Tim Brady - Actions Speak Louder Act 2: v-Orchestra (2021)

Actions speak louder than words, it is often said. And the words we use to describe and categorize music – jazz, rock, tonal, atonal, classical, experimental, world, spectral, minimal, whatever – often focus on the technical and cultural differences between musical actions that are, at their heart, remarkably unified in intent. The act of making music, the passion of composing, the happiness of playing guitar, have always been for me a single continuum of ideas and possibilities, never a series of discrete styles and rules.

The initial COVID-19 crisis in the spring and summer of 2020 gave me the time to think about these ideas, and to create these three interconnected recordings. They explore this fundamental idea of a single musical continuum with three different approaches, but always with the idea of making connections through musical actions, rather than creating divisions through technical discourse.

The titles and simple programme notes give some clues as to how and why the music was created, but I don’t want to talk too much because, after all, actions speak louder…

ACT 2: v-ORCHESTRA: Triple Concerto: Because Everything Has Changed (TK487)
Combining 3 improvisers with an elaborate virtual orchestra and distance recording, we hope to re-imagine the orchestral experience in the 21st century within the limits of the lockdown and using the myriad possibilities of technology. The 3 musicians were given the orchestral sound files and told to react to them with improvised harmonies, melodies and rhythms, recorded in their home studios. These performances were then edited and mixed to create this 4-movement virtual triple concerto. The title refers not only to the nature of the social and political landscape of 2020, but also to how our relationship to music is continuing to be transformed by technology.