Drummer and composer Sean Noonan has long preferred the term Rhythmic Storyteller to describe his audacious, genre-defiant artistry. As a modern-day sonic griot he combines the most ancient of traditions with forward-seeking experimentation; as a kind of post-modern wandering minstrel he gathers irreverent folk tales and offbeat inspirations from various cultures and translates them through his own singular worldview.

"Independence might be the ruling concept of this drummer/leader’s career. It defines a common relationship not only among his hands, feet, and voice, but between his art and almost everything else in drumland". Modern Drummer Magazine

Coming Soon:  Bartalk Large Ensemble Double Live Album Download + CD + Video Streaming link

During the pandemic lockdown, people suffered an unprecedented sense of isolation - whether through quarantine, loneliness, solitude, confinement, seclusion, isolation, retreat, separation or detachment. The pandemic has led us all to a greater understanding of isolation - and its consequences. 

Bartalk itself – a cross-genre monodrama for speaking drummer and large ensemble - is an intimate performance by drummer and composer Sean Noonan, who has himself experienced isolation and entrapment. The work expresses those experiences by combining new music, free improvisation and ‘rhythmic storytelling’, the term Sean himself uses to describe his audacious, genre-defiant artistry, which steals and stretches the responsibilities of both drummer and narrator, merging them into one and allowing the drummer's four limbs and voice to unify the forces of rhythm and storytelling.  Adding his voice as part of the drum kit, Sean provides an extra layer - or a fifth limb - to the fully-coordinated four-limbed practice. 

Featuring:  Ligeti Quartet Freya Goldmark and Salomé Rateau (violins) Richard Jones (viola) Val Welbanks (cello) Helen Vidovich (flute) Alex Ward (clarinet, guitar) Matthew Bourne (Fender Rhodes / church organ) Otto Willberg (bass) Sean Noonan (drums, voice and composer)