in may, 2002, larry rossignol presented me with the opportunity to put together something for the first annual toronto fringe jazz festival (now known as the distillery jazz festival). i basically assembled a big group of my friends (15 of toronto’s finest improvisers... in my humble opinion...) and called them the pickle juice orchestra.

the focus of the orchestra is the investigation of the world of conducted improvisation; both free-form and with the use of different types of notation (traditional, graphic, cued instruction, etc.). the first performance taught me a great deal but, as always, i had jumped into a situation i was clueless about and, though it was fun, i thought the music that came out of it was pretty awful - basically i stood in front of all these great musicians and proceeded to wave my arms, jump up and down, and make faces to try and get them to play the music i was hearing in my head.

i had set this project aside until i went to banff in the summer of 2003 with ken aldcroft and evan shaw to work on what would become the remnants trio in a concentrated setting. as well as being opened up to a whole new concept of what improvised music is about, we had the opportunity to perform john zorn's gamepiece, cobra, under the direction of the great vancouver improviser dylan van der schyff. we later did a night of cobra performances in toronto when dylan was visting and, acting as prompter in some of the rehearsals, i realised that i had found a direction in which to take the pickle juice orchestra - not cobra specifically, although it's a part of what we're doing, but the idea is now to look at what other's have done with large ensembles of improvisers in the hope that eventually i may stumble upon a voice of my own in this medium. as well as cobra, we have looked at christian wolff's burdocks and some music by ron samworth and jean derome. we have also worked on some of my own work dealing with the idea of structured improvisation using composed bits of music, sets of rules, and extra-musical communication strategies such as hand signals, aural cues, etc, that i/we are learning about as we go.

in april 2004 we had the opportunity to work with vancouver composer and guitarist, ron samworth who was able to share his own experiences with vancouver's NOW orchestra, butch morris, george lewis, and others. he conducted a performance of a number of his own works and was really supportive of the ensemble, the scene, and the interface series. we were also able to perform montreal composer and improviser jean derome's music during his interface in may 2005. jean was wonderfully generous with his knowledge and his music.

the journey continues...

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