Gruppo Di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza

Gruppo Di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza

Gli Occhi Verdi della Paura

Tiger Bay

***2024 repress. For this great 1971 soundtrack of Enzo Castellari's Gli Occhi Freddi della Paura, Ennio Morricone called on the services the Gruppo d'Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, the legendary avant-garde and improvisational combo of which he was a founding member. Not only a classy soundtrack but also a classic of the experimental and free jazz genre.

Gruppo Di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza

S/t

Superior Viaduct

Considered the first collective of experimental composers, Gruppo d’Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza formed in 1964 in Rome to chase the expressive potential of live improvisation to its furthest reaches. Led by Franco Evangelisti, Gruppo also included Ennio Morricone before he found fame composing soundtracks. The ensemble advanced the innovations of 20th century avant-garde in laboratory-like studio settings where the intuitive interplay between members flourished. Before 1976’s benchmark release, Musica Su Schemi, Gruppo recorded this eponymous album in 1973. Whether the passages are jarring or soothing, clamorous or silken, the ensemble retains astounding organic coherence. An ultra-rare entry in Gruppo’s formidable discography, Gruppo d’Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza is finally reissued for the first time ever.

Gruppo Di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza

Musica Su Schemi

Superior Viaduct

In the early 1970s, Franco Evangelisti assembled Gruppo Di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, a collective of Italian composers that included Ennio Morricone on trumpet. Gruppo aspired to revolutionize composition through group improvisation and—like their peer, Karlheinz Stockhausen—musique concrète, aleatory (controlled chance) techniques and early electronic music. One significant influence in the studio was their use of chess to define key parameters of their music.  Musica Su Schemi is unpredictable, fluid and always marked by a tension between the performers and their conscious rejection of traditional forms. Each member of Gruppo would establish themselves as important figures in 20th century music, though no others gained the notoriety of Morricone. Nonetheless, Gruppo’s influence on modern composition endures. As composer / saxophonist John Zorn explains, “[They] were instrumental in founding a radical tradition of Western musical improvisation that owed little or nothing to anybody and created some of the strangest music ever made.”