free improvisation

Free improvisation is a genre of music with a self-explanatory name. Nothing is planned in advance, and the performers create the music on the spot by responding to what the others are doing in that moment.

This kind of free improvisation with ad-hoc groups differs from that of The Winter or The Troubled Times, which are regular trios with their own particular flavours, and from the more structured improvisation (and regular beat) of The Electricka Zoo and Ascension Band.

Featherston Free Sound Ensemble (2025-)

Free improvisation from smalltown NZ, 2025- – bringing the avant-garde to the regions!

Live at the Bakehouse 29/11/25

Guy Walker – turntable, cassette loops
Alex V – turntable, MIDI, sampler
Dave Edwards – bass, guitar, e-drum, harmonica
Thanks to Zac Winterwood for the cover photo and videos.

First Experiments

Early recordings, September-October 2025 by Guy Walker and Dave Edwards

Past ensembles

Out of various free improv ad hoc groupings I’ve joined over the years, those with extant recordings available include:

The Margins (Masterton NZ, 2024)

(w/ Simon O’Rorke, Antony Milton)

Badger Sett (Lower Hutt NZ, 2016)

(w/ Julie Bevan, Michael Hall, Chris Prosser)

Confluence Quintet (Wellington NZ, 2014)

(w/ Simon O’Rorke, Julie Bevan, Michael Hall, Chris Prosser)

Latham/Edwards/O’Rorke trio (Wellington NZ, 2014)

(w/ Blair Latham, Simon O’Rorke)

Vitamin S quartet (Auckland NZ, 2014)

(w/ Emit Snake-Beings, 2x unknown – Auckland)

Wellington’s Most Famous Orchestra of Miraculous Delights (Wellington NZ, 2009-2011)

(w/ Dan Beban, Nell Thomas, Jeff Henderson, Gerard Crewdson, Alex Bartley-Nees, Noel Meek, Rosie Langabeer, Bridget Kelly, Sasha Perfect, Cylvi M)

Palmer/Edwards/O’Rorke (Wellington NZ, 2000)

(w/ Chris Palmer, Simon O’Rorke, 2000)

The Slab Septet (Wellington NZ, 1999)

(w/ Simon O’Rorke, Paul Winstanley, Jeff Henderson, Dan Beban, Blair Latham, Bridget Kelly, 1999)

Edwards/O’Rorke duo (Wellington NZ, 1999)

(w/ Simon O’Rorke)

dAdApApA Magicklone Orchestra (New Plymouth NZ, 1999)

(w/ Paul Winstanley, Paul Winther, the Digitator)

Eat the Noise ensemble (New Plymouth NZ, 1998)

(w/ Brett, Ross, Tammy, Dawn et al)

Simon O’Rorke
Paul Winstanley
Julie Bevan
Blair Latham
Jeff Henderson
Confluence Quintet, 2014
Chris Palmer
Chris O’Connor
Wellington’s Most Famous Orchestra of Miraculous Delights, 2010

Other one-off groups

that have not (yet) released recordings, but played live include:

2MBS Fine Music ensemble (w/ Nick Dan, Anthony Guerra, Anthony Fedorovitch, Axel Powrie, Monica Brooks – Sydney, Australia, 2024)
The Assembly of Individuals (w/ Chris Palmer, Gerard Crewdson, Simon O’Rorke, Cylvi M, 2010)
The Make It Up Club ensemble (w/ Francesca Mountfort, Emily Williams, Cylvi M – Melbourne, Australia 2007)
Vitamin S trio (w/ Jim Langabeer, Andrew McMillan – Auckland, 2006)
Paul Winstanley Quartet (w/ Paul Winstanley, Blair Latham, Simon O’Rorke, 2000)
Jensen/Edwards/O’Rorke (w/ Rick Jensen, Simon O’Rorke, 2000)
The Bird & Truck Collision (w/ Paul Winstanley, Brent Hayward, Brian Straka et al – Sweetwaters Festival 1999)

Background

Early influences in Taranaki

By the late 1990s my listening tastes had evolved. From folk and rock beginnings, via more experimental bands like The Velvet Underground and Sonic Youth, I discovered free jazz and improvised music. Some of my early favourite artists included the guitarists Derek Bailey and Sonny Sharrock, pianist Cecil Taylor, and saxophonists John Coltrane and John Zorn.

Paul Winstanley was an important influence, as an older Taranaki musician who served as a mentor, and produced my second album The Marion Flow. He had made a series of avant-garde bass and electronic albums while living in Texas in the early 1990s, and introduced me to a lot of new concepts. He also gave me chance to join his free improvised ensemble The Bird & Truck Collision at the Sweetwaters Festival (alongside art-punk pioneer Brent Hayward aka Smelly Feet) – sadly unrecorded.

Wellington

When I moved to Wellington in 1999, I discovered that, by coincidence, a growing scene of improvised music was already coalescing. Jeff Henderson, Daniel Beban, Chris O’Connor and many others had picked up the free improv torch from Wellington’s Primitive Art Group of the 1980s¹ and carried it into the new millennium.

Percussionist Simon O’Rorke became another mentor, who provided links between self-taught outsiders like myself and more formally trained musicians. He also played on The Marion Flow (2001) and Mantis Shaped and Worrying (2002).

NZ free improv was initially a fusion of influences from the American free jazz and European ‘non idiomatic improvisation‘ of the 1960s, but has since expanded to include influences from outside the jazz tradition entirely. Often there may no regular beat and no key signatures or conventional melody – hence “the non-idiomatic idiom”.

Wellington also had a parallel ‘noise‘ scene involving artists such as Campbell Kneale and Antony Milton – who took a more minimalist feedback-drenched approach to improvisation, and carried on the tradition of NZ bands like The Dead C. The boundaries were blurred, however, and there were a lot of other artists and cross-collaborations going on².

In 2009 I wrote a chapter of Jazz Aotearoa, a book about New Zealand jazz music history, discussing the free improvisation and avant-garde jazz scene in Wellington around the turn of the millennium in more detail. It was a richly creative era, centred around venues like The Space and Happy, and in more recent years The Pyramid Club.

Ironically, it wasn’t until a few years later that I began to appreciate more traditional jazz as well!

Beyond Wellington

I’ve also dabbled with free improvisation at other times, including playing at Vitamin S events in Auckland. The scene there (in NZ’s only big city) developed a few years ‘behind’ that of Wellington, but Vitamin S and the Audio Foundation are important long-running cultural institutions there now.

I’ve also played at improvised music events in Dunedin (Lines of Flight festival), and ‘across the ditch’ in Melbourne (The Make it Up Club), Sydney (2MBS Fine Music), and Brisbane (Liquid Architecture festival). Each of those cities has its own free improvised music history, which are stories for another time!

Since I left Wellington (first overseas to see the world, and then to the Wairarapa to afford a house and to be closer to family), I’ve missed being part of a wider scene. The main disadvantage of smalltown life is the lack of regular venues to play live, let alone an audience for ‘underground’ music. This decade my collaborations with Antony Milton, who I met in Wellington in the early 2000s), have been a lifeline³.

And in 2025, Guy Walker and I launched the Featherston Free Sound Ensemble...

At other times I’ve used free improvisations as raw material, which has been edited non-linearly and multitracked into retrospective compositions – not so much cheating as a whole other topic…

Footnotes

For more detail on this ‘first wave’ of NZ free improvisation in Wellington (before my time, and only recently being ‘rediscovered’), see Daniel Beban‘s book Future Jaw-Clap: The Primitive Art Group and Braille Collective Story.
In that light, the late ’90s / early 2000s scene was a ‘second wave’. That would make the ‘Fred’s‘ scene circa 2010 a third wave, and the Pyramid Club a fourth. ↩︎
At that point my personal tastes leaned more towards the kinetic free jazz influenced styles – despite my lack of ‘jazz chops’. But I have since collaborated in later years with both Campbell Kneale and Antony Milton. ↩︎
Although we’ve both also had to find other hobbies besides music, and enjoy the outdoor lifestyle – but that’s beyond the scope of this website. ↩︎