Gruppo Di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza Gruppo Di Improvvisazione

Way ahead of their time, Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza were an experimental collective fully based on improvised music. It was the only European group exclusively made of composers, instead of simple performers. The Group tried to break the schemes by making use of new instruments and electronic effects, reinventing new timbres, using the voice in an unconventional way. They were also known for the presence of Ennio Morricone on trumpet who, at the same time (1966), was also working as a soundtrack composer for Sergio Leone’s western movies!

Up until now all the works have been the fruit of a composer and that this «open» form was in reality still «closed» to a still greater opening. It was the presence in Rome of one of its principal members, the composer Larry Austin, that encouraged the formation of the IMPROVISATION GROUP OF THE NUOVA CONSONANZA, which is the only group in Europe formed exclusively of Composers.

The members of this group intercalate the instruments into various formations, from a minimum of two instruments, to a total formation. The essential element of the group is a sense of good understanding, which is the base for finding a fertile field first for discussion and then for performance.

This is the first time in the history of western music that more than one composer get together playing various instruments, where the result is no longer the result o f an individual effort but of a joint effort. For all this, it is clear that the GROUP makes an effort to surmount the limits of this system, and despite these limits, in some cases, gives glimpses of new horizons, of a new system, with the use of new instruments. The continual invention of timbres, and also the use of some electronic effects, for example the use of voices as impulse-phonemons, puts the group in a position of actuality, where contemporary composers of subjective vision have yet to arrive.

All the pieces in this collection are absolutely «improvised» and are not the result of «editing». The most interesting thing is that the actual duration of the piece for the listener is the same as that taken for its production, that is an «effort» of few minutes. The art of improvisation is fascinating and this way of «composing together» results in an internal and external tension of great sensitivity, and I think that this is the only magic still possible in the music of to-day, no longer written, and completely deprived of all myth in front of that personage once called Author.