duo pantoMorf consists of Palle Dahlstedt and Per Anders Nilsson from Sweden. In this concert they will perform together with the two British free improvisers Eddie Prevost and John Tilbury, both connected to the pioneering free improv group AMM. Percussionist Prévost was one of the group’s founders and is also the author to several books about improvisation. Piano player Tilbury is considered one of the major interpreters of contemporary piano music, particularly Anglo American composers such as Cage, Feldman and Cardew, in addition being an improviser. Tilbury is also author to a biography of Cornelius Cardew.

Photo by Emli Bendixen

AMM

"Free improvisation draws up a pact between performer and listener. Refusing the comforting pillars of notation and songform, the art insists that inspiration and interaction are key to the production of meaning. The performer creates music that is unique and unrepeatable; the audience must listen actively, their hearing intent on capturing each successive moment. The improvising ensemble AMM, a 2000 concert of whose is documented on Tunes Without Measure or End, provide a particularly fine example of this singular form of communication. Their live shows are compelling spectacles of rapturous intensity, where the players’ concentration on the dynamics of their sound is matched by a deep and focused listening among the audience." - Richard Rees Jones, The Sound Projector

DUO PANTOMORF

duo pantoMorf has developed electronic improvisation instruments that allow almost the same freedom as acoustic instruments, based on the following principles: If we lift our hands, the instrument goes quiet. Every sonic gesture directly corresponds to a physical gesture. Each physical gesture affects all synthesis parameters. The sound in the room comes from where it originates, and dynamics and complexity correlates to the musicians’ effort. With these instruments, electronic free improvisation is truly possible.

PER ANDERS NILSSON / electronics

Per Anders Nilsson (1954) Improvising musician, composer, and researcher. Studied saxophone and electroacoustic music from 1981-87 at the School of Music at University of Gothenburg, and became a Ph.D. in 2011. His thesis A Field of Possibilities is about designing and playing digital music instruments. In the 70s and 80s he managed his own bands as well performed occasionally with musicians such as Willem Breuker, Anthony Braxton, Palle Mikkelborg, Karin Krog and John Surman. In 2009 Nilsson toured Sweden with the British saxophone player Evan Parker. For the time being Nilsson plays regularly with several Swedish groups: Beam Stone with Sten Sandell and Raymond Strid, Natural Artefacts with Susanna Lindeborg and Ove Johansson. Nilsson has released several CDs: the solo CD Random Rhapsody in 1993, the group Natural Artefacts released CDs in 2001 and 2005 plus Strings and Objects with Nilsson/Sandell, Antiforms with duo pantoMorf in 2008, and in 2009 Beam Stone on the English label PSI.

PALLE DAHLSTEDT / electronics

Palle Dahlstedt (1971) Composer, improviser, researcher, pianist. He has degrees in composition from the academies of Malmö and Gothenburg (MFA and MA), and a PhD from Chalmers University of Technology, on evolutionary algorithms as creative tools for composers. Dahlstedt has composed everything from chamber music via orchestra to autonomous computational software, and music for over thirty stage productions. His music has been awarded several international prizes (e.g., Gaudeamus Prize 2001), and has been performed all over the world. Currently, Dahlstedt is associate professor in computer-aided creativity at the Department of Applied IT, and simultaneously lecturer in electronic music composition at the Academy of Music and Drama, both at University of Gothenburg. His research interests include advanced algorithms for improvisation (a whole family of improvisation instruments) and composition (evolutionary tools in, e.g., the Nord Modular G2), and computer models of artistic creative processes. Dahlstedt is also elected member of the Young Academy of Sweden.

EDDIE PRÉVOST / percussion

Eddie Prévost (1942) Percussionist Prévost began as a jazz drummer before branching out into entirely improvised music. He was a co-founder of the group AMM, and remains its only constant member. In 1965, along with tenor saxophonist Lou Gare, bassist Lawrence Sheaff and guitarist Keith Rowe, Prévost made a radical break with jazz, a music that had inspired these English musicians but couldn’t accommodate their rapidly expanding aesthetic concerns. Their dedicated inquiry into the terms of spontaneous creativity led them to reinvent music as a dialogue with the world beyond the limits of conventional musical discourse. They formed AMM, soon to be joined by distinguished composer Cornelius Cardew, an improvisation ensemble that has exerted influence internationally across a wide range of kinds of music, from contemporary composition to psychedelic rock, ambient soundscapes and industrial noise. During the late 1960s AMM occasionally played on the same bill as Pink Floyd. In 1968 American composer Christian Wolff spent his year in London as a member of AMM.

In addition to making music Prévost lectures, writes, edits and publishes. His writings about the aesthetic priority of improvisation have appeared in numerous arts and music magazines and mention worth is his books No Sound is Innocent, Minute Particulars and The First Concert (pub. 2011). And, for the past 14 years Prévost has convened a weekly workshop devoted to the development of improvisational aptitudes in which over 400 musicians have taken part. He shares many concerts and a number of CDs with workshop alumni.

Apart from his continued musical relationship with John Tilbury in AMM, which this year featured prominently in Donaueschinger Musiktage (2012), Prévost has also re-newed his appetite for jazz drum kit playing. In this same year (2012) he renewed his musical acquaintance and toured with American pianist Marilyn Crispell and released of a series of CDs entitled 'Meetings with Remarkable Saxophonists' (featuring - so far - Evan Parker, John Butcher and Jason Yarde).

JOHN TILBURY / piano

John Tilbury (1936) Tilbury is considered one of the foremost interpreters of Morton Feldman's music, and since 1980 has been a member of the free improvisation group AMM. Tilbury studied piano at the Royal College of Music with Arthur Alexander and James Gibb and also with Zbigniew Drzewiecki in Warsaw. 1968 he was the winner of the Gaudeamus competition in the Netherlands. During the 1960s, Tilbury was closely associated with the composer Cornelius Cardew, whose music he has interpreted and recorded and a member of the Scratch Orchestra. His biography of Cardew, Cornelius Cardew - A life unfinished was published in 2008. Tilbury has also recorded the works of Howard Skempton and John White, among many others, and has also performed adaptations of the radio plays of Samuel Beckett.

With guitarist AMM bandmate Keith Rowe's electroacoustic ensemble M.I.M.E.O., Tilbury recorded The Hands of Caravaggio, inspired by the painter's The Taking of Christ {1602). In this live performance, twelve of the members of M.I.M.E.O. were positioned around the piano in a deliberate echo of Christ's Last Supper. The thirteenth M.I.M.E.O. member (Cor Fuhler) is credited with "inside piano" as he interacted and interfered with Tilbury's playing by manipulating and damping the instrument's strings, essentially doing piano preparation in real time. Critic Brian Olewnick describes the album as "A staggering achievement, one is tempted to call The Hands of Caravaggio the first great piano concerto of the 21st century. Another notable recent recording of Tilbury's was Duos for Doris (like The Hands of Caravaggio also on Erstwhile Records), a collaboration with Keith Rowe. It is widely considered a landmark recording in the genre of electroacoustic improvisation (or "EAI").