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n Naples there is a Pole named Michal Libera who has pulled Lethe out of a hat, an "acousmatic opera buffa" made up of noises collected in the Italian city, embedded with the music of composer Luciano Cilio. Pierre Berthet, a Belgian living in Liege, makes music by playing with the sound of water drops as they fall into different containers; also with the disguises he obtains thanks to some expirators (inverted vacuum cleaners) and the hoses he connects, elements that move and strike various tubes, which adds a certain visual component to the invention. And Lee Patterson, who is English, heats small plastic bottles that he lets cool on a metal plate with a series of contact microphones, which amplify and highlight the charms of the noise that accompanies this change in temperature.
Libera, Berthet or Patterson have presented their proposals in recent years in Barcelona, within the framework of the activities of the Improvisadores de Barcelona (IBA) collective, which in 2018 celebrated twenty years of existence. The founding fathers of the entity were the musicians Agustín Fernández, Joan Saura -unfortunately deceased in 2012- and Liba Villavecchia, who would very soon after be joined by dancer Andrés Corchero. The Mondays of Improvised Music and Dance at Jazz Sí of the Taller de Músics (98-2001), and the existence of the IBA Orchestra made up of twenty elements (99-2001), mark the first years of activity of the collective.
With the new century, the promoters hand over the baton to Alfredo Costa Monteiro, Ferran Fages and Ruth Barberán, who will finally remain as the sole person responsible for organizing the activities, a task in which she counts on various collaborations and complicities. Barberán, who joined the group in 1999, explains that "the original idea was to find a space where artists interested in improvisation could get together to play, and invite musicians like Evan Parker or Peter Kowald not only to give concerts, but to play with them and, if there was time, do workshops, talks…". At the time of its founding, she indicates, "the concept of improvisation was associated above all with jazz. But those of us who came later opted more for non-idiomatic improvisation, which does not have concrete rhythmic forms, does not start from the basis of idioms such as jazz, flamenco, rock, Cuban music... We focus on other aspects beyond the archetypal ones of rhythm, melody and harmony. We work with sound itself, textures, volumes... these are intrinsic elements of all music, which are not usually worked on as much."
Summarizing IBA's activity over these twenty years is impossible. Any attempt, however, will involve naming encounters, cycles and festivals such as Mínim (03-09), Minúscul (04, 06 and 07), the curatorship of the Experimental Music Week at Metrònom (05), Com a Mínim (10-12), IBA Recolza (10-14), the Bestiario improvising musicians' gathering (12), or the Homage to Joan Saura in 2013.
Among the concerts held, the one that took place coinciding with the collective's tenth anniversary stands out, when all the activating musicians and collaborators of IBA at that time teamed up in the interpretation of La Monte Young's piece Poem for chairs, tables, benches, etc. (1960). It should be noted that if dance had a significant presence in the early days, in later years there have also been proposals for cinema, computer image manipulation, lighting... and even individualized "sound massages" by the Frenchman Pascal Battus.
At this moment -and supporting a trend that is nothing, nothing, unusual in other musical landscapes- the concerts promoted by IBA take place in private spaces and homes. Not at all secret calls -the collective announces them on its blog and through other means-, but with an interesting point of discretion: "We are talking about small places, suitable for these proposals, which musicians really like -Ruth Barberán values-. In fact, when they are on tour in the south of France, in Spain or in Portugal, many of them ask us if we can invite them. They especially value the type of audience, which is attentive and respectful, people genuinely interested in this type of music, and who, once the performance is over, have the opportunity to talk to the artist and ask them about different aspects of their work. There is a contact that does not happen in conventional concerts, where the musician performs on a stage and leaves." "Festivals -she adds to emphasize the suitability of these private spaces- look great, but what interests us is continuity, doing activity all year round and giving musicians the opportunity to play here. We ourselves have gone to play a lot around Europe because there are musicians who also organize things in private homes or other places like record stores, bookstores, libraries...".
From day one, all this activity is carried out outside of subsidies, an aspect that was decisive for Ruth Barberán to join the collective: "When they told me that the idea was to work like that, I signed up immediately. Subsidies are a condition that ties you down and doesn't allow you to do exactly what you want to do, or that forces you to do some things because you already have the money...". With no profit or intention of profit on the horizon, what, then, is the return the organizer receives? Barberán is clear: "The return is that this scene can exist. That musicians can present what they do, that the public can see it, and that all of it is free."