World snooker champion Steve Davis and renowned musician Gaz Williams have promised an ‘utterly unique performance’ when they take to Brecon Cathedral on August 10th as part of the Brecon Jazz Festival.

The supersonic pair will be creating a mesmerising soundscape experience, using modular synths to take the listeners on a journey. The cathedral will be transformed with sound bouncing around the natural acoustics, and a canvas of light and colour will dance across LED video walls, immersing the audience in a new sound.

Players of modular synths connect patch cables, creating a signal path that allows the instrument to make sound. It’s different from more traditional musical instruments, where notes are already mapped out, and a structure has been rehearsed.

Speaking about the musical experimentation, Gaz told The Brecon and Radnor Express: “There are no laptops, no pre-prepared thing. It’s all about manipulating electricity. Sending voltage through these modules. We’re not playing using keyboards or piano keyboards. You use different modules that do different things. By its very nature it’s all about exploring sounds.”

It may be different for the Brecon Jazz Festival audience, but Steve, a six-world title winner in snooker, believes they are honouring jazz by the unpredictability of playing on an instrument that they don’t have full control over. “Even though it won’t be jazz, it will be jazz-like because of the improvised nature of it. With conventional instruments, you are playing them. But with the modular synths, you’re riding the electronic wave. A lot of what you experience along the way is not fully of your making. The machine has its own brain somehow. It seems like it's part of the equation. You sometimes have to let it go where it wants to go and you have to guide it as best you can. Sometimes it can go wrong. Sometimes you know why, sometimes you don’t.”

Gaz echoes that, embracing the unpredictable nature of the performance: “When it goes wrong, you have to steer out of it. It’s a journey for the listener as well. With modular synths, we have a great opportunity to bring this to a more mainstream audience. To be part of the Brecon Jazz 40th anniversary is a real honour.”

The concert, described as having a quadrophonic sound, will have three twenty-minute pieces. Both Steve and Gaz promise each one will be different, even though ‘they don’t know how yet’. It’s this go-with-the-flow attitude that makes a performance worth it. “The acoustics of the cathedral are providing us with a lot of interesting things. We can experiment in a new setting. I think it will be quite a stimulating event for people,” Gaz says. They have practised what it will sound like in the St Fagan’s Church in Aberdare.

Steve appreciates the ethos of jazz, and the way the music transports both listener and player. With their concert, he believes that the excitement of the unknown makes for an interesting evening. “If you want to see something different, with an element of danger, why not come?”

“We’re challenging ourselves and challenging the audience,” Gaz adds. “We want the audience to come on the journey with us and understand a little bit of the technology involved.”

The one-of-a-kind performance is not to be missed. Steve Davis and Gaz Williams are playing the Mindset Stage in Brecon Cathedral on August 10th from 8:30 PM. Tickets for Mindset Stage at Brecon Jazz Festival available at mindsetstage.co.uk/tickets. For more info, visit mindsetstage.co.uk