Author: Paul Plimley

The Hexen Trio is one of the most formidable music groups I’ve had the pleasure to make music with. My wonderful musical partners are Barry Guy — string bass and Lucas Niggli — drums. This photo was taken at one of our concerts on our 2012 European tour.

Seriously, this photo is part of a music theatre piece with lots of open vocal improvisation based on a play called “Come and Go” written by Samuel Beckett. Barry took the framework of Beckett without using the original text and instead set up a framework where each group member took turns exploding in non sensical sounds within our own bizarre presentation of strange vocal sounds. We wore the feather boas to suggest the outer coverings of female identity. We also performed this structured yet wild improvised piece again in 2014 at the Barrow River Arts Festival in Kilkenny, Ireland. Our performance was rather enthusiastically received.

Download Hexen Trio CD on Bandcamp on INTAKT records site.

A review of the Hexen Trio CD that contains a version of “Come and Go” written by Alex Varty, was published in the Georgia Straight in July 2012.

Paul Plimley, Barry Guy, and Lucas Niggli show off more than just technique on Hexentrio
It’s tempting to attribute Hexentrio’s success to the collective virtuosity of local pianist Paul Plimley, British bassist Barry Guy, and Swiss drummer Lucas Niggli—who, as the Hexen Trio, recently closed the 2012 Vancouver International Jazz Festival with an even more visceral and flamboyant display of no-holds-barred improvising. Abstract as this music can get, it nonetheless suggests that the three can play anything, and indeed Guy regularly performs early music at an extremely high level, Plimley is intimately familiar with the classical repertoire, and Niggli has no problem fitting in with Chinese guzheng wizard Xu Fengxia in their Black Lotos duo. read more …