Núria Andorrà studied at the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe, where she now directs a doctoral programme dedicated to free improvisation in contemporary music.
Musica Elettronica Viva, history’s first ensemble to have employed electronics in the improvisation process, has been present in the world’s music scene for more than fifty years, and still performs today. Founded in 1966 in a small room overlooking the Roman Pantheon, it has invited musicians representing different styles, thus bringing together Italian artists and émigrés living in the Eternal City. Following in the footsteps of Cage and Tudor, they have employed not only classical instruments and synthesisers, but also such everyday objects as box springs, glass panes, tins, elastics, toy pianos, and all kinds of metal accessories. They claim that every object has its individual sound, and advertise their own sound, amplified by contact mics, as musical in its own right. Strongly politically involved, they have looked for new anarchy-related forms of expression. For the sake of collective creation, MEV discarded music notation, gave up musical leadership, and replaced it with a creative community in which the ‘who, what and when’ no longer mattered. Instead, they have promoted subtle bonds forming between musicians as the greatest value. They have published left-wing manifestos of improvised art and called for free creation unhampered by the burden of the past but based on conceptual foundations that have been collectively agreed upon.
Núria Andorrà studied at the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe, where she now directs a doctoral programme dedicated to free improvisation in contemporary music.
US-born avant-garde jazz and contemporary music singer Lauren Newton has lived in Europe since 1974. She co-founded Vienna Art Orchestra, with which she performed till 1989.
Liquid Trio is a young Catalan ensemble of improvised music which includes the eminent, world-famous pianist, Agustí Fernández.
Like Ad Libitum 2017’s artist-in-residence Joëlle Léandre, Barry Guy emerges as an ideal artist whose masterful instrumental skills combine improvised and composed music into one universe of sound (..)
The Mud Cavaliers need not be introduced to the Ad Libitum audience. One of them was the festival’s co-founder and frequently performed on its stage with invited artists (..)
Improvisation confronts one’s most personal, intimate sphere with that of one’s stage partner.
Few of the world’s musicians demonstrate equal virtuosity in inventive improvised displays and in Baroque counterpoint performed within an orchestra.
This phenomenal duo consist of Saadet Türköz, a Turkish born singer whose family and musical roots look back to the culture of the highland peoples of Central Asia (..)
Violist and singer Charlotte Hug creates performances which exceed the boundaries of styles and aesthetics.
Europe’s oldest improvising orchestra, it was set up by Alexander von Schlippenbach more than half a century ago.
"Whilst THE BLUE SHROUD reflects on the human condition and the continued suffering and violence in the world (..)"
Some of the bands established by Alexander von Schlippenbach have proved essential to the history of improvised music in Europe.
Maciej Garbowski, whose bass provides the foundation for RGG trio, has been widely recognised and acclaimed.
Music is a part of life that informs it and enters it, but it is not life itself. - Eddie Prévost In our music we are searching for sounds and for the responses that attach to them, rather than thinking them up, preparing them and producing them. - Cornelius Cardew
John Cage taught her how to love every kind of sound and music regardless of source and manner of performance.
When asked what he expected of his work with a group of Polish improvisers, Agustí Fernández answered: No expectations, no plans, no schedules. (..)
The trio of Agustí Fernández, Barry Guy, and Ramón López made its first recordings in 2004, but the world learned about them two years later, when their CD Aurora came out.
This was the first Polish concert of Barry Guy’s London Jazz Composers’ Orchestra, which for many years was his platform in the search for balance between improvisation and notated music.
The ‘conduction’ method invented by ‘Butch’ Morris is one of the most original ways of combining improvisation with composition in real time.
An Argentinian ensemble founded by Alejandro Iglesias Rossi, a composer highly regarded worldwide.
Both artists have collaborated for many long years. This year they invited the young pianist-composer Joanna Duda
Trevor Watts and Veryan Weston have been active in the European improvised music scene for more than 40 years.
Italian gamba master Paolo Pandolfo presents his fascinating vision of early music and its development over the centuries, shedding light on phenomena in contemporary culture.
"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked (..)"
Mateusz Kołakowski, then hailed as the ‘child prodigy’ of Polish jazz (..)
W 2010 roku połączyliśmy siły z innym festiwalem, zajmującym się improwizacją w dziedzinie tańca. Tak zrodziła się idea Ad Libitum + SIC!
Po raz pierwszy po 10 latach udostępniamy cykl 11 filmów uznanego dziś reżysera-dokumentalisty Tomasza Knittla, rejestrujących nadzwyczajne spotkania muzyków i tancerzy we wspólnych improwizacjach.
