Iain Ballamy Quartet – Riversphere

Doors 7:45 PM, Music 8:30 PM – 2 sets of music

Line-up:

Iain Ballamy – Saxophone

Rob Luft – Guitar

Corrie Dick – Drum kit

Tim Harries – Bass guitar

About:

The complex interconnectedness of rivers and the surrounding environment is defined as Riversphere. This concept shares similarities to the interconnectivity between musical genres, the players, the listener and the performance itself. The collective experience is achieved through a shared flow state.

Our aspiration with ‘Riversphere’ is to blur the boundaries between improvised and written composition. If the music of this group is the river, the musicians are its tributaries and the confluence, where they meet, becomes the flow state.

As rivers and tributaries are infinitely mutable, so are the possibilities for different musical incarnations of Riversphere.

The quartet will be promoting their recent album release on the Babel Label, which features a flexible ensemble of between two and six musicians. The creation of this collection of pieces was a ruminative process spanning five years. In attempting to merge and blur the seemingly opposing musical forms of composition & improvisation, the result of this project is to transcend the distinction between the two, to embrace both written & extemporised music, spontaneity & tradition, the past & the present, and everything in-between.

As one turns over the word ‘Riversphere’ phonetically, like a mantra, it begins to sound like ‘reverse fear’, a sentiment which also relates to the trust and courage involved when making music with and performing music to others!