Boy, we had a great time in the most lovely, crazy, perfect city in the
universe.  Amsterdam is simply wonderful, out of one's sugar-plum dreams
of what a city should be like.

We arrived Thursday evening, one suitcase lost but otherwise ok, got a
groovy little hotel near the Dam Square, hit a couple of coffeeshops and
ate falafel and shwarma, hard-to-find delicacies in Mallorca.  All day
Friday we worked with Robert Avalon (http://www.robertavalon.com) and the
other musicians in the workshop, which was presented by the Stichtig SWING
organization in A'dam, devoted to promotion of improvised music.  We were
2 fiddles, 2 celli, a couple of singers, a guitarist and a drummer, along
with Robert on the piano.  It was fascinating working together, people from
all over with widely varying musical backgrounds.  Everybody was a little
shy at first but by the end of the day we were really communicating and
coming up with some very interesting music indeed.

We worked for a while passing phrases to each other, opening our ears and
eyes and working on listening.  The most interesting work was toward the
end, when we would think of three contrasting ideas which would then make
up a kind of three-part form, to which we would improvise, keeping within
a 5-minute limit.  One, for instance, was:  A.  A battle between the
strings and the other instruments, the string army approaching from a
distance, B.  an absurd waltz, C.  A tender lullaby accompanied by muted
strings.  It was fascinating hearing how 10 musicians all making stuff up
could result in what came out as an organized (somewhat) piece of music.

The next day was our concert, we were to play for an hour or so as
part of a day-long festival of improvised music, held in the incredibly
historic Felix Meritus hall, former home of the Concertgebau (sp) orchestra
and in the 17th century it was the principal, indeed only hall in the city
dedicated to music.  Steeped in history we were as we squeaked and played
and pounded and sang.  We did four improvisations.  The first two were
three-part forms like we had rehearsed, with indications, written by
Robert, such as:  "Soprano and violin (Enrique) duo, all others light and
sustained." and "All start gradual accel and cresc together leading to huge
climax." The first one worked pretty well and can already be heard on the
Tramuntana webpage.

For the third improv we selected victims from the audience to be our
conductor.  We did three, and they were really fun.  One guy was not a
musician at all, and it was fascinating how he could evoke certain musical
feelings just by standing there and being himself.  Then he started to
feel the power of being able to just shake his hand and hear a musical
interpretation of the gesture.  He was just an ordinary person like anyone,
but there was music in his person, and I found it easy to play him.  I
thought of von Karajan, and how he could make the greatest of music from
the smallest of gestures; it was simply his personality, his aura if you
will, but what was interesting is that there's a musical aura to everybody.
Since that experience I have occasionally found myself sitting in a cafe or
walking on the street, and looking at a person and hearing how I would play
the music of that person.

The last improv started with a fun trio with TRAMUNTANA and Robert, later
there was a big clumsy waltz, Mahler on acid, then we did the lullaby again
but went on to give the child nightmares with "violent interruptions" that
led to "free for all" which was rather fun and sounded just like the chaos
you might expect with ten musicians, including drums, going loopy.

It was a really fun experience and we're looking forward a lot to
continuing our work in this, taking some of the things we learned and
continuing to find forms, compose rather than play predictible or academic
stuff, and really express ourselves in a way that can translate to a public
as something musical.

You can hear the first improv from the concert, as well as a couple of
other fragments, at http://mp3.com/TRAMUNTANA, and I'll be posting more
over the next week or so so stay tuned.

David Runnion
Mallorca, Spain