It could be "radicalized improvisation", "here-and-now-music".

It's been a pleasure to collect old and new things and to include the special approach of Joergen Plaetner also. I think the CD gives a nice portrait of our music form of open compositions.

Group for Intuitive Music and Intuitive Music Group are rather similar. They consist of different kind of people, but it's in the same spirit - and we also took similar names to show that. ABFA was a bigger group, more jazzy people and a special humoristic approach coming from Thicai who founded it.

At the University there were some strong influences about new music: a very good music history teacher, composer Jan Maegaard who did inspiring music history lectures. Some of us got together and made a study circle about new music and later the Group for Intuitive Music. Even though there was a lot of conservatism to fight also, I think the historical and theoretical studies have inspired me a lot. For instance, I could sit down to really study how improvisation in new music was practised. And I got an outlook into both very old (middle age) Western music and ethnic music, beyond the more well-known musics.

Oh, I could write a book about it (and I almost have!). In a broad sense, this term could mean "all non-traditional notation means which are not traditional notes". Pictures to play freely from, or very elaborate systems (like with Logothetis or Chr. Wolff or Stockhausen's plus-minus notation etc.). So it can mean so many different things, once we start to think of making new notations. One important point for me is that, simply, many sounds and sound processes cannot be notated with traditional notes. Its rhytmic aspect was designed for stanzas with text, and the twelve pitches are not relevant for music concerning itself primarily with sound and timbre. Instead of giving up composition, we should innovate the notation and have a lot of fun playing each other's pieces. And we should also cultivate the exchange aspect of that: state the graphics and instructions and everything so clearly that others could use it - not just for our own groups. Both paper publishing and Internet is important.

I make improvisation exercises, free improvisations of various lengths, pieces with improvisation, and if there's the time, let people make some open compositions. It's important to be aware of what one is doing, and one important point to me is the analysis of the parameters of the sound - pitch, duration, timbre and collective properties like density (how many people are playing at any one time), contrast and more. Just like, a painter should be well aware of the possible colours and how to blend them. So I make exercises in dealing with these dimensions, and other exercises. But the real experience comes when playing freely and things happen by themselves.

In the music therapy, I make improvised music with mentally retarded people, in ways especially designed for them individually. They often have no verbal language, and this activity helps them to become less tense, overcome psychic problems, become more social etc.

I had studied among other works his "Lontano" for orchestra and "Continuum" for harpsichord and liked them very much. And I simply wrote him a small letter telling him that I was inspired by his music for my piece. He then wrote he found my "improvisational method very fruitful". It's a pity he did not use improvisation himself...it seems he would have liked to. A piece like Continuum could easily be re-written to be played on an improvised basis (approx. number of repetitions of the elements, maybe additional freedom, any keyboard instrument allowed etc.).

Oh, you think enormous, well, everything is relative! - Hard to compare! But I'm so glad we now have the IR 003 with Groups for Intuitive Music after having the idea for several years, such a big perspective in it of many years, many groups and kinds of pieces. - And one recording I love is the DIMC 001, Intuitive Music Conference 1997. I simply felt this was a very good free improvisation. I remember the year after, standing again in the same hall and feeling the acoustics after having worked so intensively with the CD mastering and thinking, "Whauw!"

It's a series of pieces printed on postcards! And to do that was connected to the idea of communicating new music also outside new music circles.

I think the blind belief in pre-established rules is restrictive to creativity. Some people in some situations have to concern themselves a lot with "breaking rules", for instance Nam June Paik in his Fluxus happenings in the Sixties. For others there are maybe not so many rules to break - It could also be that one has escaped learning irrelevant rules and thus can work directly on creating one's own and developing (and maybe even breaking) them, for instance Chr. Wolff who was not musically educated but who became an important composer of pieces based on interaction between musicians .

Stockhausen's verbal pieces (Two collections: From the Seven Days (1968); For Times to Come (1970)) have been very important. We've played many of them in the Group for Intuitive Music. Much freedom and often very precise frameworks and elements. Ligeti's works from the sixties appeared very sensual and new to me, at the same time. And the philosophy of Cage first provoked me (as it did with so many other Europeans), later it became something natural. Works of him like Variations I - II - III are (like Stockhausen's text pieces) glorious examples of innovative music notations. We played Variations III in the Group and had a lot of fun.

Why did you decide to create your own music label "Intuitive Records"?

In order to put the new CD-R medium to use - home copying makes it easier to release music fast without paying a lot of money in beforehand. So we can do what we want to without having to work for years for funding and acceptance from record companies!

I think I must rush on to other matters now, but nice to speak to you!

Interviewed by Federico Marongiu

WORKS AND APPEARANCE ON CD: