AngelicA '93

 

 

 

AngelicA is an Italian Festival (Bologna) for improvised music since 1991. I disovered it recently throught the CD's they publish every year. I don't know if every year is as interesting as the 1993 edition, but this year was very good. The musicians present come mainly from the Free Jazz and Prog field :

Audience, All Dax Band, Han Bennink, Steve Beresford, Lindsay Cooper, Tom Cora, Dietmar Diesner, ensemble Eva Kant, Fred Frith, Gianni Gebbia, Lars Hollmer, Catherine Jauniaux, Peter Kowald, Ikue Mori, Butch Morris, Hans Reichel, Riciclo delle Quinte, Wolter Wierbos . Now the music, as often with free form music , once you out of the boundaries of harmonie and melody, you have a vaste choice of sounds and textures, that cannot always be desribed with classical structures. The 1993 was dedicated to John Cage and the CD starts with one of the musicians shouting : "silence" followed by the same. Most of the instruments used are acoustic, even so some are hardly recognizable or vintage like the famous 'daxophone ' of the German guitarist Hans REichel. Once you are getting over the point to expect' music' it's really inteersting and fun at the same time to discover pure sound, not comparable to anything heard before. The overalll athmosphere is still rather contemplative with a few occasional outbursts. I found the CD in a public library and I don't know if the CD's are hard to find, but it's a great listening experience.