JLG is a musician who wander and evade. Although his credible techniques of alto saxophone and keyboards, he never uses the staff notation or any other musical notation system to write his music down. This “Bending contumax” is also a recorded documentary of solo organ improvisations played in the churches of Portugal, France, England, Scotland from 2008 to 2014. It is clear that this music has distinct direction in the style of rendition and texture. However it has no method to notate but audio recording and JLG never elucidates the motives in his work.
Once JLG has told me about his multiphonic technique on alto saxophone. “Practice and find the fingerings. But i do not write them down. Let them go and forget, then practice and get them again. Some may be remembered and some may not be. Through this process I find new fingerings. Keeping the library always changing”.
Those attitudes indicate the scrupulous mobility with abandon, of a speculate wayfarer who measure oneself to have no map nor compass to roam the wilderness of memory. Getting through same place from different direction rewrites memories and overlapping footprints get deeper one after another.
Like the process an amnesiac organ player trying to recover his memory to listen the execution of a person who has never played organ before, These living relics are still growing and transforming even after they were recorded. Enjoy them with your own ear, body and time scale with no maps and compasses.