Marginal Consort #performance #video [#geekgirl]

Missed a unique opportunity to see Marginal Consort in Melbourne last night (June 8th). Here is an ear twister for you, in case you missed them too.

Marginal Consort is a Japanese avant-garde improvisation collective composed of sound and visual artists who were all students of Takehisa Kosugi at the radical Bigaku school of aesthetics in Tokyo in the ’70s. Founded in 1997, the collective, which plays just one concert per year, is a reformation of the East Bionic Symphonia, a large improvisation ensemble in the spirit of Kosugi’s Group Ongaku and Taj Mahal Travellers projects.

Marginal Consort’s extended set explores forms of sound and ways of playing that never coalesce into music, but create a group dynamic of ebb and flow, exploration and fluidity. A Marginal Consort show has a fixed start and end time, but otherwise nothing else is predetermined. All is temporary, flexible. Accidental or deliberate unison. The musicians are physically separated in the performance space like individual actors. The audience is encouraged to move around to experience different aural perspectives of their dense, kaleidoscopic and immersive performance.