This month: Mark Wastell
Life is never easy for independent labels but Confront Recordings celebrated its silver jubilee this year. Run by cellist and tunedpercussionist Mark Wastell, it specialises in improvised music, releasing albums by some of the most celebrated improvisers as well as those deserving wider recognition.
Wastell’s initial interest in improvisation developed ‘as a direct continuation of my previous jazz listening. I began listening seriously to jazz around 16 and discovered free improvisation by the time I was 21. I only began playing after exposure to free improvisation and reading the philosophies and teachings of people like John Stevens and Derek Bailey. It would be wrong of me to deny any jazz influence as a performer, but I don’t think it was particularly discernible in my material.’
Can completely improvised performances be prepared? Wastell says sometimes there might be ‘a little road map to get things going, maybe as simple as agreeing to start with a solo by one player, then be joined by the others. On other occasions things don’t need to be said or discussed, especially with longterm partners like Rhodri Davies, Phil Durrant and Burkhard Beins. There is so much shared history it need be no more than just the feeling once we are in the same room together.’
That room can also shape the way the music develops. Wastell says ‘a venue certainly influences the proceedings. Club spaces, concert halls, churches, art galleries and so on each have their own unique features that you have to absorb and navigate via your own circuitry.’
To what extent can performances be influenced by an audience? ‘Obvious things like chatter or chairs being scraped can be easily blocked or filtered out. It won’t necessarily affect the music [but] would the music have been completely different if there was nobody in the room? In that given moment, in the same space and at the same time and under the same circumstances, would the group have played in exactly the same way regardless or totally differently?’ Barry Witherden
‘With long-term partners, things don’t need to be said or discussed’