Origins

The group was formed in 1993 upon the premise of free improvisation and extended voice usage. While primarily a vocal group we were occasionaly joined by a variety of instrumentalists. These were always looked upon as "other voices", and we never used more than one instrumentalist (so far) at the time. We also improvised a lot with the format and composition of the group.

Below an interviewthat explains the origen and development of the group which was published (in an edited form) in 'Unusual Work' a magazine published by Collected Effort Press

On reading it again I felt I should add the following paragraph :

After initially inviting lead singers from various bands over to sing together in improvised pieces (due to weekly poetry and music nights at the Arthouse I knew many of these) I found there was a lack of progress. We appeared to find similar avenues of improvisation each time, but due to their primary “band” commitments there were never more than a couple of quick rehearsals available before performances. So each personnel change brought a different timbre due to different voices, but stylistically it came down to the same kind of formats.
Things became more interesting when I started to find some more long term collaborators, with whom I met on a regular basis, and extensively recorded our rehearsals and subsequently analysed our impros. There was Edgar Loutit, who had an amazing ability to see things through on a long term basis and had a unique and wicked sense of humour. Liu Ponomorew who had a fantastic vocal style of a sort witchetty moody persuasion, and a great desire to investigate methods of impro. Mark Lewis a fantastic rich deep bass voice with a sense of rhythm favouring the offbeat. After the initial excitement with which the group started the "paradox of practicing to improvise" started to become obvious. How to rehearse improvisation becomes a paradox that needs to be resolved more or less at each rehearsal. Together with this initial grouping we explored methodologies of impro at great length but what was always the guiding mood was and more laughter. This reminds me of a passage in Gerhard Richter’s account of the early days Dada, where despite their serious intensions fun and laughter kept breaking through (page 64 in “Dada art and anti-art”). When we performed at the Mechanics Institute Art Gallery (Oct. 29 1994) we walked around the artwork and sang our impressions of it. During the performance one of us accidentally knocked over a piece of sculpture which was then (almost) caught by another, who couldn't quite hang on to it either. In the end it took all four of us to catch the sculpture and stop it from falling. Somehow this was an exciting event, it showed how much of a "unit" we had become.
As these good people left due to other commitments there was a long period where various people came and went around a steady anchor of myself, Anna Fern and Mark Lewis.
I always shunned a leadership role, felt that the group started on self-organising basis that I wanted to adhere to at all costs. Looking back on all of this now there were a number of times that some people that drifted into the group had ulterior motives and I should have asked them to leave, rather than put up with their disruptions of group harmony.

An interview of Sjaak de Jong conducted by Jeltje Fanoy

How did UQ come about?

One day towards the end of Jan.1993, I felt discouraged about the collapse of yet another band that I had been involved with. However, the only musical adventures that I had really enjoyed in the last 3 years was playing with a number of improvising outfits, and it struck me that rather than working with other improvising instrumentalists it would be more interesting to work with vocalists instead. Tiresome questions such as ‘what key are we playing in?’ and ‘where is that scale and where are these notes on my instrument?’ just become obsolete. Feeling quite excited about this idea I took a walk down the street, and ran into a performer I’d featured at the Arthouse, Melody James, who somehow had come up with a similar idea. Just then, as we talked over our ideas on vocal improvisation before the window of a coffee shop in Fitzroy Street, St Kilda, the dancer Zev Howley came past and said that he really wanted to work with an improvising musical group on a regular basis. The three of us contacted a number of friends and three days later five singers and three dancers met for the first time in the old skating rink in Williamstown for a rehearsal. Later on in the evening after hours of rehearsal we just could not stop, we sang all the way back to the Williamstown station and also on the train. We did our first gig about two weeks later. All of this was a very exciting and synergetic phenomenon it really felt that the group formed itself, rather than being the idea of (or due to the effort of) a particular individual. We did a number of gigs and after that met at a regular basis for many years. We had access to a regular Monday night “poetry and music” performance space in “The Arthouse” where we could freely experiment in front of an audience, and regularly met other vocalists there who, at times, joined us.

UQ stands for Unamunos Quorum. Is this a humorous reference (obviously not applicable to an improvising group!) to having to have a quorum, formally, to make proceedings valid?

The name came from a suggestion of Johnathan Barnsley. We rang him asking for a good name for the group we just started. He suggested pricking pins at random into a Philosophical Dictionary, of which he had one at hand. We liked the name Unamunos (a Spanish philosopher) and shortlisted it, and matching it to other suggestions, we liked Quorum, as it would give rise to confusion, people imagining it was unanimous. We always insist the name was mispronounced (outrage!), a sort of early start to some word-games that we developed further.

Would you agree with the interpretation that there is a search for a common humanity in UQ live performances? A common language, so to speak?

Certainly when searching for and exploring underlying structures, there are definite latent linguistic (mostly tonal) frame-works that convey a certain feeling (such as a question, a rejoinder, a series of expletives, an incantation etc.).You can start a piece by agreeing for example to use one of such forms as a starting point. Or, more true to total improvisation, one can recognise that someone has (or you have) proclaimed such a form as part of an improvisation, and then go with it, embroider on it. Like islands of familiar territory in an aural sea

Improvisation can lead to some dark psychological places. For example, it was suggested by an acquaintance of Arnold Schwarzenegger that he could be interested in using a UQ recording for one of his Terminator films. How and when do members of UQ decide not to go down this path?

People find some pieces quite dark. When improvising you access your own subconscious to some extent, and at times a group (sub)conscious appears. Many people find this sort of confronting, but we feel you can explore areas as long as there is a balance with more ethereal material that forms in the same way. We have been asked to donate tracks for horror movies, but no thanks, this takes the material we produce too much out of context. We did produce some quite dark pieces but these were released as part of a CD presenting a balanced (well we tried!) set of emotions.
An example would be the track ‘Limit’ which is also the name of the CD on which it appears.

How does gestural language fit in the improvisation process? Are there gestural pieces that exist independently from vocal improvisation? Or do the two always merge in UQ performances?

While working with the saxophonist Robert Calvert who had studied free impro with John Stevens (1), we added more structure to our regular improvising evenings by exploring workshop techniques he learned from John. Later we deconstructed some of these ideas in trying to find our own methods. Also, using some methods of Augusto Boal (2), the workshop ideas often took on certain body movements as well as word plays, and we were crossing into other art disciplines. These transgressions have always stayed with us in performance. The Four Horsemen had a similar experience and worked with a Butoh artist, as we also (much later) did. It was interesting that, right from the start, dancers started to work with us, preferring improvised dance to vocalizing. Consequently UQ always had a strong gestural element to their performances. An excellent example would be the piece ‘Instructions for aliens on the correct use of powertools” both movement and vocalisation are free impro, but the piece still has a recognisable form.

On many of the UQ recordings there are some very complex rhythm structures. Do these help to create the complex musical and language improvisation patterns?

Unusual rhythms can be constructed from a vocal basis. We decided to explore more exotic rhythms away from the western MUSIC idiom. Rather than counting in (a musician’s way) we used word bases. So helamakena repeated forms a 5/4 basis, where, having learnt the word, you can get totally into the rhythm. In addition, you can change the word into another word by changing one part of the word basis at a time (as is done in the work of Eric Reich) e.g. helamakena, falalaken fulumakena . We often try to approach this in a more glossolalia fashion (‘talking in tongues'), constructing quite a number of these structures to embroider on, and keeping track of them in a sort of toolbox, to be used as required. It’s here that working with poets becomes a synergistic exploration, with UQ crossing over into sound poetry. Poets have such a great feeling for rhythms of speech, and longer lyrical patterns!

When I worked with UQ in a performance for MIAF (Melbourne International Arts Festival), UQ was very much placed by the director of the show in a ‘chorus’ role, in the sense of a classical Greek chorus emphasizing and extending words and concepts from the poems themselves, in unison. Would you say this is how UQ works with poets, adapting techniques from its , that is ‘improvising toolbox’ to scripted material, either together with a poet (e.g. myself or Peter Murphy) in agreed-on improvisations, or spontaneously improvising from the scripts themselves without the poet being present (e.g. Jaap Blonk, and sound poets from the past such as Kurt Schwitters?)

One of the items in the “toolbox” is the group functioning as a chorus. Vocally as well as physically underscoring, amplifying and at times critiquing the main focus of a theatrical performance. Extensive rehearsals and experimentation leads to almost accidentally recovering such ancient forms. We did use that approach pretty much in the MIAF performances, both with you and with Peter Murphy. Since we often worked with you e sort of knew what to expect, and took a more free impro approach, again both of you were happy to go that way but did state clearly some directions you did not want to pursue. With Jaap Blonk we first did some free impro and worked from scrips (of which he brought an extensive and wide range). When you first improvise you tend to do your best first, and often next restate the same themes in a more selfconscious and studied manner. By interrupting the impro with scrips you can make a fresh start. Which is why we often start a performance with an impro, and follow this with more circumscribed material. In some cases interpreting material of soundpoets who have not left audio, one makes it up. Certainly interesting on how much variety one can hear in such reconstructions.

UQ has had many different manifestations over the years. Would you say the Pier Performance, for one of the St Kilda Writers Festivals, involved the largest number of performers and audience? Alternatively, what is perhaps the minimum ‘quorum’ for an Unamunos Quorum performance?

Perhaps you could say that a quorum is the threshold crossed going from three to four improvisers, the group identity becoming supra-personal, the total always greater than the parts. If you have 3 people singing together it is possible with some training to be clearly aware of all three voices, and interact (play). It seems that’s how our brains are wired. Once you have four than our hearing is such that we tend to group two of the voices together (the rhythm section, the two sopranos, etc.) so it goes back to 3.
For performances minimum forms would be duo or trio, these formations that can transcend and often do with experienced improvisers. Four will always be a bit on the deep end, it is critical how the group uses that freedom. If performing for an audience you need to be aware that they are also part of an impro in a silent (or occasionally not so silent) way. From having recorded ourselves, we know that certain things can be great fun to do but don’t really sound like anything but a form of aural anarchy that lacks distinction. The recording process allows us to understand what is good to avoid. For very large pieces such as the Pier Performance (‘On the origin of language’) we subdivided the large number of performers (about 40 performers!) into smaller groups that were headed by long-term members of UQ. This facilitated a structure that still allowed free improvisation to occur, in many different physical foci in and around the audience.

How important has the physical environment been for some of the live recordings? Do the acoustics have a large impact on the improvising process? And how important is the physical presence of a live audience?

We experimented a lot on the effect of the environment in an early phase, recording
in a variety of places, such as hard concrete spaces, large drain-pipes, domed spaces and churches. We listened carefully to these, trying to analyses how these environments coloured our impros. Sometimes this happens in quite an obvious way, for example, where there is a large reverb, as in the long drainpipes, you tend to work with long notes, focusing on harmonising and leaving short percussive ideas alone. Some buildings had strong effects by their aura, and we decided to go with that, explore this “silent” direction, challenge it perhaps. Thanks to a considerate and trusting care taker Helen Tripp we could extensively experiment in the Sacred Heart Church in St Kilda. The church by its architecture, amplified certain harmonies but also provided a theatrical setting that did influence what and how we performed (leading to the ‘reCycle’ project).

Notes
(1) John Stevens (1940–1994) was one of the pioneers of free improvisation in the UK. The Spontaneous Music Ensemble (SME), which he co-founded in the mid-1960s with Trevor Watts, explored a form of improvised music that was not dependent on conventional harmony and timekeeping. Line-ups featured Kenny Wheeler, Evan Parker, Derek Bailey, Peter Kowald, Julie Tippetts, Nigel Coombes

He published :
Search & Reflect: A Music Workshop Handbook by John Stevens
Published by Rockschool, spiral bound paperback, 128 pp, 1985/2007.

(2) Augusto Boal (1931 –2009) was a Brazilian theatre practitioner, drama theorist, and political activist. He was the founder of Theatre of the Oppressed, a theatrical form originally used in radical left popular education movements.
He published
Games for actors and non-actors (1992)
Routledge Press