To celebrate the the Masters of Contemporary Improvisation Course at Macquarie and mourn its loss – along with other university music courses in this county. It was a wonderful evening and all praised musician and scholar of Indian and improvised music Adrian McNeil.
The tabla master Aneesh Pradhan played with Adrian on Sarod in one highlight , and other musicians who played were Damian Wright, Bobby Singh, Peter Kennard, Steve Morley, Chris Fields, Tony Lewis, Michael Galleazi, Tony Gorman, Boyd, Mary Rapp, and Adrian McNeil. And Sandy Evans, who directed the finale where everyone played. I had spieled about impro and the night but lost it – so just to say it was moving and uplifting.
The next night I was on a plane out of the country and pleased to find Charles Ives4th Symphony (Dallas version) on – still as thrilling as when I first heard it in 75, and to think how old it is (WW1) and that Ives had died at the age of eighty a decade before it’s first full performance.
“Ives leaves a great deal to the mercy of the performer. In his compositions, the notation of a work is only the basis for further improvisations, and the notation itself, frequently of music first conceived many years before, is a kind of snapshot of the way he played it at a certain period in his life.”
–Elliott Carter, Collected Essays and Lectures”
