Improv 1

Can electronic music sound both instrumental and acoustic? Improv 1 presents one of the most important trends in contemporary improvisational jazz, with two representative groups that experiment with live electronics, sampling, treated musical toys, and anything that can create original, sweeping soundscapes.

Centering on avant jazz and using new media, the Athens quartet RSLG lifts the audience into moments of emotional charge, leading it into a liberatory dimension, creating a sense of time expanding. Super-group Glue and sound artist Ignaz Schick of Berlin enrich their improvisations with treated electronic sounds.

Their unconventional approach is based on the equal contribution of instruments and offers the listener a fascinating aural layering full of secret intensities and cathartic surprises.

Stef Gijssels of "The Free Jazz Collective" wrote of Glue in 2014: “They create quiet, yet incredibly intense sonic universes, without real soloing, but rather with only one task for the musicians, to create a coherent and unique sound, as the result of the instruments playing their sparse notes on an open canvas of silence. The result is absolutely great, primarily because of the dynamic nature of the music. Even if there is no rhythm or harmonic development, the sounds move forward, little notes get stretched, accentuated by dry percussive beats. Less is more, but here with substance and depth.”

Glue first performed in Greece in November 2014 at the festival “Improvisation at the Onassis Stegi” Their participation in Improv 1 will be their second appearance before an Athenian audience.