Strange Umbrellas, a platform for free improvised music and visual art, was started in 2012 by Dr Blanca Regina with musician Steve Beresford.

An artist, teacher and curator who is currently involved in creating mixed media performances, installations and film, Dr Regina is a visiting research fellow at University of the Arts London. Her research and practice encompass expanded cinema, free improvisation, moving image, photography and audiovisual performance.  In 2010, she received a doctorate in Humanities from University Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, with the thesis The VJ and audiovisual performance: towards a radical aesthetic of postmodernism.

She is curator at the London-based Music Hackspace, Live Cinema Foundation and Strange Umbrellas. With Matthias Kispert she founded the Material Studies Group, developing a series of workshops and performances around the production of sound with everyday objects.

You can hear Dr Regina here as part of Unpredictable: Conversations with Improvisers – a collection of videos that have grown out of deep research into the nature of Free Improvisation, its history in the UK and its international connections. Research and filming began in 2011 and it was directed and produced by artist, curator and educator Blanca Regina in collaboration with Steve Beresford and Pierre Bouvier Patron.  The series was commissioned by Sound and Music for the 50th anniversary of the British Music Collection.

Strange Umbrellas Number 19 will be on 20 March, in collaboration with CAFE OTO at 18-22 Ashwin St, London, Dalston E8 3DL.  Doors at 7.30 pm, performances at 8 pm. Tickets £8 £6 ADVANCE £4 MEMBERS.

More info go to our web page.