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ICP Orchestra

In 1958, guitarist Jim Hall, in notes to a Jimmy Giuffre record, used the term "instant composition" to describe improvising. A few years later, Misha Mengelberg, knowing nothing of this, recoined the term, and it stuck. A quiet manifesto, those two English words countered notions that improvising was either a lesser order of music-making than composing, or an art without a memory, existing only in the moment, unmindful of form. Misha's formulation posited improvisation as formal composition's equal (if not its superior, being faster).

Yes but: Misha says he was thinking of "instant coffee," stuff any serious java drinker (count Misha in: espresso cup rattling in its saucer announces his approach to a stage) recognized as a sham substitute, however aggressively sold. He deflates his lofty idea even as he raises it. He's also praised the "instant poetry" that came out of the Fluxus art movement he was involved with around then: put individual words on strips of paper, place in a jar and shake. Years later it became a commercial novelty: words on tiny magnetic tiles you can arrange on a refrigerator door.

For Misha mid-'60s Fluxus was inviting because it stood for nothing, had no ideals to defend. What bound together Fluxus's conceptualists, shock artists, early minimalists, musical comics et cetera was a need for a performance format that could accommodate them all. One solution was that symbol of '60s kookiness, the multimedia Happening. Those events belatedly helped inspire Mengelberg's absurdist-circus theater shows with Wim T. Schippers in the '70s and '80s, and the fluid play of styles, unbinding rules, lyricism and barnyard humor that characterize the ICP Orchestra today.

Nineteen sixty-seven, 30 years ago: Misha was as happy to think about music as play it. He said in an interview not long after, for me a few gigs a month is plenty. But his drummer of six years, Han Bennink--who'd sparked their little tours with visitors like Johnny Griffin and Eric Dolphy, and played sans Misha with everyone from Sonny Rollins to Marion Brown, (and a former art student who thought Happenings were contrived jive)--was as always eager to play, a lot, and working, a lot, with early Dutch punk Willem Breuker.

Willem was a kindred spirit on several levels. He had hellfire as a tenor saxophone or bass clarinet player, untutored enough (and eclectic enough in his tastes, jazz being just one of his interests) to sound like nobody so much as himself. He was also a conceptual composer full of odd ideas: barrel organ music out of John Cage; a piece conducted by a toy, which no one could see because it was for radio. Willem gives himself fair credit for helping to bump Han and Misha out of Monkish postbop and into a new improvised music.

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Live Review

Instant Composers Pool at The MAC

Read "Instant Composers Pool at The MAC" reviewed by Ian Patterson


Instant Composers Pool The MAC Tempered jny:Belfast, N. Ireland November 3, 2017 It's a significant year for Instant Composers Pool, for 2017 marks the Dutch jazz collective's fiftieth anniversary. Sadly, the year also saw the passing of Misha Mengelberg, pianist, composer and co-founder of the IPC along with Willem Breuker and Han Bennink. That left Bennink as the sole-surviving charter member, an inevitable sort of evolution with any collective of long-standing. The doors ...

Album Review

ICP Orchestra: Restless in Pieces

Read "Restless in Pieces" reviewed by Vic Albani


Con gli intelligenti insegnamenti di creatività e humor che l'ormai da qualche tempo fuori gioco Misha Mengelberg ha sempre inserito nella “sua" straordinariamente attiva e divertente ICP Orchestra, nonostante l'assenza del leader spirituale di quello che davvero tutti hanno sempre riconosciuto il migliore esempio di “new swing" europeo, Restless in Pieces brilla dei concetti di sempre. Una sorta di homegrown capace, come nessun altro, di elaborare free forms totali accanto alle ben conosciute trascinanti forme proprie delle big band storiche ...

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Album Review

ICP Orchestra: East of the Sun

Read "East of the Sun" reviewed by Glenn Astarita


The Holland-based Instant Composers Pool (ICP) Orchestra has amassed 51 albums since its inception in 1967 and due to health-related issues, legendary co-founder, pianist Misha Mengelberg is unable to perform. But guest artist, pianist Guus Janseen duly integrates his artistry into the orchestra's distinct constitution. And of course inimitable drummer Han Bennink helps support and steer the large ensemble through its perpetually moving currents amid its customary unpredictability and topsy-turvy discourses. As surmised, the artists interconnect free jazz improvisation, folk ...

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Live Review

ICP Orchestra Plus Ken Vandermark/Nate Wooley at FringeArts

Read "ICP Orchestra Plus Ken Vandermark/Nate Wooley at FringeArts" reviewed by Victor L. Schermer


ICP Orchestra FringeArts Ars Nova Workshops Philadelphia, PA January 11, 2015 Despite a cold and damp Sunday night in January, a packed house came to hear a stellar group of musicians from the Netherlands for a performance at the FringeArts Center in the Old City section of town. This collective of seasoned and versatile musicians call themselves the ICP or Instant Composers Pool, and they embody guitarist Jim Hall's broad definition of jazz ...

246
Album Review

ICP Orchestra: Jubilee Varia

Read "Jubilee Varia" reviewed by Glenn Astarita


ICP Orchestra's recordings echo the dynamics and ingenuity of European progressive-jazz improvisation. The largely Dutch band, featuring co-founders, pianist Misha Mengelberg and drummer Han Bennink, instituted the ICP Orchestra in parallel with the ICP record label in the late 1960s. The critically heralded 1999 Hat Art album, Jubilee Variance, enjoys renewed life via this 2010 reissue. The band and respective musicians' legacy is well-documented, spanning several decades. Nonetheless, ICP's creative sparks reside within asynchronous projections of improvisation and ...

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Live Review

Ottawa Jazz Festival Day 7: June 27, 2007

Read "Ottawa Jazz Festival Day 7: June 27, 2007" reviewed by John Kelman


Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 | Day 8 | Day 9 | Day 10 | Day 11

In 2005, TD Canada Trust Ottawa International Jazz Festival Executive Director Catherine O'Grady introduced the Improv Invitational series, intended to bring a diversity of groups whose focus was on collective improvisation to the festival lineup. It's been a successful series and, while some past performances have ...

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Film Review

Instant Composers Pool Orchestra: A Film by Guy Girard

Read "Instant Composers Pool Orchestra: A Film by Guy Girard" reviewed by Ivana Ng


ICP Orchestra A Film by Guy Girard La Huit 2006

For this film, Guy Girard recorded the ICP Orchestra's performance at Noisy-Le-Sac in France in 2003. Much like the nonet's anarchic free improvisational music, the visual document moves from orderly to chaotic without warning. Psychedelic and kaleidoscopic, the film sets out to investigate the metamorphoses of the concert. The film starts with Dutch drummer and co-founder of ICP, Han ...

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145

Recording

The ICP Orchestra Continue Their Remarkable Odyssey in Self-Titled Album

The ICP Orchestra Continue Their Remarkable Odyssey in Self-Titled Album

Source: Gapplegate Music Review by Grego Edwards

The Netherlands have as one of their most enduring and worthy cultural exports the madcap ICP Orchestra. They've just concluded a US tour and their rather recent self-titled CD (ICP 049) maps out why they remain a vital musical organization, whether caught live or, the next best thing, through the electronic medium. The ICP folks have been “post-modern" long before the term had currency; and they continue to be now that the term is on the outs. Just like most ...

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Performance / Tour

ICP Orchestra Brings Zany Dutch Mischief to Seattle Art Museum on April 12th

ICP Orchestra Brings Zany Dutch Mischief to Seattle Art Museum on April 12th

Source: Seattle Jazz Scene

The International Composers Pool (ICP) Orchestra, pictured here, doesn't just invent music in the moment, it plays with the idea of how that music gets made. Mischievous, zany, fox-quick and witty, all the players in this 44-year-old Dutch tentet can tap dance on a dime. (Sadly, pianist and composer Misha Mengelberg left the tour earlier this week for health reasons.) Whether bearding the classics with hippity-hoppity horns or playing ineffably beautiful sustains on violin, cello and bass, ICP always offers ...

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Performance / Tour

Kevin Whitehead on the Instant Composers Pool

Kevin Whitehead on the Instant Composers Pool

Source: Ars Nova Workshop

Ars Nova Workshop's Three Nights in Philadelphia with the Instant Composers Pool Orchestra began last night. Taken from the performance, the video below shows a bird-like Tristan Honsinger conducting the orchestra. It continues tonight when, at 8pm, the tentet will take the stage with guest vocalist Fay Victor. Then, on Sunday, members of the ICP Orchestra will join jazz critic and author Kevin Whitehead for a pre-concert public dicussion at 6pm. Phawker interviewed Whitehead to talk about his new book, ...

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Performance / Tour

ICP Orchestra | Three Nights in Philadelphia

ICP Orchestra | Three Nights in Philadelphia

Source: Ars Nova Workshop

In celebration of Jazz Month, on April 1 the ICP Orchestra invades Philadelphia, making a three-night stand at Christ Church Neighborhood House in Old City. A Dutch collective of improvisers and composers founded in 1967 by Misha Mengelberg, Han Bennink, and Willem Breuker, over 40 years later the ICP Orchestra continues to be at the forefront of creative music. “As swank and precise as it is rollicking, and knowingly evocative of both Ellington and the wildest and woolliest free jazz,” ...

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Education

Ars Nova Workshop Hosts Two Series with Fieldwork & ICP Orchestra

Ars Nova Workshop Hosts Two Series with Fieldwork & ICP Orchestra

Source: Chris M. Slawecki

Ars Nova Workshop Hosts Two Special Creative Music Series

Composer Portrait: Fieldwork, March 11 -13 featuring Vijay Iyer, Tyshawn Sorey and Steven Lehman; Instant Composers Pool Orchestra, April 1ש

Ars Nova Workshop, Philadelphia's leading nonprofit jazz and experimental music presenter, announces two special weekend concert series in Spring 2011. Featuring the work of Fieldwork and Instant Composers Pool Orchestra, the concerts take an in-depth look at the work of two important groups of composers and musicians representing both today's most ...

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Performance / Tour

Benjamin Herman | ICP Orchestra

Benjamin Herman | ICP Orchestra

Source: Ars Nova Workshop

On November 10, 2010, Ars Nova Workshop presented the Netherlands' Benjamin Herman Quartet in Philadelphia. For those who experienced their smoking set of Misha Mengelberg compositions, you likely noticed the camera crew. WHYY-TV’s On Canvas documented this rare performance, which will be premiering on the channel tonight at 10pm. If you missed the concert, be sure to tune in, and check their website for future airings. The preview below shows the band playing a Mengelberg tune called “Brozziman,” inspired by ...

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Recording

ICP Orchestra: "Jubilee Varia" on Hatology 667, Available September 2010

ICP Orchestra: "Jubilee Varia" on Hatology 667, Available September 2010

Source: Werner Uehlinger

On first hearing this CD may sound to you like an ill-programmed mess, with the improvisations up front and the catchy numbers buried deep. But with ICP, over the long haul or short, the more you hear it, the more apparent its trajec tory becomes, the more orderly and less chaotic it sounds. Or, the more you hear ICP's improvised “instant compositions" and their instant demolitions of Misha's highly whistleable tunes, the less clear it becomes what's order and what's ...

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Event

Holland's World-Renowned ICP Orchestra Tours US March 24 - April 12

Holland's World-Renowned ICP Orchestra Tours US March 24 - April 12

Source: Braithwaite & Katz Communications

Stops in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, Austin, Washington D.C., Knoxville, Atlanta, Buffalo, Oakland, Arcata, and Santa Cruz for World-Renowned 10-Piece Dutch Jazz Ensemble

“Arguably the most dynamic, unpredictable and just-plain-fun jazz ensemble on any continent" --Bob Blumenthal, Boston Globe

The world-renowned, Amsterdam-based Instant Composers Pool (ICP) Orchestra tours the U.S. in March & April:

Sat March 24 An die Musik Baltimore, MD andiemusiklive.com

Mon March 26 Houston Hall, University ...

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Performance / Tour

ICP Orchestra US Tour Starts Tomorrow

ICP Orchestra US Tour Starts Tomorrow

Source: All About Jazz

The ICP Orchestra from Amsterdam kicks off its US tour tomorrow night in NYC. [url]http://www.icporchestra.com[/url] The ICP Orchestra is: Misha Mengelberg - piano Han Bennink - drums Ab Baars - clarinet, tenor saxophone Tobias Delius - tenor saxophone, clarinet Ernst Glerum - bass Thomas Heberer - trumpet Tristan Honsinger - cello Michael Moore - alto saxophone, clarinet Mary Oliver - violin Wolter ...

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

De Zeurpiet / No Idea

Instant Composers Pool
2012

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Jubilee Varia

Hat Hut Records
2011

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ICP Orchestra

Instant Composers Pool
2010

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!ICP! 50

Instant Composers Pool
2010

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Videos

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