Day 1

As my project was not until the second week of Colab, I spent most of week one locked away in a practice room, doing reductive analysis of Chopin. Many of my friends were busy doing their projects and although it was good to have all the practice time in the world, I felt like I was missing on the fun and was looking forward to starting Colab myself.

At last, the day came. When I reached the McKerras room almost everyone was already there, sat in a circle. I grabbed the nearest free chair and looked around. Some people I knew, but others I had never met before. Semi-confused smiles were being sent and received across the room. Our mentor, Douglas Finch, welcomed us and gave us brief information about the project we were about to be involved on. We decided to divide into groups of 3 or 4 people to start off with. We wrote our names on bits of paper and each group was chosen randomly. I was grouped with Danae (soprano) and Francesca (harp). Shortly after, Douglas threw us in the deep water: the newly-formed ensembles were to improvise something on the go. Each performance was followed by a short discussion and we were encouraged to share any thoughts and ideas that we might have. Group improvisation with people you never played before, especially with people with little experience in improvisation – or none at all – certainly was a challenge. I felt quite nervous when it was our turn. Danae quickly came up with an improvised poem. Something nice and dreamy about stars and roads. I remember hitting a chord on the piano and a terrible moment that lasted a lifetime when I was waiting for the singer to give me an idea how to continue. Then the adrenaline rush came and time disappeared. I don't remember much, apart from that I became quite relaxed and really enjoyed it. Afterwards, Francesca said, 'I followed the piano'. Oddly enough, I must have appeared to have known what I was doing.  

After all of us have performed, we agreed to go and practice with our groups and meet again at half two. 

Moving the huge harp to the second floor didn't kill our enthusiasm. Danae, Francesca and I decided to come up with a new improvised piece. 

At first, Francesca and I played some random improvisations on piano and harp while Danae was writing some lyrics. Playing with a harp was a new thing to me and we were trying to discover what worked and what didn't for the combination. 

When Danae was ready with her poem we decided to try it out. Our first go sounded like this: 

We discussed ideas of structure and emotion, our harmonic preferences - some of them were quite different from each other, but we finally agreed on some general parameters to stick to. The second go was a bit different and more complex:

After lunchtime we performed it in front of the whole group:

'But it didn't feel improvised, it felt like a composition!'

Was it? Fair enough. I realise that we fell in the trap of over-planning it so there was not much room for spontaneity left. But is that a bad thing? Or a good thing? And what is improvisation itself - is it the opposite of composition, or the essence of it? Where is the border between improvised and not-fully-composed? To answer those questions Douglas talked about different improvisation formats as in a up-going chart - starting from absolutely composed pieces with almost 0% of improvisation, then Chopin Nocturnes, Indian music, jazz standards, and so on.

To finish day one we had a session on conducted group improvisation with Diego Ghymers. He introduced us to the techniques and signs he is using with his Soundpainting orchestra. I had seen their performance at the Hackney Cut last October and I wanted to try it myself ever since...

'Who is in charge?'

Maybe because I'm not used to being conducted, it felt awkward in the beginning: as if I had no ears of my own and had only eyes on the ready to respond to the 'puppeteer's` wishes. Apparently others felt the same way and it led to an interesting (and quite heated) debate on the role of personal responsibility. People - not only in orchestras, but generally in life - tend to get away from taking responsibility when someone else's in charge, forgetting that they have a free choice. 

'They may tell you what to do. But everything they don't tell you to do is up to you.'

(Diego Ghymers) 

*** 

After that I went to see the Gamelan project performance. It was a nice ending to a long and busy day!