The East Coast Free-Music Festival
This festival will be devoted exclusively to freely improvised music. Our collective commitment and compatibility, plus the concentrated two-night form, will make it the best representation in this country of what the free-playing musical approach can do. The twelve of us gathered for this have already selected each other to play with, having performed in numerous small groupings. Only the specific formations in trios and quartets are new, for some their first meeting.
Free improvisation is a music of spontaneous group interaction, a polyphonic music without score, concept, rehearsal, or leadership. More than that, we do not consider what might please you, so focused are we on what’s going on moment to moment. That focus is our pleasure and not a rule. In this unique musical event we musicians depend on mutual trust and your excitement. Our imagination will generate yours; you'll see!
The event is the third “annual”; the last was 33 years ago. That was also assembled by Spring Garden Music, saxophonist Jack Wright’s musical endeavor since 1982. Since even before then free improvisation was his only musical approach. He’s even written The Free Musics, a provocative book widely read by other improvisers in North America and Europe. The festival musicians are drawn from a pool of those he has played with, and who have also been engaged without him.
This year they are: Ben Bennett, percussion (Philadelphia); Ed Cho, guitar (Easton PA); Patrick Crossland, trombone (Baltimore); Zach Darrup, guitar (Philadelphia); Joel Kromer, modular synth (Bethlehem PA); Evan Lipson, double bass (Chattanooga); Toshi Makihara, percussion (Phoenixville PA); Andrea Pensado, electronics and voice (Salem MA); Ron Stabinsky, piano and electronics (Wilkesbarre); Matt Tomlinson, bass guitar (New Philadelphia PA); Jack Wright, alto/soprano saxophone (Easton PA); Walter Wright, electronics (Lowell MA).
June 4 and 5. Music will begin promptly at 7:30 pm, doors at 7. Admission is free.