ICP Orchestra

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

The ICP Orchestra is the orchestra of the Instant Composers Pool, a Dutch collective for jazz and improvised music. The ICP label was founded in Amsterdam in 1967 by the saxophonist Willem Breuker, the pianist Misha Mengelberg and the drummer Han Bennink. The name refers to an idea of the founders: improvising is composing in the moment itself. European free jazz musicians then found it hard to get a record company, so they built a cooperative to release their own recordings.

Music and breakthrough

Mengelberg and Bennink had been playing together since 1961 and in 1964 had contributed to the album Last Date by Eric Dolphy. Mengelberg came from the Fluxus movement and wrote compositions that work like games. Breuker left in 1974 to lead his own group, after which Mengelberg and Bennink extended their collaboration. In the 1970s the label also released records by Derek Bailey, Steve Lacy, Evan Parker and Peter Brötzmann, among others.

Influence

In the 1980s younger musicians joined the orchestra, such as the violinist Mary Oliver. Under Mengelberg's direction the ICP Orchestra studied and recorded the music of Duke Ellington, Herbie Nichols and Thelonious Monk. At the end of the 1980s a long collaboration with the Dutch punk group The Ex also began. The records from the first years appeared in 1970 and 1971, and later came East of the Sun in 2014, among others. The ICP made clear that free improvisation in the Netherlands had a playful tradition of its own, with humour, theatre and an open view of jazz history.

Listening

Discography

Studio albums

• 1970Instant Composers Pool
• 2014East of the Sun
• 2020Instant Composers Pool: Recordings From 1967

In School of Rock

The chapters, maps and magazine stories of School of Rock are currently available in Dutch only.

• After Hours: Session 3^NL Reader