Tre giorni di fila di Globe Unity Orchestra al Cafe Oto a Londra a partire da domani: un desiderio che gli organizzatori hanno coltivato a lungo, e che ora si traduce in festa grande per l'anniversario dei sessant'anni della 'leggendaria' orchestra fondata da Alexander von Schlippenbach appunto nell'autunno 1966. Auguri!
"We are thrilled to welcome Alexander von Schlippenbach’s legendary Globe Unity Orchestra to Oto for a three-day residency coinciding with the group’s 60th anniversary. The most defining orchestral formation in European free music, Globe Unity has been on our wishlist since Oto first opened. To finally host them here, with a 15-piece line-up including Alexander von Schlippenbach, Aki Takase, Evan Parker and Axel Dörner, feels genuinely special: six decades of collective invention and unruly force gathered in the space across three nights.
In 1966, Schlippenbach composed Globe Unity as an exclamatory free-jazz piece for big band. Its Berlin Philharmonie debut was received as a scandal, but the ensemble it produced became one of the central large-ensemble projects of European improvised music, expanding across generations, countries and approaches to collective sound.
Big band residencies have produced some of the standout moments in Oto’s history, from the Sun Ra Arkestra to Peter Brötzmann’s Chicago Tentet. These three nights sit firmly within that lineage: an extremely rare chance to hear Globe Unity in its 60th year, still gathered around the music, piano and conducting of the person who first composed the piece that gave the orchestra its name.
This is a genuinely exceptional moment in our programme’s history. A must for those invested in the history of free music, large scale collective improvisation, and the lineages that still shape the present."