Improvisation in music goes back centuries and is one of the great traditions in jazz, in organ music and in particular among French organists. So here we have a different disc by four classical music graduates from Sydney who started improvising for fun in a little terraced house in Darlinghurst. This is really an interesting disc and deserves purchase for anyone with an open mind and wants their boundaries stretched. Don’t buy it for your mum for Mother’s day – buy it for yourself or for a mate who is into quirky music and different sounds. As the interesting notes accompanying the disc say:
‘What do you get when you cross Radio Head, Kronos Quartet and The Necks?’ You get the Noise.
It’s all about soundscapes and also letting your imagination rip. So there is a piece called Moths which has the cello playing over fluttering effects from the rest of the quartet. Another piece is called Video Games which came from the Noise taking some improvisation lessons from a jazz pianist who played a game with them in which she held up a flash card with some text on it which would serve as a title for an improvisation. She then made ‘us close our eyes for five seconds and begin playing’.
Other tracks have the title such as Lament; Indian Blue and there ones about biodiversity. Desert was particularly atmospheric – did I hear sounds of rattlesnakes!
| Buy Spontaneous Improvisation CD or download |
