Morris / Fell / Ward

The Necessary And The Possible

Label: Victo Country: Canada

"The Necessary and the Possible applied to the context of this group -- and what we reach for with our music -- says so much about the subject that I could just type the title enough times to fill this page, not write anything else and leave the rest for the reader to imagine. That might be sinister and apathetic.

Seriously though, Simon, Alex and I are indeed equals. There is a balance of content between us. It is rendered in shared ideas about articulation, timbre, and methods of interaction. The group vocabulary feels limitless. We listen to one another carefully, with a willingness to play in unison, to complement and or juxtapose whatever idea comes to us. Perhaps it's a coincidence that we share this set of things. We live in different countries (me in the U.S., Alex in the U.K., Simon in France) and up to the date of this recording had only worked together as a group for a week. Knowing as I do that there are many U.K. musicians who share a similar degree of technique and versatility, perhaps the real coincidence here pertains to me.

Regardless, the complex set of materials we share makes it possible to achieve what I feel is a rare combination of things. For instance, we freely decide to connect to a kind of narrative flow, a stated or implied pulse or linear progression, then instantly disconnect from it separately or together. This single musical decision gives us an amazing amount of freedom in our performance. It expands our ability to use pitches that can be manipulated with timbre and extended techniques as singular sonic statements, to construct intervallic templates, or to use melodic ideas that ride the flow. Like every part of our music, our collective creation of form requires no planning or discussion. The sequence of events, beginnings and endings occur through trust and confidence in each other."-Joe Morris, March 2009

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