Improvizone

A word about Improvizone: This is a venture run by the excellent drummer Andy Booker, who I’ve been working with in the No-Man band. He invited me to play at one of the Improvizone gigs in north London a couple of weeks ago. These are basically concerts by a variety of improvising musicians in several different venues – the one I played was in a pub in Walthamstow, with a line up of violin, guitar, bass, drums and sound engineer. Os, who does fantastic live sound manipulation, also records the gigs live. Andy then puts edited highlights on to the Improvizone website. You can already listen to a couple of clips from the recent gig (plus 80 or so others from past events), with more excerpts to come. Do take a look at – and more particularly a listen to – the website: www.improvizone.com. Meanwhile here’s one of the clips:

This gig was a new experience for me: My first completely improvised concert! It’s hard to describe the feeling you get (particularly for a classically trained musician) when you allow yourself to block out everything except the music that is happening at that moment, with no written notes, or even the memory of written notes, to get between you and the collective creative process which is going on. It can be completely exhilarating.