July 2026: back to the University of West London to work with Jane Chapman and Simon Zagorski-Thomas on our Divertissements project. This was a really satisfying session because it rekindled momentum and resulted in some genuinely collaborative composition; we listened through to the various improvisations Jane and I have created on the piece’s materials, deciding which had potential and which we needed to discard.
What happens next involves quite a number of bits of ‘homework’ for each of us but chief amongst these is that Simon is now in a position akin to producer Teo Macero who worked on Miles Davis’ seminal electric albums In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew. Macero and Davis selected and edited together multiple takes and improvisations in order to create the large scale forms featured on the albums; Simon now has to do the same with the improvisations he, Jane and I have selected. This is just the kind of collaborative process, with the roles of composer, performer and producer collapsing, that I hoped for on starting this project.
The next stage is to take the MIDI data that records my synth improvisations and use this to trigger instruments within the Townshend Studio collection; Simon and I are particularly drawn to the Synclavier with its range of early sampled sounds so we will begin there and see where it leads us.
There is still more to do before we can arrive at a master that we can approach labels to release but that will be for another news item.
