Long live the gathering

On arrival in London I found myself engaged as pianist in its varied free improvisation scene. I had started regularly attending gatherings through which a whole new vista of music making was opening up to me. Yet as I was becoming more proficient in this style of impromptu music making, it had also become quite evident that only a handful of such attempts actually resulted in an outcome that I could personally call interesting music. Attending improvisation concerts as an audience member deepened this perception and lead me to believe that there is a hitch laying at the core of this whole practice – the element most absent for me in improvisation was that of a ‘head’, an all seeing ‘father-figure’ that could gather up disconnected moments of brilliance and fit them into a coherent structure, which could finally result in a moving narrative. However, this latter approach is in complete negation to the whole ethos of free improvisation, which carves on its flag the freedom, and especially equality of all its participants – the improvisers are all composers, players and listeners at the same time, partaking first and foremost in a group experience as an end, with music as its means. In Long Live the Gathering I proposed to invert this paradigm and to take on the roll of the so-called ‘father-figure’. By borrowing from improvised music and later Jazz scored into the piece with the use of space notation, an external timeline, unspecified pitches and some total improvisation, I have attempted to recreate the unrehearsed and somewhat immediate decision making process executed by performers whilst improvising. I hope that in this manner I have managed to capture some agitated, erratic and indeterminate sound worlds - the most gratifying elements of free improvisation to my taste.