We’re excited to welcome back to The Rose Hill guitarist Jessica Ackerley and pianist Eli Wallace, this time in a quartet with reedsmen Mark Hanslip and Nick Branton.
Jessica Ackerley is an innovative guitarist, composer and improviser whose work draws on avant-garde improvisation, Black American music and New York’s rock and noise scenes, synthesising these into a hybrid language on their instrument. Their music explores the relationship between spontaneity and composition, natural and amplified sound, and personal experience and social convention. Originally from Alberta and now based in Honolulu, Ackerley has released 25 albums, collaborated with leading experimental musicians, performed internationally, and composed works for numerous ensembles. They are also the founder of The Brink Guitar Festival, an educator and mentor, and a doctoral candidate in composition at the University of Hawaiʻi.
Eli Wallace is a pianist, improviser, and composer who resides in Brooklyn, NY, where he envisions his own projects and collaborates with like-minded artists. His work as a pianist displays a proclivity for non-idiomatic free improvisation, incorporating vast and elaborate piano preparations that John Lewis (The Guardian) describes as “…pushing the boundaries of the prepared piano.” His compositions employ conceptual and notational strategies to broaden the ways in which musicians produce sound and interact with one another. Over the past decade, he appeared on countless albums and performed at venues such as Roulette (Brooklyn, NY), Bemis Center (Omaha, NE), and Echoraum (Vienna, Austria). Additionally, he continues to tour worldwide, performing solo and with established ensembles, as well as teaming up with musicians from around the globe. His sophomore solo piano album, Peregrine, will be released by Protomaterial Records on November 27th, 2026.
Nick Branton is a north west England-based clarinet and saxophone player, improviser, organiser and promoter, active in the region’s experimental music scene. As a player, he has collaborated with musicians including David Birchall, Johnny Hunter, Dialect, JC Leisure and Luce Mawdsley, while also organising performances featuring leading European improvisers including Albert Cicera, Signe Emmeluth and Olie Brice. His solo work, including the 2020 album Sumi, explores spacious, dreamlike and textural approaches to the reeds, combining jazz-inspired phrasing with darker, more abstract and experimental sounds.
Mark Hanslip is an electroacoustic saxophonist based in north west England. Widely experienced as a saxophonist in contemporary jazz and improvised music, he now extends his saxophone playing through the use of electronics, seeking new ways to sample and recombine his improvising. In 2024 he completed a PhD in applications of machine learning to instrumental practice at the University of York. An active presence on the jazz, improvised and experimental music scene in the north of England, his current regular collaborators include harpist Manon McCoy, poet Lauren McLean, drummers Will Shaw and Mark Sanders, and keyboards player Adam Fairhall.
Last/Lost Ensemble
Matt Clark is an improvising guitarist and composer based in Brighton.We are delighted to host his vision of getting together an ensemble of musicians to play his new Vivaldi ‘Four Seasons’ inspired pieces. Using graphic scores and improvisation which we always find exciting !
His work sidesteps traditional notions of harmony and melody, instead exploring the random and unexpected within improvisation around twelve tones, and the sonic possibilities of unorthodox techniques.
He regularly performs in Brighton and London with a number of collaborators and ensembles, and is a regular participant and member of Brighton’s Safehouse collective and London’s Mopomoso Improvised Music series. His music has been played on both local and national radio stations, including Resonance FM and BBC Radio 3.
“What started as a reimagining of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons developed into an exploration of existence, a document of a difficult year passed and inspired by one of Matt’s poems. Based on the changing seasons, the piece, by way of a graphic score in 7 movements, is inspired by modal jazz, free improvisation and, well, Vivaldi!” says Matt Clarke
“Brave and experimental as if the boundaries have shifted somehow – anything is allowed, and as long as it makes sense – which this album does totally – it is okay.” – Sammy Stein (Review of Sounds of The City) on Free Jazz Collective
“This trio produces a version of free playing which uses familiar traces of music to give a frame to its more radical elements . This brings an appealing warmth and humor to the work, and is a far cry from the usual forbidding stereotypes given to free music…” – Jerome Wilson (review of Sounds Of The City) on All About Jazz