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'Penguin Cafe + Portico Quartet' at the Barbican

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Time 19:30
Date 09/02/11
Price £25
  • Produced by Barbican
  • Price £10 - £25
  • Get ready for otherworldly blend of fuzzy jazz melodies and urgent bass lines.
  • Bring along your beguiling, feisty charm.
  • Surf to buy tickets.
  • See you at Barbican

The quintessentially English, avant garde, neo-classical chamber ensemble - Penguin Cafe return to London with Mercury-nominated melodic post-jazz influenced four-piece - Portico Quartet.

Penguin Cafe’s music has infiltrated daily life from films like Napoleon Dynamite to countless theme tunes, and they’ve played festivals from Bestival and The Big Chill to a sold out Royal Albert Hall as part of the BBC Proms. Their sound is at once familiar and new, combining acoustic power and a beguiling, feisty charm.

 

 

Electronica meets 21st century-jazz in Portico Quartet’s melodic, rhythmic music that mixes the inspiration of Philip Glass and Steve Reich with a very contemporary kind of improvisation. It’s the blend of ethereal saxophone, splattering electronics, otherworldly Hang, clattering drums and earthy double-bass that gives their music its unique sound. Their hook-laden, darkly atmospheric post-jazz has pushed them to the forefront of the contemporary music scene and got them nominated for a Mercury Music Prize - their inimitable sound has been compared to Radiohead, E.S.T and The Cinematic Orchestra.

 

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