Roberto Bonati Chironomic Orchestra: The Gesture Of Sound / The Gesture Of Colour

Someone once said that writing about music was as illogical as singing about economics. Writers about music inevitably bristle at the suggestion but it might have merit when it comes to improvised music. How do you write about something that can never be recreated, even when recorded and preserved for posterity? We can discuss its method of creation, the sounds made by those who perform it, its colours and textures and our emotional and intellectual responses to it in much the same way we would were it through-composed. But this surely ignores what made it different as a mode of musical activity in the first instance.

On The Gesture of Sound/The Gesture of Colour, Roberto Bonati uses but extends the conduction approach of African American trumpeter/composer Lawrence "Butch" Morris. We might call Bonati's modus operandi instant composition and describe its result in terms of the sound world of the European contemporary music avant-garde of Berio, Boulez, Nono and others. But still we miss something. This live recording, made at the Valserena Abbey near Parma, involved live drawing by Henning Bolte, the images being projected onto the screen behind the performers. The music and the audience's reaction to it were shaped then by both place and the images created by Bolte. It was, therefore, an immersive experience that cannot be adequately represented by any recording, even one as brilliantly engineered as this.

Readers may respond that this is surely true of any concert recording. Is not the sense that we make of the music's shape and development and our own emotional reaction to it worthy enough for comment? Perhaps, but there is surely a difference between a notated or even an improvised jazz performance and one created through the medium of its conductor and their musical mind. It is about narrative. Here, any narrative involved must surely be Bonati's, even though his musicians are central to its realisation. Bolte's drawings offer a parallel account but the core narrative is Bonati's.

When Morris performed in London in 1998, several of the UK's finest improvisers hired for the concert balked at the restrictions that the conductor sought to impose. That certainly is not the case with the Chironomic* Orchestra, but it is a point worth bearing in mind. The classical symphony orchestra take the score and follow its pre-existing narrative. The straight-ahead jazz quintet take a composition and contribute to its narrative in their solos but the story lying in the original composition is not theirs to begin with, however much they may change its shape and tenor. A group of free improvisers come together to create a narrative collectively. All of these differ from what is involved with The Gesture of Sound/The Gesture of Colour.

Of course, one can simply choose to luxuriate in the colours and textures on display here. And the listener may be more than willing to do so. This music is astonishing. And if we were told that it had been through-composed, it would not be surprising. That it emerged during the performance is another matter entirely. This music is deeply moving. It feels simultaneously ancient and modern, speaking as it does of musics both past and present.

But critics are asked to do something else and to do that involves an act of projection, not just in trying to imagine what it felt to be present at this concert but of trying to find a way into the creative imagination of Bonati himself. In that, we are both helped and hindered by our knowledge of his previous work and—for some of us—the experience of interviewing and corresponding with him. No-one else could have made this music, that it is as much a reflection of his aesthetic and ethical creative imagination as work with the ParmaFrontiere and other orchestras.

The Gesture of Sound/The Gesture of Colour is imbued with Bonati's personality, his warmth, kindness and generosity, but also his capacity to embrace darkness. Imagine a medieval mystery play or ritual, its meaning opaque to the viewer, but somehow sensed. This music is as much about intuition as conscious intention. To borrow a word from film theory, Bonati is in this context an auteur, a guiding light but reliant on his musicians/actors to realise the end result. This music emerges from the complex relationships between Bonati and the members of the Chironomic Orchestra, individually and collectively. It is stunningly beautiful.

*Chironomic refers to the use of hand gestures, or cheironomy, in directing music or speech.

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