Sunday 2nd February 2025
5pm-7pm
The Con Club, 139 High Street, Lewes, BN7 1XS
£5
Safehouse Collective and the Free Range Orchestra from Canterbury join forces to play John Zorn’s Cobra and other experiments in group improvisation.
Cobra was conceived as a system with very detailed rules but with no pre-conceived sequence of events – a ‘game piece’ – for a group of musical improvisors and a prompter. The title was inspired by a table-top war game.
Zorn said his goal with Cobra was to harness the creative developments in improvisation and extended techniques by New York City’s downtown scene musicians in a semi-structured way, but without hindering their performances; he was interested in telling the musicians when to play, and with whom, but without telling them what to play.
Plus-Minus (1963, 1974) by German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen was a key inspiration for Zorn, inspiring him to develop methods play with or against each other and in response to his cues but without dictating specific notes, sounds, or other formal structures.
Safehouse and Free Range Orchestra are pictured below in the first of these joint gigs, which happened in Canterbury in November.
Thanks to Outlands Network Exchange Programme for the commission that made this possible.