In many ways, this Episode is our attempt to engage with Fred’s incredible writing: with his proposal that all black performance (culture, politics, sexuality, identity, and blackness itself) is improvisation.
Our favourite Lancashire-born autodictact asks what’s political about the tension between the individual and the collective in free jazz.
What might Carter and Parker’s collaboration tell us about our own performances of responsibility and liberty, whether individual, social or musical?
How might two of the great musicians working within contrasting traditions of freedom collaborate? What might this produce: musically, socially, allegorically?
A performance bearing witness to a struggle built upon patience and collective action from the great multi-instrumentalist and member of the AACM.
Do art forms like black radical poetry, free jazz and improvisation create a space for the performance of freedom? Did they ever? And can they still do so now?
TEST is a collective creative improvising quartet based out of the NYC Underground (figuratively and literally). Their street-hardened, spatial Jazz is riotous and intense: is also makes us think about collective organization, and different ideas of responsibility and liberty.
Now a two day festival, INSTAL 04 was borne of a desire to open eyes, challenge audiences and expand musical horizons. This was also the year in which a certain representative from Corwood Industries made his first ever live appearance.
A cast of pioneering and provocative spirits who exist outside the mainstream, between borders and definitions; a series of events that each explore different aspects of music that doesn’t quite fit any given category. INSTAL 08 included the Self-Cancellation project.
A cast of pioneering spirits over an expanded three day festival including Jandek (one year on from his first ever show at INSTAL 04), JO-JO, Tetuzi Akiyama,Tom Bruno, Pauline Oliveros, a legendary Hijokaiden performance and Henri Chopin.