In February 2013 the Berlin-based musician Johnny Chang, who is a member of the Wandelweiser collective, visited London as part of a short tour along with his some-time playing partner Jamie Drouin, the Canadian musician and artist who had recently moved to Berlin. The duo constructed an installation at the Soundfjord gallery in Tottenham, and also played at a concert entitled Variable Formations at Cafe OTO in East London. As well as the Chang / Drouin duo, the Cafe OTO concert also featured John Tilbury on piano, and the trio of Angharad Davies, Phil Durrant and Lee Patterson.

In the first half of the concert the musicians played in their established groupings (Tilbury solo, Chang/Drouin duo and Davies/Durrant/Patterson trio). The trio realised some pages from Eva-Maria Houben’s composition ‘von da nach da’, John Tilbury played a solo entitled ‘Homage to Moriarty’, using themes and sound extracts taken from the early film ‘The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’, and the Chang/Drouin duo played a semi-improvised piece which they had developed for their tour.

For the second half of the concert all the musicians played together as a sextet. The concept for the sextet performance, which Johnny Chang had suggested, was that each group should develop the material that they had presented in the first half of the concert in relation to the work of the other groups. It was left open as to exactly how this development and integration of material should occur, resulting in a degree of uncertainty which was heightened by the fact each musician had never played with at least two of the other musicians before.

The CD ‘Variable Formations’ consists of the sextet performance from Cafe OTO in its entirety, and is a particular and unique combination of prepared and improvised material.