A little story
The fateful meeting of Sonia Paço-Rocchia and Therese Bann took place at a CoMA (Contemporary Music Making for Amateurs) summer school in Doncaster which Therese attended under the guise of doing voluntary work - but it was actually just a cunning plan to gatecrash the classes with Brian Irvine so she could make strange noises on her flute. Sonia borrowed Therese's tent, spent a lot of time twiddling around on her bassoon too, and then repaid the favour by making weird noises with electronics while everyone else tried to eat breakfast.
It was the summer of 2007, which had been, up until then, admittedly, one of the worst years of their lives... After only just getting over the summer school experience, a few months later they bumped into each other again at Alvin Curran's Maritime Rites, so the infamous duo, seeing this as a sign, and determined not to be defeated by the cruel winds of fate, formulated a plan to just stand around and make music on the streets of London until someone would give them a break. Their regular all-weather spectaculars roused both tourists and locals alike, as they played down mobiles to Singapore, jammed to Indian ragas, sent toddlers into fits of jigging and reeling and answered the burning question on everyone's lips with the irrefutable pronouncement: "It's a bassoon."
Such heroic endeavours even earnt them a couple of tubs of complimentary caramel peanuts along the way (until the cops came and put a stop to the show) but the good times don't last forever and although sad to leave the streets behind, they gave into temptation and decided to sell out to anyone who would offer them more than two pounds a session and a gig inside, out of the cold. And so, as the frost began to form over the icy slats of the Millennium Bridge, and their fingers began to freeze, the phenomenon that is "Wandering Windists" was born...