Rai Tateishi and Theodora Laird in session

Jennifer Lucy Allan presents a studio meeting between two seasoned improvisers: Japanese bamboo flute player Rai Tateishi and London-based experimental vocalist Theodora Laird.

Best known for his work with avant-garde band goat (jp) and the Kodo Taiko Performing Arts Ensemble, as a soloist Rai Tateishi’s music is stripped back and intimate. On his latest solo album, Presence, he attempts to transcend the limits of his ancient instruments, distilling aspects of myriad folk traditions through his mastery of the shinobue, an ancient bamboo flute, as well as its elder sibling, the shakuhachi, the khene mouth organ of northeastern Thailand and Laos, and even the Irish flute.

Theodora Laird is a vocalist and multidisciplinary artist. In recent years she has received critical acclaim for releases under her alternative solo moniker, feeo, including her latest album, Goodness. Theodora's practice has evolved in tandem with an interest in situating narratives within freely improvised music, and she is a frequent performer at the GRAIN residency, a London-based concert series, archive and label for improvised and experimental music.

Elsewhere in the show, more cross-cultural collaborations from Mother Tongue - the meeting of a Senegalese Griot singer, an Amsterdam improviser and a Puerto Rican jazz drummer - and echoes of vintage synths from the Italian duo of Francesca Bono and Vittoria Burattini.

Produced by Gabriel Francis
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3

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