The Music Improvisation Company
Aliases: Company
1983
Wonderful, previously unreleased recordings by Derek Bailey and his guests at Company Week in 1983. What's remarkable throughout this album is the respect and affection the musicians show for each other, exemplifying the dictionary definition of "company" as "the fact or condition of being with another or others, especially in a way that provides friendship and enjoyment." It starts with "Landslide", a brilliant, spiky, spluttering, twanging reunion of Music Improvisation Company members Evan Pa…
The Music Improvisation Company / Company bundle
Since 2017, Honest Jon’s, the London based record shop and imprint renowned for its forward thinking, democratic approach to music, has embarked on one of its most remarkable and ambitious projects to date - a close collaboration with Derek Bailey’s seminal record label, Incus, returning some of the most remarkable efforts in free improvisation and avant-gardism to the world. So far we’ve seen a stunning series of Bailey’s many solo and collaborative efforts reemerge, bringing his towering histo…
Trios
For the 1983 edition of Company Week held at London's I.C.A. in May of that year, guitarist Derek Bailey once more invited a typically eclectic collection of guests. Cellist Ernst Reijseger is a mainstay of Dutch new jazz (ICP Orchestra, Clusone Trio...), American wind virtuoso J.D.Parran a veteran of the Black Artists' Group and Anthony Davis and Anthony Braxton ensembles, while saxophonists Evan Parker and Peter Brötzmann, as titans of European free improvisation, need no introduction. French …
Epiphanies VII-XIII
More buried treasure from Company Week 1982: seven previously unissued Epiphanies by lineups involving Derek Bailey, Ursula Oppens, Julie Tippetts, Keith Tippett, Philipp Wachsmann, Fred Frith, George Lewis, Anne LeBaron, Motoharu Yoshizawa and Akio Suzuki. Fred Frith is a stellar improviser — 1974’s Guitar Solos is still a seminal album of free improv — and he has three opportunities here to showcase his considerable talents. Eleventh is a tour de force of extended technique, with George Lewis…
Epiphanies I-VI
Derek Bailey’s guests for Company Week at London’s ICA in July 1982 were contemporary classical pianist Ursula Oppens, folk/jazz singer-turned-improviser Julie Tippetts and her partner pianist Keith Tippett, violinist/electronics wizard Philipp Wachsmann, guitarist Fred Frith, trombonist George Lewis, harpist Anne LeBaron, and from Japan free jazz bassist Motoharu Yoshizawa and sound artist Akio Suzuki. Altogether they performed the stunning extended improvisation Epiphany. In different, more i…
1981
Previously unreleased recordings by various line-ups drawn from Derek Bailey, Tristan Honsinger, Christine Jeffrey, Toshinori Kondo, Charlie Morrow, David Toop, Maarten Altena, Georgie Born, Lindsay Cooper, Steve Lacy, Radu Malfatti, and Jamie Muir. Journalists often make the brief history of free improvisation conform to the idea that the history of music is a nice straight line from past to present: Beethoven... Brahms... Boulez. Thus Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, and John Stevens -- together wit…
Epiphany
Honest Jon's Records present a reissue of Company's Epiphany, originally released in 1982. Epiphany \ i-ˈpi-fə-nē \ (1) a manifestation of the essential nature of something (usually sudden) (2) an intuitive grasp of reality through something (usually simple and striking) (3) an illuminating discovery or disclosure. All three definitions apply perfectly to this span of music recorded at London's ICA in July 1982. It's a miracle of group interaction, wonderfully paced, moving steadily between mome…
1969, 1970
**Available next week** "The original concepts of vocal and instrumental music are utterly different. The instrumental impulse is not melody in a 'melodious' sense but an agile movement of the hands which seem to be under the control of a brain centre totally different from that which inspires vocal melody. Altogether, instrumental music, with the exception of rudimentary rhythmic percussion, is as a rule a florid, fast and brilliant display of virtuosity... Quick motion is not merely a means t…
Klinker
Factory pressed double CD in printed triple panel Ekopack cardboard sleeve. Derek Bailey : guitar. Simon H. Fell : double bass. Will Gaines : tap dance. Mark Wastell : violoncello. Recorded live at The Klinker, London on Thursday 24th August 2000. Compèred by Matt Scott. Original DAT recording by Tim Fletcher.Mixed and mastered by Simon H. Fell. Produced by Mark Wastell. One of the special qualities of improvisation is the array of responses musicians and performers have to the environment …
1968-1971
Music Improvisation Company: 1968-1971 - one of the earliest recorded examples of the European school of Free ImprovisationImportante e fondamentale ristampa di uno dei primi dischi della Incus, Music Improvisation Company 1968-1971 (Incus 1971). La Company era una sorta di gruppo aperto fondato dal chitarrista Derek Bailey sul finire degli anni Sessanta. Il primo capitolo della Company, che raccoglie varie registrazioni che vanno dal 1968 al 1971, è sicuramente uno dei più rivoluzionari in sens…