Published:
April 26, 2016
On June 6, a rare 3-hour concert by the legendary avant-garde improvisation collective Marginal Consort is set to take place. This is their first ever appearance in Germany, in the dramatic setting of Berlin’s St. Elisabeth Kirche.
Marginal Consort is a Japanese avant-garde improvisation collective composed of sound and visual artists who were all students of Takehisa Kosugi at the radical Bigaku School of Aesthetics in Tokyo in the ’70s.
Founded in 1997, the collective, which plays just one concert per year, is a reformation of the East Bionic Symphonia, a large improvisation ensemble in the spirit of Kosugi’s Group Ongaku and Taj Mahal Travellers projects. Marginal Consort's current line-up includes Kazuo Imai, Tomonao Koshikawa, Kei Shii and Masami Tada. The group also featured previously artists Yasushi Ozawa, bassist in Keiji Haino’s Fushitsusha, and Chie Mukai, from dreamy psychedelic group Che-Shizu.
''A Marginal Consort show has a fixed start and end time, but otherwise nothing else is predetermined. All is temporary, flexible. Accidental or deliberate unison. The musicians are physically separated in the performance space like individual actors. The audience is encouraged to move around to experience different aural perspectives of their dense, kaleidoscopic and immersive performance.''