I think I must have seen Phil perform so many times that I no longer notice that he can look a bit deranged when he's singing. Anyway I find watching say Cecilia Bartoli much more offputting.
What do you think are the important considerations (if any), Richard, when including voices in such a performance? Does one have to be more careful about avoiding unwanted significations with the human voice?
At the risk of seeming to dodge the question, when the group was originally being put together, the primary considerations were more to do with maximising its timbral/articulational range and possible subgroupings and "symmetries" with only eight performers (hence 2 voices, 2 melody instruments, 2 electronic instruments, (prepared) piano & percussion), and with the actual musical personalities and their possible relationship within such a collective, than with "unwanted significations" - since it's principally an improvising group, once (say) Phil is part of it, anything and everything he does is by definition "wanted".
I'm just listening to fORCH's new 2CD set
spin networks (just got to the end of the first disc), and I still find Phil Minton is quite often the main focus of my attention whenever he's present at all, really, although I'm hearing more range - and, in particular, more wit - in what he does than I perceived on Saturday. Maybe a result of not having the visual element or maybe more to do with the closer acoustic picture I'm getting listening to a CD than sitting at the back of a church.
I'm very interested by your way of putting things, Richard, in saying that anything and everything that an improviser does 'is by definition "wanted"'. I suppose I don't have any real insider knowledge of the sorts of decisions a musician might make when performing in such a group. Would the pianist, for example, make a point of not hitting big triads/dominant 7ths in order to avoid strong tonal implications (much as in early notated atonal music)? If so, aren't there similar considerations to do with what human voices can evoke, and what you might not want them to evoke?
Having said that, there's something almost Berio-esque about the range, and indeed the sometimes surprising linguistic concreteness, of what Phil seems ready to evoke in his contribution on
spin networks, so maybe I'm barking up completely the wrong horse.
PS Guys, what's the 'shew' joke? CD pulled that one on another thread the other day, and now Colin. Does it rhyme with 'Grew'?
