It was a long Friday at PUNKT, with seminars, concerts and live remixes.
The first seminar of the day was with Fiona Talkington talking to "turntable artist" Philip Jeck. A fascinating and talkative artist! He was not particularly interested in claiming that one genre was better than the other. "There are bad people in all genres". He also advised the students at the university to take any opportunity offered. "Don´t be cynical about anything! That´s my motto!".
A pretty nervous Evan Parker entered the stage, admitting that he did not feel comfortable speaking in these academic settings. What he did do, was to use his nervousness to illustrate some of the nature of improvisation, when he lost track of his own manuscript. His talk was on composition and/or improvisation, and the correct title in the program should have been "Semantic confusions and their consequences in the discourse on improvisation", not "confusion". Glad to help you all there.
And thanks to Evan Parker I may even manage to sneak in a Wyatt - Benge link, since he told us that Alfreda Benge introduced him to John Stevens, while she was working at Ronnie Scott´s when she was studying.
On the main stage at the Agder Teater we were in for a slow and meditative evening, with quiet improv (Koboku Senju, JohnTilbury/Evan Parker/John Russell/Okkyung Lee), music composed by Dai Fujikura and a live performance of David Sylvian and Holger Czukay´s "Plight and Premonition", with Sylvian, Erik Honoré, Jan Bang, John Tilbury, Philip Jeck, Arve Henriksen and Eivind Aarset on stage. Beautiful music all the way, with fantastic sound and lights as added value (photo of Tilbury/Parker/Russell/Lee). I must admit I would have enjoyed some kick of energy in there for a change, but as Han Bennink says when he goes off rock drumming at jazz festivals: "Sorry, wrong festival!"
Jan Bang, Erik Honoré and Sidsel Endresen remixed Dai Fujikura´s music from the first concert of the evening. Very nice, and not too long either. Quite a lot of artists here do not seem to agree that it is smart to leave the audience wanting more.
Since we were told that some of the audience were quite distracted by amateur photographers at the festival, let me just put it straight, that my photos were taken in a very discrete manner, from the side of the hall or well hidden among the professionals. And hey, no shutter sounds from me!
No members of the audience were hurt to make this blog post.
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