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Instant Composers Pool at The MAC

By Ian Patterson

Instant Composers Pool The MAC Tempered jny:Belfast, N. Ireland November 3, 2017 It's a significant year for Instant Composers Pool, for 2017 marks the Dutch jazz collective's fiftieth anniversary. Sadly, the year also saw the passing of Misha Mengelberg, pianist, composer and co-founder of the IPC along with Willem Breuker and Han Bennink. That left Bennink as the sole-surviving charter member, an inevitable sort of evolution with any collective of long-standing. The doors ...

ICP Orchestra: East of the Sun

By Glenn Astarita

The Holland-based Instant Composers Pool (ICP) Orchestra has amassed 51 albums since its inception in 1967 and due to health-related issues, legendary co-founder, pianist Misha Mengelberg is unable to perform. But guest artist, pianist Guus Janseen duly integrates his artistry into the orchestra's distinct constitution. And of course inimitable drummer Han Bennink helps support and steer the large ensemble through its perpetually moving currents amid its customary unpredictability and topsy-turvy discourses. As surmised, the artists interconnect free jazz improvisation, folk ...

ICP Orchestra Plus Ken Vandermark/Nate Wooley at FringeArts

By Victor L. Schermer

ICP Orchestra FringeArts Ars Nova Workshops Philadelphia, PA January 11, 2015 Despite a cold and damp Sunday night in January, a packed house came to hear a stellar group of musicians from the Netherlands for a performance at the FringeArts Center in the Old City section of town. This collective of seasoned and versatile musicians call themselves the ICP or Instant Composers Pool, and they embody guitarist Jim Hall's broad definition of jazz ...

ICP Orchestra: Jubilee Varia

By Glenn Astarita

ICP Orchestra's recordings echo the dynamics and ingenuity of European progressive-jazz improvisation. The largely Dutch band, featuring co-founders, pianist Misha Mengelberg and drummer Han Bennink, instituted the ICP Orchestra in parallel with the ICP record label in the late 1960s. The critically heralded 1999 Hat Art album, Jubilee Variance, enjoys renewed life via this 2010 reissue. The band and respective musicians' legacy is well-documented, spanning several decades. Nonetheless, ICP's creative sparks reside within asynchronous projections of improvisation and ...

Ottawa Jazz Festival Day 7: June 27, 2007

By John Kelman

Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 | Day 8 | Day 9 | Day 10 | Day 11

In 2005, TD Canada Trust Ottawa International Jazz Festival Executive Director Catherine O'Grady introduced the Improv Invitational series, intended to bring a diversity of groups whose focus was on collective improvisation to the festival lineup. It's been a successful series and, while some past performances have ...

Instant Composers Pool Orchestra: A Film by Guy Girard

By Ivana Ng

ICP Orchestra A Film by Guy Girard La Huit 2006

For this film, Guy Girard recorded the ICP Orchestra's performance at Noisy-Le-Sac in France in 2003. Much like the nonet's anarchic free improvisational music, the visual document moves from orderly to chaotic without warning. Psychedelic and kaleidoscopic, the film sets out to investigate the metamorphoses of the concert. The film starts with Dutch drummer and co-founder of ICP, Han ...

ICP Orchestra in Seattle, WA

By Bill Bennett

ICP Orchestra Seattle, WA March 25, 2006

New Dutch Swing is the phrase coined by critic Kevin Whitehead - who wrote a book of the same name - to describe the music of the ICP (Instant Composers Pool) Orchestra, the Willem Breuker Kollektief, Bik Bent Braam and other members of the vital improvised music scene in Holland. Misha Mengelberg, Han Bennink and Breuker were co-founders of ICP in 1967. In Seattle as part of a ...

ICP Orchestra: Aan & Uit

By John Kelman

The Instant Composers Pool, or ICP Orchestra, is a Dutch collective that, after emerging in the ‘70s with a number of albums over a ten-year period only to then more or less disappear, has re-emerged over the past five years with a number of recordings for its own ICP label. Schizophrenic at the best of times, the ensemble’s early history was characterized by a deep rift between originating members pianist Misha Mengelberg, who wanted to explore the concept of “instant ...

ICP Orchestra: Oh, My Dog

By Mark Corroto

The Amsterdam based ICP Orchestra (meaning improvisation defined as an “instant composing pool”) can best be described to Americans as Carl Stalling directs the Duke Ellington Orchestra playing chamber music. Pianist Misha Mengelberg and drummer Han Bennink lead their brand of instant composing. Mengelberg, a master of the music of both Herbie Nichols and Thelonious Monk, is the poster-child for the Dutch creative scene. He prefers odd angular melodies and playing spin-the-dial for differing styles. Drummer Han Bennink seems to ...

ICP Orchestra: Jubilee Varia

By Glenn Astarita

Individually these gentlemen have had more than a hand or two in redefining modern jazz, yet as a unit and under the auspices of the “Instant Composers Pool Orchestra” – this band has been knocking them dead during live gigs over the years while remaining criminally under recorded. Jubilee Varia is the new “ICP Orchestra” release recorded live in Zurich, Switzerland 1997.

Primarily a Dutch outfit featuring pianist Misha Mengelberg, drummer Han Bennink, cellist Ernst Reijseger, California born woodwind specialist ...

ICP Orchestra: Jubilee Varia

By Robert Spencer

Misha Mengelberg has never gotten the recognition he deserves; this new release from his ICP (Instant Composers Pool) Orchestra is yet another indication of how much recognition he does indeed deserve.

Mengelberg is a premier pianist with a superb skill for instant composition. He manages to create coherent wholes out of the sounds of utter surprise. Here and there in the “Jubilee Varia," which is a feature for several soloists that forms the first half of this disc, he'll tinkle ...