Free improv gigs resume in Hastings

The night will offer improvised music featuring Dee Byrne (solo) and Rachel Musson and Olie Brice (duo) at The Nest, Old Town Hall, High Street, Hastings, TN34 3EW. Tickets are £6 on the door or £5 in advance from twoship.eventbrite.co.uk.

The series has been devised by Olie Brice and by Tullis Rennie after they spotted a gap in the provision in the area: “Olie and I are both performers and we are both based in Hastings,” Tullis says. “We know each other primarily through having gigs in the same circuit and circles of free improvised music. There are all sorts of really exciting musical offerings in Hastings but perhaps we found that there was a gap that we could address, a bit of a space where we could introduce more free improv acoustic music in the town.

“There are smaller venues in the country where if you move in those circles you can find free improv music but in a sense it is quite niche and quite localised music and we would like it to be more known perhaps in this area just so that people who haven't necessarily gone to a free improv concert before might consider doing so.

“I don't think there is anything that you need to know beforehand except perhaps to understand a bit about the premise behind the music which is that any sound is open and effectively up for grabs. You find instrumentalists working in ways with their instruments that you might not have seen before, and in the duos and trios what you get is something entirely non-hierarchical and entirely in the moment musically. You are experiencing something that is happening in real time.”

For the musician the move to free improv is freeing, Tullis says: “It means you can concentrate more on the sounds you are making and on the musical relationship. You are not being dictated to (by a musical score) and in some ways that is very empowering. Melody and familiarity and recognisable aspects still arise in the performance. It doesn't mean that aspects of blues or jazz or punk or whatever won't arise in improvisation. It is not the case that all the sounds that you will hear are necessarily particularly avant-garde.”

A danger perhaps is falling into patterns: “You might get a name for a particular sound or a particular approach but changing is really important to keeping everything fresh and just working with different performers. It might be a bunch of people that you know but you'll be working with different line-ups. If you are touring the third night will be very different to the first but you will have only got there because of the first and the second. It is about exploration. It's about exploring the instrument and it's about exploring your sound and also exploring how the audience can be included and made to feel very much part of it all.

“We did three gigs in July and the next series is monthly in September and October and November on Fridays or Saturdays, and we are already looking at gigs for next year. And there is even talk of a festival for next year.”