Mondo Jazz

My main thought about the ICP is: How do they do it?The show is always radically different. These are certainly all great improvisers in the most unfettered sense. But perhaps what amazes me most, beyond that, is the way they wander in and out of strictly composed material. With ten people all finding each other at exactly the same moment and abandoning each other at the next.Only one analogy comes to mind: they're like a herd of elephants. Each one doing its own thing, seemingly oblivious to the others. And without any cue they all start running in one direction. Without any signal again they stop. Scientists say there must be cues, but that we humans are just not aware of them.I feel the same way about the ICP. I'd like to know what those invisible signals are and how they work. I've invited the group to the Banff Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music in hopes of getting to the bottom of this. That should be a trip.These musicians can swing like mad when they want to, and can play the most sensitive cafe ballad at the drop of a hat. They also compose their own fantastic repertoire, and play a passel of Misha Mengelberg tunes, many dating back to the fifties. But the crux of what they do, as the name implies, is improvisation. And they do it as well as anyone out there. 

Dave Douglas (2007)