AMM

AMM, perchance more than a group, has been a vast idea, of what can be the limits of music, of improvisation, of notation (and the lack thereof), of musical expression, of the discovery of sounds, of socialism in music. And it’s precisely in 2015 that 50 years have passed since the beginning of this journey.

Created in 1965 by Eddie Prévost (drums, percussion), Keith Rowe (guitar, electronics) and Lou Gare (saxophone), AMM has seen a number of key musicians in the history of 20th century British music pass through its ranks. Composer Cornelius Cardew was a member for 7 years, Syd Barrett and his Pink Floyd were sharing the same orbit in concerts during 1966 in the more psychedelic side of swinging London, Paul McCartney witnessed a recording of theirs (reportedly left a bit confused), Evan Parker was a regular collaborator - as was John Butcher, and a select handful of others.

Their unabashed exploration of truths (musical, human, artistic, political, civic, ideological), enabled them to revolutionize the meaning of not only jazz, electro-acoustics or contemporary music, as it also contributed to the atomization of the frontiers of these areas, opening throughout the last five decades numerous doors for those who listen, those who make music, while at the same time creating uncountable hours of memorable music, essencial to the decoding of the advancements in these fields through the last half century. The vastness herein is as grand as the scope of modernity itself, and of whatever one wishes to call lucidity in the midst of post-modernity; no more, no less.

John Tilbury, one of the most prominent men and pianists in both research and interpretation of contemporary music in the last few decades, has been a member since 1980. Roughly in the last 10 years, after Rowe’s definitive exit, its through the duo of Prévost, the one founding member of the group, and Tilbury that all of AMM’s continuous expressive exploration continues. Tilbury forever focused in analysis and progression of Morton Feldman’s clusters, Prévost forever master of all times, metrics and possibilities of ordinance. One of the rarest of musics, that seems to know all there is about the world.