the Unnamed Music Festival was one of the more rewarding initiatives of the first half of this year. Currated by another timbre’s Simon Reynell, it was held in mid-june in the cities of London and Leeds and featured an intricate mix of players that reflected its currators tastes as much as it reflected the until-recently imperceptible changes in the waters of improvised music. Some of those players came from the latest wave of London-based improvisers, some were more closely aligned to the EAI school of musicians, a couple of elder statesmen were included for good measure as well. Though on paper things didn’t look too spiky, the sets were full of subtle and rewarding moments. We witnessed strong working groups given ample space to flesh out their music (Tom Chant/Angharad Davies/Benedict Drew/John Edwards and Rhodri Davies/Louisa Martin/Lee Patterson with Lucio Capece filling in for missing members), delicate attempts to beauty (Sebastian Lexer/Aleks Kolkowski and Clive Bell/Matt Milton/Bechir Saade) and two sets full-on risk-taking improvisation (Paul Abbott/Jamie Coleman/Grundik Kasyansky/Ute Kanngiesser & the guns-blazing trio of Keith Rowe/Martin Küchen/Seymour Wright). There was also the duo set of Jez riley French & Patrick Farmer, but this was in Leeds, so i cannot comment.
the main reason for this post is not to bore you with my one-line reflections, but to point to the way of a download page that is now up at the another timbre webpage:
http://www.anothertimbre.com/downloads.html
in this page, and until september, you’ll be able to listen and download extracts from the music performed at the festival (from all but one of the sets that took place). Some very interesting music there, and quite different at places from the way i remember it -the workings of human senses never cease to confound.
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relevant links:
unnamed impressions, by al jones @ bagatellen (http://www.bagatellen.com/?p=2390)
richard pinnell’s blog entries around the festival (http://www.thewatchfulear.com/?p=1156 & http://www.thewatchfulear.com/?p=1161)
