Gruppo di Improvvisazione di Nuova Consonanza

The Gruppo di Nuova Improvvisazione Consonanza was the first extended period of time existing improvisation ensemble in the field of new music.

The ensemble was founded in 1964 by contemporary composers living in Italy at the suggestion of Franco Evangelisti and existed until 1975. They took the name from the concert society which existed since 1961, as the group as part of their third Festival 1965 in Rome gave her debut concert.

The members of this group were Mario Bertoncini ( percussion and piano ), Ennio Morricone (trumpet ), Walter Branchi (double bass), Franco Evangelisti ( piano ), John Heinman (trombone and cello ), Roland Kayn (vibraphone, marimba, Hammond organ ) and Egisto Macchi ( percussion and celesta ). The musicians were all composers who wanted to expand by matching their musical horizons and consciously perceived the dual role as composer and performer. The ensemble members were hanging by the utopia of a spontaneous composition during an experimental music making. Without formal hierarchies and boundaries created some of the wildest and most lyrical images of the post-war avant-garde.

Unlike AMM or New Phonic Art, the Roman improvisation group did not understand as a counter- flow to the aesthetic debates of the time. Your members involved the consistent further development of musical thinking and the formulation of new sound worlds and forms of communication. The goal was not to develop free forms of improvisation, but to bring together collusive concepts for implementation. The substance of the erimprovisierten works is highly dependent of the sounds used and their conditions of production. The improvisations were usually requires samples that were equally understood as training for the show and was where familiarized yourself with the particular concept of the work.

In particular, Franco Evangelisti, the basic lines of these actions has fixed sound in theory; he saw the ensemble as a way out of the mainstream music business with commissioned works, worn forms of communication and division of labor. The key provision was the principle of economy of compositional and improvisational work. However, the foundation is listening and listening - learning. The essence of improvisation is by Evangelisti namely in the "capacity of listening to one's own mistakes and the mistakes of others and in the immediate response to correct himself accordingly, ie in the distribution of individual energy in the service of the common idea." The repertoire of Nuova Consonanza pieces predominate with a then unconventional treatment of the instruments used (eg puffs and speaking in wind instruments, wings as a resonance chamber for other instruments, etc.).

Discography

• Doo vanguard 137007, (1969 )
• RCA Italiana MLDS 20243 (1970)
• General Music D ZSLGE 55491, (1973 )
• Cinevox Record Sc 33/44 Sc 14 (1975 )
• Cramps Records ( Nova Musicha n 9) CRSLP 6109, (1976 )
• The feed- hack, RCA Italiana P5L 10466, (1977 )
• Gruppo di Nuova Improvvisazione Consonanza RZ 1009 (2001)

Source

• Gianmario Borio, ( text accompanying ) Gruppo di Nuova Improvvisazione Consonanza, RZ 1009 CD (2001)

• Ensemble ( New Music Improvisation )
• Music ( Italy)
• Chamber Music Ensemble