Fields presents “String Theory” — an evening of guitar adventures with Mike Cooper, Inturist, Vukašin Đelić and Feliks Mirenskiy.

Our main guest is 84-year-old Mike Cooper, a living legend of British experimental music. Over six decades, he has made a remarkable journey: from folk-blues clubs and shared bills with John Lee Hooker to free improvisation, electronics and a musical world of his own, where blues meets tropical exotica. The guitar has accompanied him throughout these travels, finding a new voice along the way.

In Cooper’s music, the gliding tones of lap steel guitar intertwine with electronic loops, birdsong and field recordings. Melodies emerge through the noise, island landscapes shift, and familiar outlines dissolve into psychedelia. Even his famous Hawaiian shirts play a part: their repeating colourful patterns inspired Rayon Hula, an album that transforms samples of Arthur Lyman’s exotica into curious sonic collages.

Joining Cooper is one of his Eastern European musical disciples — Zhenya Gorbunov, aka Inturist. A co-founder of Glintshake (ГШ) and one of the most inventive musicians on the Russian independent scene, Gorbunov charts his own routes through guitar loops, tape manipulations, offbeat pop and everyday absurdity.

Representing the local scene is Vukašin Đelić, also known as WoO — a Belgrade guitarist and sonic explorer. In his hands, the guitar takes on different roles: leading an entire ensemble through jazz, electronics and psychedelia, locking into a springy dub groove, or becoming a receiver that picks up interference and stray noises.

The evening’s special guest is improviser Feliks Mirenskiy, who will present a programme based on his album Do You Remember?. On this record, Mirenskiy uses the guitar as a MIDI controller: a touch of the pick against a string sets off an electronic whirlwind of synthetic rhythms, vocal fragments and acid glitch. In these spontaneous romances, virtuosity sits alongside humour and a love of sonic oddities.