ONe exciting thing about improvising as a person who is not a cis-gendered white man is working to find a new musical language, freeing oneself from the default assumptions built up over millennia… this may produce musics and processes that sound strange in some ways, or to some ears, but if we can conceive of them and allow ourselves to explore them it opens up novel, important and unfamiliar sound-worlds.

Improvising is also a way for us to be together safely in sound, life and communication while we search for these new languages through: mutual respect; listening, uttering; knowing when we can be trusted NOT to listen; learning to listen in new ways… every time ONe plays there are new ways of hearing, as well as new things to hear.

Improvisation is also, by necessity, a big part of just being, and surviving as, ‘other’ … conversely, otherness – that everyone has in their heart, in some tiny or huge place – is a big part of where improvisation comes from.

We don’t want to be granted the special privileges from which we’re currently excluded, but to re-make music and the world so all can be heard!