'This glorious headstrong beast that is the London Improvisers Orchestra here continues after more than twenty years of ground-breaking large-group improvisation. The line-up for its monthly performances is never twice the same, yet these events always beggar boundaries – relational or sonic, of taste or expectations – passionately courting catastrophe in order to advance towards fresh communion, new ways of knowing, not knowing.

Improvisation means musicians and audiences completely alive in and to the moment, observing and shaping it in real time, simultaneously seizing it and releasing it, intense and specific, to memory. Everything that is exists within these swathes of heightened time; so much that is ungraspable can nearly be intuited within the revolutions of each person’s moment-by-moment choices (in playing as in listening), making up a collective and individual musical experience, just as unique lives come together to create entire societies.'

– from Caroline Kraabel's liner notes to the 2018 LIO double CD, Twenty Years On, available here. 

The LIO's monthly concerts feature large-group free improvisation and large-group conducted or directed improvisation. 

LIO December 5 at Cafe Oto (more TBA)

Phil Minton - trumpet, voice; Daniel Cano Amaro - trumpet; Jonny Martin, Loz Speyer - trumpet, flugelhorn; Dan Goren - flugelhorn, trumpet; Dave Jago - trombone; Rowland Sutherland - flutes; Georgina Brett - oboe; Chris Hill - clarinet; Tasos Stamou - digital horn; John Eyles - sopranino sax; Dee Byrne, Caroline Kraabel - alto sax; Sue Lynch - tenor sax; Sue Ferrar, Phil Wachsmann - violin; Ivor Kallin - viola, voice; Faradena Afifi - viola, cello, voice; Sofia Vaisman Maturana - cello, voice; Isidora Edwards - cello; Dave Tucker, Martin Vishnick - guitars; Jerry Wigens - mandolin; Douglas Benford - harmonium; Steve Beresford - piano; Elia Baioni - double bass; Gero Kempf - upright electric bass; Dave Fowler - drums; Adam Bohman - objects

Conducting: Tasos, Caroline, Phil, Steve B, Dave T.