Night of experimental music at Sunderland's Fire Station includes a Futurehead

The Ligeti Quartet, at the forefront of modern and contemporary music since 2010, will be joined by three of the region’s most adventurous composers: Ross Millard, Peter Brewis and Faye MacCalman.

They will come together for The Mixer on Friday, June 30.

The Peter Brewis Trio will start the show with music from their forthcoming album Blow Dry Colussus. Peter is best known as co-founder of rock group Field Music with his brother David, but on his new album, and for The Mixer, he will focus on his interest in contemporary instrumental music and new compositions for synthesisers.

The Ligeti Quartet will complete The Mixer’s first half with a performance of Steve Reich’s seminal Different Trains; one of the most popular minimal pieces of the last century.

The second half of will begin with an improvised piece from Ross and Faye. Ross is best known as guitarist and singer with The Futureheads. Faye is known as a composer, songwriter and saxophonist.

The headline set comes when the Ligeti Quartet perform music by Anna Meredith from their critically acclaimed new album, Nuc.

Ross said: “I’ll be playing the electric guitar and Faye will be on her saxophone and together we’ll be looking for patterns, motifs and rhythms in an improvised ten-minute piece.

“Faye has bags of experience doing this, but it’s new to me so I’m excited and nervous in equal measure.

“Faye is a vastly experienced jazz musician and improvisor, so I feel like I’m in very safe hands – as are the audience.

“In terms of modern classical music, these are big names; Anna Meredith, Steve Reich and The Ligeti Quartert have massive international reputations and are very well respected.

Tamsinvenue director, at The Fire Station added: “I’m hugely excited about The Mixer at The Fire Station. It’s something completely different for us and our audience. It is an experiment, but we have the very best of musicians performing their own work and that of contemporary composers with stellar reputations.”

For further information and to book tickets from £10, visit www.thefirestation.org.uk.