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John Tilbury (born 1 February 1936) is a British pianist. He is considered one of the foremost interpreters of Morton Feldman's music, and since 1980 has been a member of the free improvisation group AMM.
Tilbury studied piano at the Royal College of Music with Arthur Alexander and James Gibb and also with Zbigniew Drzewiecki in Warsaw. In 1968 he was the winner of the Gaudeamus competition in the Netherlands.
During the 1960s, Tilbury was closely associated with the composer Cornelius Cardew, whose music he has interpreted and recorded and a member of the Scratch Orchestra. His biography of Cardew, "Cornelius Cardew – A life unfinished" was published in 2008.
Tilbury has also recorded the works of Howard Skempton and John White, among many others, and has also performed adaptations of the radio plays of Samuel Beckett. He collaborated with the choreographer Ernest Berk.
With guitarist AMM bandmate Keith Rowe's electroacoustic ensemble M.I.M.E.O., Tilbury recorded The Hands of Caravaggio , inspired by the painter's The Taking of Christ (1602). In this live performance, twelve of the members of M.I.M.E.O. were positioned around the piano in a deliberate echo of Christ's Last Supper. The thirteenth M.I.M.E.O. member (Cor Fuhler) is credited with "inside piano" as he interacted and interfered with Tilbury's playing by manipulating and damping the instrument's strings, essentially doing piano preparation in real time. Critic Brian Olewnick describes the album as "A staggering achievement, one is tempted to call The Hands of Caravaggio the first great piano concerto of the 21st century". [1]
Another notable recent recording of Tilbury's was Duos for Doris (like The Hands of Caravaggio also on Erstwhile Records), a collaboration with Keith Rowe. It is widely considered a landmark recording in the genre of electroacoustic improvisation (or "EAI").
In 2013, he collaborated with artist Armando Lulaj in FIEND performance at the National Theatre of Tirana (Albania).
With Morton Feldman
With others
Free improvisation or free music is improvised music without any general rules, instead following the intuition of its performers. The term can refer to both a technique—employed by any musician in any genre—and as a recognizable genre of experimental music in its own right.
Cornelius Cardew was an English experimental music composer, and founder of the Scratch Orchestra, an experimental performing ensemble. He later rejected experimental music, explaining why he had "discontinued composing in an avantgarde idiom" in his own programme notes to his Piano Album 1973.
AMM was a British free improvisation group that was founded in London, England, in 1965. The group was initially composed of Keith Rowe on guitar, Lou Gare on saxophone, and Eddie Prévost on drums. The three men shared an interest in exploring music beyond the boundaries of conventional jazz, as in free jazz and free improvisation. AMM never achieved widespread popularity, but have been influential in improvised music. Most of their albums have been released by Matchless Recordings, which is run by Eddie Prévost. In a 2001 interview, Keith Rowe was asked if "AMM" was an abbreviation. He replied, "The letters AMM stand for something, but as you probably know it's a secret!"
Keith Rowe is an English free improvisation tabletop guitarist and painter. Rowe is a founding member of both AMM in the mid-1960s and M.I.M.E.O. Having trained as a visual artist, his paintings have appeared on most of his albums. He is seen as a godfather of EAI, with many of his recordings having been released by Erstwhile.
M.I.M.E.O. is an experimental electroacoustic free improvisation group formed in 1997 on the initiative of several independent concert promoters in Europe. The abbreviation stands for "Music In Movement Electronic Orchestra". They have issued recordings on Erstwhile Records, Cathnor, Perdition Plastics, Grob, and other labels.
Gert-Jan Prins is a Dutch musician active in free improvisation.
Thomas Lehn is a German piano and synthesizer player active in free improvisation and contemporary music.
Erstwhile Records is an independent record label devoted to free improvisation, particularly the electroacoustic variety, contemporary, experimental composed music, and combinations of both. Erstwhile was founded by Jon Abbey in 1999, whose personality and tastes are closely identified with the label.
Howard While Skempton is an English composer, pianist, and accordionist.
Michael Edward Parsons is a British composer. Since the 1960s, when he met Cornelius Cardew and helped found the Scratch Orchestra, Parsons has been strongly associated with the English school of experimental music. He was born in Bolton and studied at St John's College, Oxford before taking up composition lessons under Peter Racine Fricker at the Royal College of Music in London in 1961. In the 1960s he met Cornelius Cardew; Parsons attended Cardew's experimental music classes at Morley College since 1968. In 1969 Cardew, Parsons and fellow composer Howard Skempton founded the Scratch Orchestra, an experimental free ensemble devoted to performing contemporary music. The Orchestra broke up in early 1970s, partly as a result of the politization led by Cardew. Parsons was among the Orchestra members who refused to be associated with the Maoist politics Cardew was propagating, and left. In 1970 Parsons started working as visiting lecturer in the Fine Art department of the Portsmouth Polytechnic and in the Slade School of Art, University College London. In 1974 he and Skempton formed a duo to perform their own works. In 1996–97 Parsons was a bi-fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge. During this time he organised concerts at Kettle's Yard, Cambridge. Since the early 1960s Parsons has also been active as a writer on music; his writings include a number of important articles on contemporary English composers.
The Scratch Orchestra was an experimental musical ensemble founded in the spring of 1969 by Cornelius Cardew, Michael Parsons and Howard Skempton.
Edwin John Prévost is an English percussionist who founded the free improvisation group, AMM.
Cornelis William Hendrik Fuhler was a Dutch/Romani improvisor, composer, and instrument builder associated with free jazz, experimental music and acoustic ecology. He played piano by manipulating sound with electromagnetic string stimulators like Ebows and motorized actuators. Fuhler also performed on guitar, turntables and synthesizer. He invented the keyolin, a combination of keyboard and violin.
Leslie Arthur "Lou" Gare was a British free-jazz saxophonist born in Rugby, Warwickshire, England, perhaps best known for his works with the improvised music ensemble AMM and playing with musicians such as Eddie Prévost, Mike Westbrook, Cornelius Cardew, Keith Rowe and Sam Richards.
Tania Caroline Chen is a composer, improviser, and sound artist utilizing piano and found sounds. After moving to the United States, Tania toured and performed across the country. She initially settled in Northern California and is now based in New York. She is known for performing the works of composers such as Cornelius Cardew, John Cage, Earle Brown, Morton Feldman, Chris Newman, and David Toop David Toop (recording).
Irma is a 1969 experimental opera by artist Tom Phillips, Fred Orton and Gavin Bryars.
Mikroton Recordings is an independent record label for experimental electronic music, founded by Kurt Liedwart and based in Biel, Switzerland. Mikroton works with a wide range of musicians working in the field of electronic music like sound artist Günter Müller, laptop improviser Christof Kurzmann, electronic musician Jason Kahn and pioneer of tabletop guitar Keith Rowe, turntablists Dieb13 and eRikm, sound artists Stephen Vitiello, Thomas Lehn, Marcus Schmickler, homemade electronics performer Norbert Möslang, guitarist Burkhard Stangl, composers of electroacoustic music Jérôme Noetinger, Angélica Castelló and others. It usually publishes drone, ambient, electronic, experimental music and works with mixed electronic and acoustic instrumentation, trying to research a land between electronic and acoustic fields. The label released two seminal compilation recordings for Austrian group of artists known as klingt.org, who work in the fields of electroacoustic, experimental music and free improvisation, and Echtzeitmusik scene from Berlin. In 2023 the label was rebranded as a label only for Techno music.
Another Timbre is a record label, based in Sheffield and known for its releases of free improvisation, experimental and contemporary classical music. It was founded by television sound recordist Simon Reynell, who also engineers and produces most of the label's recordings.
Piece for Four Pianos is a musical composition for four pianos by American composer Morton Feldman. It was finished in 1957.
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