Time for Video - Oxford Improvisers

Oxford Improvisers is a group of musicians from diverse backgrounds who meet together regularly for the pleasure of each others' company in acts of collective improvisation. Most of our work is spontaneous group playing, and it is the intuitive interaction in improvisation that is most highly valued by the group.

When we discussed collaborating with Ebba Jahn we were in lockdown and for many months had only played together online. Ebba suggested that we each document the space in which we worked, our instruments and our view of the outside world. Each of us responded to this in a different way. From these resources Ebba constructed a collage of our separate lives, which was enhanced by interlacing with Mano Kinze’s dramatic and passionate “Recent Paper Pairs”.

The music we made to Ebba’s film is a continuous improvisation, a multi-layered texture that was played as we watched the film together in our separate spaces, whilst listening closely to one another. We each recorded our individual soundstream in high quality, so Gero Kempf was able to create a perfect mix of all the layers in sync with the film just as we had played them.
Lawrence Casserley