Free improvisation and new music from the north.

Wow, what a fun way to end my time in Seydisfjordur! Last night was my concert in the Blue Church. I’d been looking forward to playing here as it’s such a beautiful building and an iconic symbol of this town. I’ve been lucky to have been allowed to practise in this wonderful acoustic all week. In fact, I’m not sure how I’ll deal with practising in my pokey room at home now.

I was, however, a little nervous about this concert, too. I was working with Charles Ross and we wouldn’t even meet until 5pm that afternoon. There’s a Scottish connection, too. Charles is from Ayrshire, studied the viola with the RSNO’s Ian Budd and has had his music performed in the BBCSSO’s Tectonics series. Find out more about him here.

Charles turned up with violin/viola/10string guitar and Siberian Fiddle – not to mention some mighty fine throat singing. Here he is with Siberian fiddle:

Thanks to the restrictions of air travel I just had a viola! That gave us a wealth of colours to play with. Those of you who know me will know I have a fetish about timbre, so we were off to a good start.

There’s only one way to approach free impro and that’s to get on with it, so we spent the afternoon playing around with various concepts and sounds, before letting it settle over tea!

The concert was a blend of music by the two of us, Kristian Blak, Poul Ruders and free impros with an Icelandic/Inuit /Siberian/Faroese influence. We finished with a long impro where we moved around our audience and somehow ended up playing in stereo in the balcony. And the audience? Well, they included 2 children under 10 who’d never been to a concert. We had a little chat after as they’d been so good and quiet and they were fascinated by the sounds and said they wanted to play music every day. We were also asked for an encore? Contemporary music inaccessible? Really?

Charles, I have to say thanks for a wonderful and inspiring concert and I’m sure we’ll meet again in Glasgow.