Release Date: 20 January 2023
Label: Discus Music
Packaging Type: Digipak
No of Units: 2
Barcode: 5051078001821
Genres: Jazz Contemporary
Description
Six years in the making, 'Micromotives' represents a dynamic and empowering vision of real-time collective composition, created by composer Moss Freed and showcased by large ensemble Union Division.
With improvisation and sociality at its core, this is dazzling and surprising music that shifts nimbly between materials and structural events, encouraging synchronicity and collaboration while giving unusually high levels of creative control to individual performers. The aim of the project was to engineer an large-scale environment that both maintained the personal freedoms, sense of 'nowness' and modes of communication that improvisers commonly experience in small groups; and produced distinct and distinguishable compositions that were audibly impossible to achieve through improvisation alone.
Freed established Union Division early in 2018 to workshop these ideas, bringing together some of the UK's top improvisers from a range of backgrounds. Through a shared language of hand signals, the collective practice that evolved enables large numbers of players to self-organise easily and transfer detailed information between themselves directly and inaudibly. There is no demarcated leader and any attempts to coordinate the group are invitations only. Each piece within 'Micromotives' has a unique set of compositional materials that guide players towards particular activities and soundworlds but, critically, there is no obligation for performers to use these: improvisation is always the default position. Players, then, have power to determine their roles and integrate improvisation with predetermined elements fluidly, as they see fit, from moment to moment.
Moss Freed: electric guitar
Laura Jurd, Charlotte Keeffe, Sam Eastmond: trumpet
Tullis Rennie: trombone
Rachel Musson: tenor saxophone
George Crowley: tenor saxophone, clarinet
Chris Williams: alto saxophone
Rosanna Ter-Berg: flute, piccolo
Brice Catherin: voice
Otto Wilberg: double bass
Steve Beresford, Elliot Galvin: piano
Will Glaser, James Maddren: drums
Pierre Alexandra Tremblay: electronics, electric bass
Press:
"Two splendidly ambitious yet separate recordings marking the development of his Union Division project. The energy of a self-organising collective is the very essence of jazz, and with Freed and Union Division, the baton seems safely passed to a newer generation." - Andy Robson, Jazzwise
"An engaging, free flowing, rapidly changing set of improvisations that retained their spontaneity throughout, and blended the individual voices of the musicians into a coherent whole." - Tony Dudley-Evans, London Jazz News
"Sprawling and maximalist and you immediately gain a sense of invigorating freedom." - Marlbank
Tracklisting
Army Of Briars
Keith Tippett & Matthew Bourne
Laura Jurd & Paul Dunmall
Theo May's Odd Unit
Charlotte Keeffe
Ron Caines / Martin Archer Axis
Keith & Julie Tippett - Couple In Spirit
The Exu
Sultan Stevenson
John Patitucci
Tommy Whittle & Alan Barnes
Xhosa Cole
John Clayton & Mulgrew Miller
George Cables
Sylvaine Helary & Orchestre Incandescent
The Exu
