All of a Sudden

The Instant Composers Pool has been dropping world premieres every night for 40 years.


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Published: Mar 20, 2007

The title "Instant Composer" is a typical bit of double-edged cheek coming from pianist Misha Mengelberg. Certainly it forces audiences to think of the Instant Composers Pool (ICP) Orchestra as building an evanescent musical structure that will exist for only as long as it takes to create.

TALENT POOL: The current lineup has been steady for the past five years.

(CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

On the other hand, it suggests an offhand flippancy, supported by Mengelberg's impish playfulness. For drummer Han Bennink, Mengelberg's partner in the ICP since its founding in 1967 and musical collaborator for years before, it's the mercurial nature of the project that attracts him.

"Why should an improviser be different than a composer?" Bennink asks from his hotel room in Florence, Italy. "A composer sometimes works on a thing for months and months and it's played once and then it goes in the fridge and you never hear it again. They call that a world premiere. Well, my instant composing is a world premiere every night."

That makes for a lot of world premieres, given the fact that the ICP is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. The nebulous group began as a partnership between Mengelberg, Bennink and saxophonist Willem Breuker. Through its early years, the ensemble consisted of an ever-shifting roster of improvisers, the name referring more to a concept than a group. In the early '80s, Mengelberg began to assemble a larger and more permanent group, appending "Orchestra" to the name. The current 10-piece lineup has been steady for the past five years.

While Bennink describes those raucous early years as "like a total boiling can of spaghetti," he'll compare the current band with only one other: the late-era Duke Ellington Orchestra.

The story that's always told about the history of improvised music is that a rift formed in the '60s, with Americans pursuing free jazz inspired by jazz, soul and rock; and Europeans playing a free chamber style derived from modern classical. In Holland, however, there seemed to be a melding of the two, coined "New Dutch Swing" by critic Kevin Whitehead, and exemplified by the jazz backgrounds of Bennink and Mengelberg.

Born in Amsterdam in 1942, Bennink spent most of the '60s playing with touring American jazz musicians — everyone from Sonny Rollins to Johnny Griffin to Eric Dolphy. "In that small country called Holland," explains Bennink, "we stay shoulder to shoulder with 60 million people up to our knees in the cow shit, and the main influence after the Second World War was of course American music. When I heard for the first time 'Kim' by Charlie Parker, I fell off my chair. When I rented out my drum kit to Sunny Murray, with the Albert Ayler group in 1964, I fell off my chair again."

Much has been written of the tempestuous relationship between Bennink and Mengelberg over the years, though Bennink claims that much of that has been inflated, the inevitable result of a decades-long interaction. "Misha and me have been playing together longer than Harry Carney and Duke Ellington," he says, "so that's quite a bit of a lifetime."

The pair couldn't provide more of a contrast. Mengelberg, the introvert mastermind, hunches over the keyboard, almost seeming like a growth on the instrument as he spins his musical web. The tall, lanky Bennink, on the other hand, can't be contained by a drumkit, often leaping off his stool to play the floor, the walls, his body, whatever's around that can have noise forced out of it.

"Misha will always be my friend in music, but he has a completely different lifestyle," Bennink describes. "I'm totally active, Misha's totally passive. I never see him in daily life. But the main thing is that we play and that we have the same direction or thinking or meaning about what the music should be."

When it comes to his athletic playing style, however, Bennink gets upset that it's often treated as comedy. "I never play a show to make people laugh," he insists. "It's totally coming from a different context, and it still makes me mad. I like to sit in front of my drumkit and play the floor. But it doesn't have to be funny. You'd rather hire Spike Jones."

Still, Bennink comes from a visual arts background (he used to design one-of-a-kind packaging for ICP's earliest self-produced records), and his performances have a Dadaist absurdity to them, an inventive wit that is a characteristic of the ensemble as a whole. But Bennink claims that he is simply sticking with his musical instincts. "Going off the drums, doing nothing, and laying on the floor, that's also music. Or sitting under your cymbal and doing nothing. Or suddenly running outside and putting your cymbal in a hailstorm. That's also music. There are many, many possibilities. And I'm into that."

(editorial@citypaper.net)

Instant Composers Pool Orchestra plays Mon., March 26, 8 p.m., free, Bodek Lounge, Houston Hall, University of Pennsylvania, 3417 Spruce St., www.arsnovaworkshop.com.