The music Phil and I played during the concert recorded here was not determined in advance (except in respect to when and where we would play, and that in general Phil would mainly sing and I would mainly play the double bass); as this implies, we improvised both the form and content of the performance. But contrary to what some writers often assume, this doesn't necessarily denote elements of stream-of-consciousness, or moment form, or indeterminacy. Indeed I would suggest this is composed music in many senses of the term, but not composed in advance of performance. It is certainly 'determined' in the sense that on the whole we decide what will happen, it doesn't just happen to us. As experienced improvisers Phil and I know what we are doing (although we don't always know what we are going to do). Admittedly, every now and then we might also do something we didn't even know we could do, but in the main we draw on our considerable individual vocabularies and structuring strategies to spontaneously produce unforeseen and unrepeatable constellations of sound with a malleable yet form-aware structure. For me this represents one of the ideal possible states of music-making - a musical voyage of discovery, without a map but with an erudite and companionable fellow-traveller!
