Phosphene's latest live outing happened in the Britannia Panopticon Music Hall in Glasgow. June 20th 2007 was the last date on an extensive Colleen tour, which closed with two performances at this historic venue. John Cavanagh organized the shows for Cecile who wanted to do something special with some of her friends in Glasgow in preference to taking higher offers from promoters... indeed, the shows were run as fundraisers for the restoration of the hall, which is 150 years old.
Gayle Brogan joined John on stage....
....a sort of Electroscope reunion in all but name....
....with a Syd Barrett cover in the set and Colin Stuart projecting Mr Barrett himself above the stage for good measure!
L-R: Aby Vulliamy, George Burt, Raymond MacDonald and John Cavanagh playing the venue where the likes of Stan Laurel, Jack Buchanan and Cary Grant made their stage debuts.

Between the sets by Phosphene, Nalle and Colleen, there were a couple of extra surprises... Hanna Tuulikki of Nalle and Cecile Schott (Colleen) recreated a short version of Hanna's installation piece Salutation to the Sun and Cecile also suggested a clarinet trio... Chris Hladowski (of Nalle), Cecile and John are seen, above, with Hanna to the left of the stage.
You can read Neil Cooper's review of the event at The Herald website.
Thanks to Gayle and Carrick for the photos and to Iker Spozio for his marvellous poster design

The first Phosphene live performance was also at the Britannia Panopticon Music Hall on 23rd October 2004. This was part of a fantastic day of music, light shows, film, poetry, juggling and "turns", as they used to say, organised by Hanna Tuulikki and Chris Hladowski. On the day, for the Phosphene set, John Cavanagh was joined by guitarist Stewart Morgan. So far, we have no photos from that event, however, as some footage was shot for a dvd it's hoped some images might turn up one of these days.
The second Phosphene live experience happened at the Garrioch Arms in Glasgow on Sunday 18th June 2006. Legendary songwriter Simon Finn was playing there and John was asked to support... he was in pretty interesting company in this role: at Simon's London show, Graham Coxon was on first and in New York, Finn was supported by, he told us, "the guy from Sonic Youth" (Lee? Thurston?... I don't know).
John was joined for this show by Aby Vulliamy (Nalle, One Ensemble of Daniel Padden, Scatter) on viola and George Burt & Raymond MacDonald (Burt-MacDonald bands of various sizes, Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra etc.) on guitar and soprano sax respectively.


Here are some photos... l to r: George, Raymond, John and Aby.

In case you're wondering what's being played in the photo above,
here's some detail. May we present...

..."The Beast": the EMS VCS3!!

Neil Davidson's lovely Selmer amp deserves to be seen too (one for the valve amp fans!)


 
 

Thanks to Gayle for these photos.

These were taken at Glasgow's CCA on Saturday 28th April 2007, during the Triptych Festival. Under the banner "The Art of the Synthesizer", John Cavanagh, drew Mulholland & Jim McKenna performed improvised music for an hour.


 

This one (below) is from 19th September '06. John joined Age of Wire and String (left: Peter Nicholson, 'cello - right: Neil Davidson, guitar) for a live set at Mono in Glasgow. Also on the bill were Raymond MacDonald, Jez Riley and, headlining, Theremin player Pamelia Kurstin.