Quinta
Quinta is a London-based multi-instrumentalist performer, improviser and experimental composer. Her first record, My Sister Boudicca, (Tartaruga, 2009) was variously described as “sparkling with a sense of play, wilful originality and effortless grace” (The 405), “the most peculiar recital you’re ever likely to experience” (Line of Best Fit) and “strange, beautiful and irresistibly unique” (God Is In The TV). Her next is due for release early next year. As well as her solo project, she has collaborated with a range of critically-acclaimed and innovative artists, including Bat for Lashes, Patrick Wolf, Scanner, Lou Rhodes, Penguin Café, Marques Toliver, pioneering ‘paperteers’, The Paper Cinema, award-winning acrobatic troupes Ockham’s Razor and Mimbre, and flagship contemporary dance company, Rambert, where she was 2015/16 composer-in-residence. Since 2010, Quinta has worked with Radiohead’s Philip Selway, collaborating on the musical score for Rambert’s highly-acclaimed Merce Cunningham Event in 2014 and co-producing and performing on Selway’s 2015 release, Weatherhouse. She is one quarter of all-female experimental arts collective, Collectress, who released their first album, Mondegreen, in 2014. Classically trained rather than classically moulded, Quinta meets free play and experimentation with musical substance in her work, and brings a mischievous theatricality to her performances. She plays a variety of instruments including violin, piano, and musical saw. With a background in third sector activism, Quinta is co-founder of Music in Detention and spent formative years working with Music in Prisons and participatory film-makers, Living Lens.
Quinta said,
“To be awarded the Guiyang musical residency is an enormous honour- I’m absolutely thrilled and delighted, and can’t wait to get started! I hope to build on previous work, most recently as Rambert Music Fellow, to explore how to make improvisation ‘work’ in a performance context, to use electronic interfacing to perform musical material in unusual ways, to meet the traditional with the experimental in another culture, with new instruments and new friends, creating a show for and of Guiyang that is innovative, entertaining and rich with local colours. Can’t wait!”