I've always enjoyed improvising.  I've been a closet electric
guitarist since I was 16 (now 42) and while I followed the traditional
path of a classical musician, studying cello in conservatory and playing
in orchestras and chamber groups, I've always been fascinated with
improvisation, particularly improvisation using "classical" vocabularies,
20th-century extended harmony and instruments and all of the sounds that
20th-century music has made possible.  Traditional jazz, though I've
studied it some, has never grabbed me, partly because I never had the
patience or time to master the complexity of the scales and also what
I see as a rigid structure of harmony that has to be followed.  But
improvised chamber music, that's interesting to me.

Improvisers like to talk about form and beauty emerging from chaos,
about sponteneous creativity, melding composition and performance to occur
together.  Others work with visual artists, poets, musicians from other
cultures, performance-art types and other such hibrow stuff.  Me I just
like making, literally, music.  I get a big ol' charge from having no
notes in front of me, no passages that might or might not go well, nothing
planned, just simple musical communication with friends, like conversation.

Lately I've been experimenting a little with this kind of thing, with
a violinist colleague named Enrique Pastor, and having a a lot of fun.
We just started playing together a few weeks ago and still we just
basically sit and noodle about and who knows what'll happen.  As it
happens, Enrique has a DAT machine and sometimes we switch it on and
forget about it.  Some of the results can be heard right here on the
internet at http://mp3.com/TRAMUNTANA.  Please remember, this is not a
polished finished product by any means, just a couple of musicians making
some music.  Funny thing is, in some spots, it seems those improvisers
are right:  form and something beautiful can come out of the chaos of
instanteneous composition.  Maybe it's just me, but there are one or two
moments in the four tracks on the page that I rather like, and that in the
moment of playing it, I felt like something really musical was happening.
I hope it provides a moment of entertainment.

David Runnion
Mallorca, Spain