In 1991 Maggie Nicols and others began a gathering of free improvisation performers around the London area at the Betsy Trotwood pub. The group has met nearly every Monday since, and has drawn a who's who of improvisers, including the group making up this cd: Angeline Conaghan, Hugo Danino, Evrah, Sharon Gal, Glynis Joseph, Juliet Morel, Carmel Morrissey, Zia Musafia, Maggie Nicols, Frank Charlton, Paul Shearsmith, Shirley Hall Bass, Bernard Burns, Tom Chant, Dave De Cobain, Richard Leigh, Veryan Weston, Susanna Ferrar, Morris English, Moshi Honen, Steve Moyes, Mick Rodwell, Dennis Austin, Dave Fowler, and Stuart Fisher.

Over the years The Gathering has developed a subtle language of improvisation as only a dedicated group who have worked together this long could. When The Gathering was asked to perform in the 2002 Freedom of the City Nicols culled a set of current and prior performers and did something somewhat antithetical to the group: she asked them to rehearse.

Nicols cites the recently departed conceptualist John Stevens, with whom she had worked as early as the 1960s, as a source of inspiration on her thinking. For the Freedom of the City she decided to present three pieces: Click Piece, Sustained Piece, and Mouse in the Desert (not Stevens' original title). These pieces play with the simple concepts of sustain, staccato or dynamics, and are intended to function as springboards for group improvisation. Nicols augmented the pieces with improvisations and readings of poetry by Stevens and, Frank Charlton, Vicky Scrivener, Shirley Hall and Richard Leigh. The original live recordings were technically problematic, however, so it was decided to take the group into a studio to rerecord the works. Two large improvisations were also recorded, the second naturally dividing itself into two parts.

The resulting works are rich and diverse, as one might expect from the list of playersand their long association. The improvisations Feast, Released, and Beauty and the Beast take the listener on extended journeys, now playful, now dark and brooding, droning, sardonic, bewitching (or downright bewitched!) quiet and then chaotic. One has a sense of European history unfolding around them, enveloping them with a shroud of sound, ancient and modern, but never predictable and rarely familiar. The Stevens pieces give focus to the release, particularly in the poetic readings, where the approaches are forceful and unusual, sending a shiver in their sharp attitude and strong renderings. The Gathering is music to hear to over and over, to mine the many nuances, to hear the subtle interplay and the incredible musicianship of such a large group listening and interacting, and to experience the merging of many powerful and unique voices.