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Spontaneous Music Ensemble
From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist
The Spontaneous Music Ensemble, SME for short, was a loose association of freely improvising musicians, brought together in 1965 by the South London jazz drummer and trumpeter John Stevens and the alto and soprano saxophonist Trevor Watts. The line-up varied from a duo of Stevens and Watts to a company of more than a dozen players. In January 1966 the group began a residency of six nights a week at the Little Theatre Club in London. The month after, it recorded its first album, Challenge.
Music and breakthrough
The principle was open and leaderless. According to the critic Brian Olewnick, great value was placed on careful listening. The saxophonist Evan Parker related that Stevens had two rules: if you play so loudly that you can no longer hear the others, it is too loud, and if your music does not regularly relate to what the others are doing, why are you in the group? Out of this came what was jokingly called insect improv: very quiet, intense, rhythmless and mostly atonal music. The early groups centred on wind instruments, with Watts, Parker and the trumpeter Kenny Wheeler, the later ones on strings, with the guitarist Roger Smith and the violinist Nigel Coombes. The transitional album is Biosystem from 1977. Derek Bailey, Paul Rutherford, Dave Holland and Barry Guy also played with the group.
Influence
The group drew inspiration from American free jazz and from AMM, and from Anton Webern and Samuel Beckett. The final line-up was a trio of Stevens, Smith and the saxophonist John Butcher. Stevens died in 1994, which meant the end of SME. The ensemble showed that improvisation can above all be a matter of listening.
Listening
Questions & Answers · Spontaneous Music Ensemble, 1966
Discography
Studio albums
- 1966Challenge
- 1968Karyōbin
- 1969John Stevens Spontaneous Music Ensemble
- 1971The Source - From And Towards
- 1972Birds Of A Feather
- 1973Face to Face
- 1973For You to Share
- 1973So, What Do You Think?
- 1977Biosystem
- 1980Volume One
- 1981Volume Two
- 1995A New Distance
- 1995Summer 1967
- 1996Hot and Cold Heroes
- 1997Quintessence 1
- 1997Quintessence 2
- 1997Withdrawal
- 2007Frameworks
- 2007Quintessence
- ?Plus Equals
Mentioned in other articles
- European free improvisation Genre
In London the Spontaneous Music Ensemble of drummer John Stevens and the group AMM worked with small, attentive sounds.