, Will McGee on bass, Jack McCarthy, Frank Mata and Rosemary Toll on percussion, Olly Syrus on tenor saxophone, Mark Harrison on trumpet and myself on alto saxophone, flute and backing vocals. For advanced, cheaper tickets (£7.50 I think) EMAIL white548@btinternet.com or PHONE 07980092311. For this price, you get 2 sets of wonderful salsa, samba, jazz, funk, pop, reggaeton and dancing brought to you by an 11-PIECE Latin funk salsa orquesta!

With Alyss Rose from Diáspora, I have been playing flute with the newly expanded Beleza (www.myspace.com/belezamanchester) Brazilian with a tinge of Manchester Bossa Nova band, with Julian Harris on guitar, Justin Shearn on piano, Holly Prest on cajon and Nicki Dupuy on bass. We have been working on some original material written by Alyss and Julian. My favourites have to be the uplifting 'Miracles' and the beautiful 'Bless the Moment'. Our first gig will be on Saturday March 31 at Chorlton Green Arts Festival. Make sure that you sign up to Alyss' website (www.alyssrose.co.uk) for more information on this developing project.

With smaller ensembles, I have been working with Italian guitarist Giovanni Capiocco, who you are probably familiar with from the Dalston Gypsy Jazz trio (www.facebook.com/DalstonTrio), on some Bossa Nova, acoustic Latin and jazz repertoire which we will be taking to some London venues very soon!

In London, I have also been playing piano with the absolutely fabulous charismatic jazz/cabaret vocalist Claire Benjamin, with whom I have also been recording some demo material, and we will be working on some arrangements of jazz classics and theatrical original material in due course!

As ever, I have also been busy with private bookings for the jazz quartet and Latin trio. The quintet gig at Cloud 23 Bar, Hilton Hotel, with KLM Airways and Air France, went down a treat! So there you have it, a roundup of my latest happenings. And there will be more dates to get into your diaries, so stay tuned...​

Here’s a roundup of some of the stuff I’ve been involved with lately.

I have been busy fixing a 10-piece brass section with Manchester School of Samba (www.sambaman.org.uk) for 2 gigs at Manchester’s Park Life Weekender in Platt Fields Park (Sunday 12 June) and Manchester Day Parade (Sunday 19 June). The lineup will consist of 2 trumpets, 2 alto saxes, 2 tenor saxes, 2 trombones, bass trombone and tuba and should be pretty stonking. The 12 June gig is sold out I believe, but you can catch the Samba School marching through Manchester City Centre on Sunday 19 from 2pm.

Composition is continuing slowly. I’m currently working on 3 new tunes. I actually started the first one just before Christmas but I left it for a while, came back to it and completely reworked it! It’s a crazy mixture of funk (think Brecker Bros ‘Some Skunk Funk’ style), Brazilian samba-reggaeton and middle-Eastern grooves. I’m still developing the lyrical content, but it’s going to be a song about going round in circles and never getting anywhere - pretty much sums up my life, I think!

The second song is a very Snowboy influenced Samba/Latin fusion, which definitely leans more towards the jazz/experimental side of Latin music - and contains an AAB head geared towards instrumental solos. This will repeat and repeat and repeat and... finally it breaks out into a new unusual sequence that I created with a funky horn riff and vocal montuno creating a nice counterpoint and vehicle for improvisation.

The third composition is going to be a samba. I’m experimenting with blending the coro/pregón (call/response collective refrain vs. individual improvisation) structure deriving from African music with samba rhythms inspired by one of my favourite Brazilian composers Ivan Lins. I realised that there are a lot of structural similarities between Cuban and Brazilian (as both African-derived) musics and, frankly, I’m bored of all my compositions going into standard montunos (call/response sections) so I’m experimenting with these techniques in Brazilian music.

I’m really excited to share all three compositions very soon (once I get my head round to writing some lyrics!). I’ll upload some onto the Laboratory to give you a taster.

I’ve got several gigs coming up with the Latin trio featuring Julian Harris (guitar), which will hopefully give me an opportunity to workshop these new songs. See the Diary section for details.

A busy month it is for Diáspora too , we did Matt & Phred’s last thursday May 26 with the small band, where we played to a packed dance floor. Tomorrow we’re playing at Prestwich Festival with the full 11-piece band (which is going to be recorded and filmed live) and on June 24 we’re playing at Civic Hall Saddleworth Oldham with the 7-piece. Details for both of these gigs and how to obtain tickets can be found on the website. On Saturday May 28, myself and Alyss Rose were kindly invited to participate on Latin DJ Amos De Roover’s radio show Global Vybz which airs every Saturday 6-8pm on North Manchester FM 106.6. Here we hung out with the Latin Crew, discoursed generally about what Diáspora means to us, and played a couple of songs too (Golden Section and ‘Move To The Music’). Details of how you can ‘listen again’ are at the bottom of this page. We are planning on doing a possible date with the band at Club Copacabana this July - of course, we will keep you posted. Check out the website (www.diasporamusic.co.uk) and Facebook pages for all the latest scoop on this exciting project.

With all this and various other appearances (including another outing to Burma with ‘The Burma Play’ in Taunton, summer looks to be busy.

Hopefully see you at a gig soon!

- - -

Saturday 28th May 2011

Diáspora on North Manchester FM 106.6 fm - The Global Vybz show with Amos de Roover -www.northmanchesterfm.org

1st hour of the radio show - we're talking in the last 7 minutes or so

http://www.podcasts.canstream.co.uk/manchesterfm/index.php?id=894

2nd hour of the radio show. 


We're talking off and on from the beginning and then songs at times below
1st song "Golden Section" at 12 mins 51 secs
2nd song "Move To The Music" at 42 mins 26 secs (or 43mins 54 secs without the long intro)

http://www.podcasts.canstream.co.uk/manchesterfm/index.php?id=895