Simon O'Rorke

(b. Portsmouth, England 1955).

Simon O'Rorke started playing bass guitar when he was seventeen. He first got exposed to free improvisation when he was a student in London in the 70s. At that time he wanted to be a jazz-funk musician. He attended workshops in free improvisation run by John Stevens and Trevor Watts in London in the late seventies. But it took years for him to realise that free improvisation was his favourite music and what he could play well. Improvising with guitarist Andy Hammond (later of Conspiracy) in the mid-80s was a revelation that clarified this for him.

But when O'Rorke moved from Britain to Auckland, New Zealand in 1989, there appeared to be no interest there in the American free jazz and European improvised music that had inspired him. He met saxophonist Brian Hutson in 1992, the year he moved to Wellington. O'Rorke and Hutson determined to form an improvised music ensemble. For the next five years they struggled to find suitable collaborators and performance venues. They tried various line-ups, using the ensemble name The Slab from 1995. The turning point came in 1997. Around that time there began a revival in interest in improvised music, and O'Rorke and Hutson were pleased to be able to work with Matthew Mitchell, one of New Zealand's leading jazz guitarists. The CD The Slab (1998) was the result.

O'Rorke got fed up trying to attract a drummer competent at and committed to playing improvised music. Just a few months before Hutson and he started their collaboration with Matthew Mitchell, O'Rorke decided he could do better himself and started playing percussion in earnest. He has since given up playing bass guitar completely, for health reasons.

Brian Hutson moved to Melbourne, Australia in 1998 and Matthew Mitchell moved to London, England in 1999. But the Wellington free improv scene, which from 1992 to 1995 consisted more or less only of Simon O'Rorke and Brian Hutson, has taken off. There is now a pool of at least twenty musicians. With the establishment of a specialist venue, The Space ("New Zealand's home of improvised music") in 1998, it has been much easier to play improvised music here. (The Space recently moved to more salubrious premises and was renamed Happy). O'Rorke has been able to work with most of the talented musicians who have emerged on the Wellington improv scene, using the ensemble name The Slab for his main line-ups. His regular collaborators in The Slab have included guitarist Daniel Beban, since 1998, and saxophonist Anton Wuts, since 1999. They are both featured on The Slab's CDs Live at The Space (2001) and Squeakspeak (2001).

Simon O'Rorke has also performed in California: in San Francisco in 2001 and 2003 and at the Big Sur Experimental Music Festival in 2003. His collaborators in California have included Ernesto Diaz-Infante, Bob Marsh, John Shiurba and Brian Eubanks.

O'Rorke has recently been playing with turntablist Alphabethead (David Morrison) in the duo Clangophone and with laptopist Octif (Shanan Holm) in the duo Peel (PErcussion vs ELectronics). CDs by both duos will be released shortly: Clangophonica by Clangophone and Pattern Recognition by Peel.