Writing as a participant in this project;
When DT first proposed the idea I considered it a worthy but perhaps an overly-ambitious one, given the funding sought and the organisational and logistic requirements, and especially DT’s poor health. When the funding was not forthcoming, it appeared a significant hurdle, but I think this actually galvanised the resolve and brought the focus squarely onto the music and the relationships.
I had heard a lot about Phil via DT for many years and he appeared almost as a mythical character, it has been an enriching experience coming to know him and I would now consider him a friend.
The primary experience for me is the music making but it it is only a product of the relationships of the participants. When I step back from the music, I see an event that has clarified, consolidated and motivated a significant cross-section of dedicated improvising musicians in Melbourne. We have had our sense of community and unique quality articulated and reinforced, the timing of this event has been immaculate (or is it the event has created a sense of synchronicity, whichever way the result is the same). I’m sure the ramifications of this period will be ongoing.
It has been like a centrifugal energy spiral, the outer arms brushing and coaxing many other listeners and practitioners, informing, alluring, energising and clarifying an awareness that right now, in this place and time, there are artists working away on a music that is a product of past labours and decisions, but who’s nature is about the quality of the inter-personal relationships, the ability of the inner self to create clarity and unobstructed conditions for free expression, and the broader conditions and context of our environment.
Thank you David, for your more than significant contribution to, and creation of, a particular Australian music. We, and modern Australian culture are all the richer.
Ren Walters
david tolley 