Ensemble Density
contemporary art music • improvised
Invisible Ink
Blurred Edges Hamburg | June 2024
Featuring a local line up, Ensemble Density made its European debut at the 2024 Blurred Edges Festival in Hamburg. The performance took place with a full audience in the upstairs Seminarraum at the Gängeviertel.
Charles MacInnes – bass trombone, electronics
Joseph Cannella – bassoon
Uwe Haas – electronics
Alexina Hawkins – viola
Jörg Hochapfel – keyboards
Michael Leuschner – flügelhorn
Mutsumi Kobayashi – objects
Charles MacInnes – bass trombone, electronics
Joseph Cannella – bassoon
Uwe Haas – electronics
Alexina Hawkins – viola
Jörg Hochapfel – keyboards
Michael Leuschner – flügelhorn
Mutsumi Kobayashi – objects
Around the room were a collection of books, scores, artworks and objects as optional extra information about the works and composers. Below are extracts of the recording from the night along with some of the scores that guided us.
Carnival – The First Panel (1966) by Steve McCaffery
TYPEWRITER ART
Typewriter Art or Sound Poetry appeals to us as improvising musicians because it's an example of repurposing a tool. The artist took a device ostensibly designed for writing and turned it into a way of making pictures.
The restriction of having just red or black ink, a number, letter or symbol meant that one had to be creative in other ways – e.g., using blank space and repetition. But no repetition is exactly the same – patterns and shapes slowly emerge and the texture changes.
Over the clickety-clack of typing, the players slowly moved to their places, each selecting two panels from the 16 that make up the complete work. We sonically reassembled the picture with short repeating motifs, flipping back and forth between regions as the typewriter bell sounded or platen was advanced.
Typewriter Art or Sound Poetry appeals to us as improvising musicians because it's an example of repurposing a tool. The artist took a device ostensibly designed for writing and turned it into a way of making pictures.
The restriction of having just red or black ink, a number, letter or symbol meant that one had to be creative in other ways – e.g., using blank space and repetition. But no repetition is exactly the same – patterns and shapes slowly emerge and the texture changes.
Over the clickety-clack of typing, the players slowly moved to their places, each selecting two panels from the 16 that make up the complete work. We sonically reassembled the picture with short repeating motifs, flipping back and forth between regions as the typewriter bell sounded or platen was advanced.
GROUP ONGAKU
A central part of the performance was to explore the work of Group Ongaku from the early 1960s. This was a small collection of Japanese composers influenced by the Fluxus art movement. Group Ongaku sought to:
• bring improvisation back into contemporary classical music
• look for common ground between instruments and things and electronics
• think of a performance space as more than a stage and an audience
• bring improvisation back into contemporary classical music
• look for common ground between instruments and things and electronics
• think of a performance space as more than a stage and an audience
Mieko Shiomi (pictured) is still active as an artist in the Osaka prefecture and recounts the following about Group Ongaku:
"Every week we discovered some new technique or method for playing a previously unthought-of 'objet sonor,' and argue endlessly about how to extend its use, and what relationships of sound structure could be created between each performer."
"Every week we discovered some new technique or method for playing a previously unthought-of 'objet sonor,' and argue endlessly about how to extend its use, and what relationships of sound structure could be created between each performer."
Midori Yoshimoto, Into Performance: Japanese Women Artists in New York. New Brunswick, N.J., Rutgers University Press, 2005, 142–143.
SHIOMI, Mieko (1938*)
KOSUGI, Takehisa (1938–2018)
HAIKYO
Haikyo is a Japanese term that highlights a fascination with abandoned buildings. And when things have become overgrown, this neglect can be strangely beautiful. Perhaps we see that nature is gradually reclaiming and repairing the world that we have so damaged. It's a paradoxical mixture of old and new – the new is more ancient than the old building itself and the spaces undergo a change that is often startlingly different from the original purpose and design. Nothing is permanent, it seems to say.
Piano image credit CC by 2.0, Ralf Steinberger
Having recently returned to Hamburg, the protagonist from Henry Sorgenbrecher [see below in Scrap Museum] decided to be more truthful about the real story behind the piece. Hearing Henry's tape remix and reinterpretation of Miles Davis' Freddie Freeloader that night in another time and another life, was a wake up call to begin working creatively as a musician rather than being a well-trained robot. One of the dreams was to put together an improvising ensemble to create works collectively.
It took a while, but here we are! For the final piece of the night, we imagined playing the whole concert backwards and in a tenth of the time…
Structures, Melbourne ’66
Melbourne Recital Centre | July 2018
1966 was the year Keith Humble returned to Melbourne after a long stay in Europe. The improvisations and graphic scores of the mid-1960s were regarded by the conservative elements of the contemporary music scene as being too experimental. Structures presented some of these exciting works, and reproduced an atmosphere established by Humble at the Grainger Museum workshops, where composition was presented as a process rather than a product.
Ensemble Density offered an insight into the world of the Melbourne conceptual art and music scene of 1966, and an introduction to what happens when the lines between performer and observer are blurred. I left inspired, wondering what else might be possible.
CutCommon Magazine
Image: Rooney Second Landscape / Photo: Chrissy Chan
HUMBLE Music for Monuments
The score of Keith Humble’s Music for Monuments (1965-67) consists of a set of instructions and suggestions as to how different sound elements can be created and combined. Many of these are made by an activity choir – shuffling feet, rattling things, tearing paper, chanting words or numbers, and letting the air escape from half-blown-up balloons.
In our performance of the work, Ensemble Density director Charles MacInnes directed the audience to create some of these sounds, and others were recorded from workshops with primary school children at the Grainger Museum the week before. The live and recorded sounds were arranged to form a basis texture over which Ensemble Density soloists improvise. The Grainger Museum Frozen Improvisations (more information) workshops were run as part of the "Synthesizers: Sound of the Future" exhibition, curated by Dr Heather Gaunt.
The score of Keith Humble’s Music for Monuments (1965-67) consists of a set of instructions and suggestions as to how different sound elements can be created and combined. Many of these are made by an activity choir – shuffling feet, rattling things, tearing paper, chanting words or numbers, and letting the air escape from half-blown-up balloons.
In our performance of the work, Ensemble Density director Charles MacInnes directed the audience to create some of these sounds, and others were recorded from workshops with primary school children at the Grainger Museum the week before. The live and recorded sounds were arranged to form a basis texture over which Ensemble Density soloists improvise. The Grainger Museum Frozen Improvisations (more information) workshops were run as part of the "Synthesizers: Sound of the Future" exhibition, curated by Dr Heather Gaunt.
ROONEY Second Landscape & Duos / McKIMM Folium
By dividing Ensemble Density into three separate trios, this suite tells the story in sound of how a mainstream jazz quintet evolved into the Rooney-McKimm-Clayton improvising trio. These beautiful images (or “graphs” as the group called them) provide ideas and starting points for free improvisation, with many other musical decisions made by listening and reacting to sounds and movements in the room – accidental or otherwise.
McKimm’s recent compositions are conventionally notated and primarily guided by melody, yet these grew from an apprenticeship of changing musical perspectives expressed in the open spaces, swirling lines and floating notes pictured here.
By dividing Ensemble Density into three separate trios, this suite tells the story in sound of how a mainstream jazz quintet evolved into the Rooney-McKimm-Clayton improvising trio. These beautiful images (or “graphs” as the group called them) provide ideas and starting points for free improvisation, with many other musical decisions made by listening and reacting to sounds and movements in the room – accidental or otherwise.
McKimm’s recent compositions are conventionally notated and primarily guided by melody, yet these grew from an apprenticeship of changing musical perspectives expressed in the open spaces, swirling lines and floating notes pictured here.
Image: excerpt from Folium by Barry McKimm
Photo: Chrissy Chan / Image Design: Charles MacInnes
Image: excerpt from Folium by Barry McKimm
Video includes explanation of compositional process
MACINNES Gazebosplayed
The idea for Gazebosplayed came from a conversation Charles MacInnes had with a saxophonist who was part of a project ensemble run by musician and psychologist Jeff Pressing at La Trobe University in the mid-1970s. Each player in the group was assigned a specific note or rhythm to repeat and extend. In this adaption, different symbols, notes or instructions on cards were given randomly to members of the audience. Listeners decided whom in the ensemble was given which card. Within the resulting musical constraints an entirely improvised work was created and performed.
A gazebo is a temporary structure, you are neither inside or out, there is no clear entrance or exit, and at the end of the day it is packed up and put away.
The idea for Gazebosplayed came from a conversation Charles MacInnes had with a saxophonist who was part of a project ensemble run by musician and psychologist Jeff Pressing at La Trobe University in the mid-1970s. Each player in the group was assigned a specific note or rhythm to repeat and extend. In this adaption, different symbols, notes or instructions on cards were given randomly to members of the audience. Listeners decided whom in the ensemble was given which card. Within the resulting musical constraints an entirely improvised work was created and performed.
A gazebo is a temporary structure, you are neither inside or out, there is no clear entrance or exit, and at the end of the day it is packed up and put away.
Sessions, New York ’57
Melbourne Recital Centre | February 2018
Sessions recreated some open rehearsals that took place in 1957 in New York where a group of musicians was guided through a graphic score by pioneering electronic composer Edgard Varèse. Featured in the concert were works by composers who had a direct relationship with that event: session organiser Earle Brown, audience member John Cage, and jazz bassist Charles Mingus.
VARÈSE (reconstructed by MacInnes) Jazz Sessions
In 1957, Earle Brown organised some jazz musicians to play one of Varèse’s experimental scores. The players included Art Farmer (trumpet), Teo Macero (tenor saxophone), Ed Shaughnessy (drums), Don Butterfield (tuba), Eddie Bert (trombone) and Charles Mingus (bass).
Recent research has shown that the score Varèse brought along was almost identical to that which he used the following year to create his Poème électronique for the Brussels World’s Fair—in each case, fixed sound objects became the springboards for musical development and extension. Musical director Charles MacInnes has reconstructed this score through a combination of surviving facsimiles and recorded archives, and has filled in the gaps by following the contours of the electronic work.
In 1957, Earle Brown organised some jazz musicians to play one of Varèse’s experimental scores. The players included Art Farmer (trumpet), Teo Macero (tenor saxophone), Ed Shaughnessy (drums), Don Butterfield (tuba), Eddie Bert (trombone) and Charles Mingus (bass).
Recent research has shown that the score Varèse brought along was almost identical to that which he used the following year to create his Poème électronique for the Brussels World’s Fair—in each case, fixed sound objects became the springboards for musical development and extension. Musical director Charles MacInnes has reconstructed this score through a combination of surviving facsimiles and recorded archives, and has filled in the gaps by following the contours of the electronic work.
Photo: Chrissy Chan
Photo: Chrissy Chan
BROWN 4 Systems
“As you walk into a museum and you look at a mobile you see a configuration that’s moving very subtly. You walk in the same building the next day and it’s a different configuration, yet it’s the same piece, the same work..” (Earle Brown on the work of Alexander Calder)
“As you walk into a museum and you look at a mobile you see a configuration that’s moving very subtly. You walk in the same building the next day and it’s a different configuration, yet it’s the same piece, the same work..” (Earle Brown on the work of Alexander Calder)
CAGE Seven
Composed during the last years of Cage’s life, the Number Pieces are examples of time bracket notation. In Seven all but one of the twenty brackets for each of the seven instruments is fixed, and the number of sounds provided varies from one to five depending on the instrument. The players are making choices about the placement of the events, but these take place within a tightly organised structure.
Cage provides the following instructions to the percussionist:
"Use four different frictional sound producing means: long bamboo or other sticks, metal rods or thick wires, chairs or tables etc. moved while in contact with the floor; plastic cups or pots against walls or doors; cymbals, gongs, piano strings, etc. bowed; bowls including Japanese temple gongs, and goblets, set into vibration around the edge; etc.."
Composed during the last years of Cage’s life, the Number Pieces are examples of time bracket notation. In Seven all but one of the twenty brackets for each of the seven instruments is fixed, and the number of sounds provided varies from one to five depending on the instrument. The players are making choices about the placement of the events, but these take place within a tightly organised structure.
Cage provides the following instructions to the percussionist:
"Use four different frictional sound producing means: long bamboo or other sticks, metal rods or thick wires, chairs or tables etc. moved while in contact with the floor; plastic cups or pots against walls or doors; cymbals, gongs, piano strings, etc. bowed; bowls including Japanese temple gongs, and goblets, set into vibration around the edge; etc.."
Photo: Chrissy Chan
Photo: Chrissy Chan / Image Design: Charles MacInnes
MINGUS Weird Nightmare
"Weird nightmare ... you haunt my every dream ... weird nightmare ... "
"Weird nightmare ... you haunt my every dream ... weird nightmare ... "
Melbourne Fringe Festival | Scrap Museum — Bakehouse Studios, Richmond September 2017
Among the best improvisatory music and compositions for improvisers I have heard over the last 35 years: evocative, introspective, inspiring and refreshing at a time when I thought I had already heard it all.
Dr John Whiteoak (music scholar and author of “Playing Ad Lib: Improvisatory Music in Australia, 1836–1970”)
Image design: Chrissy Chan & Charles MacInnes
In the distance we see an indistinct building – is it boarded up, or was that perhaps a flickering light or a curtain being quickly drawn?
C. J. Dennis’ 1917 satirical poem The Glugs of Gosh eerily predicted some of the greed and political ignorance that surrounds us today. In this musical version, a violin imitates the lines of the poem, interrupted by an amplified cello improvising on some of D. J. Trump’s well known statements (“I know words...I have the best words”). The vocabulary, repetition and tone of these two original voices combine to form a surprising musical poetry.
photo: Chris Tse
Sorgenbrecher Bar in Hamburg St. Pauli is a popular spot for artists, musicians and other bohemians.
In a haze of conflicting hallucinogens, one such musician ended up there late one night to drown various sorrows.
Amid the calm hysteria inside, he hears the sound of a single, callow trombone.
“Oh, that’s one of Henry’s tapes; I think it’s Freddie Freeloader slowed to half-speed”.
Photo: Glenn Taylor
The first room is dark but the echoes suggest it must be a large ballroom of some sort. Down the end of the passage is a mirror room, and even our whispered voices reflect sharply off the walls and floor. Upstairs is the library with books and newspaper cuttings piled to the ceiling. Opposite that is a curious collection of gramophones and reel-to-reel tape players running simultaneously…
“Any reading of these [open] works is an improvisation; one moves through the work not in straight lines but in curves, swirls, and across intersections, to words that catch the eye or attract attention repeatedly.”
Lyn Hejinian quoted in “The Material of Poetry” by Gerald Bruns
Photo: Glenn Taylor
Recordings by: Kevan Atkins