Oxford Improvisers
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Interview with Pat Thomas by Martin Longley from the Birmingham Post 28 March 2003
Programmed to extend that live improv sound
Oxford-based improvising keyboardist Pat Thomas talks to Martin Longley about the early direction that influenced his music.
Over the last few weekends, the Electric Cinema has been getting more punters through its
doors to hear live music than would normally turn up to catch a movie. As a gig venue, it's
recently been responsible for some of Birmingham's most adventurous promotions, ranging from
free jazz and improvised rock to extreme electronica and ambient abstraction.
The current season continues this Saturday with Oxford-based improvising keyboardist Pat Thomas, partnered by guitarist Chris Brown and bass player Dominic Lash. They're all members of the newly-revived Oxford Improvisers Co-Op, whose first incarnation was in the early 1980s.
That was Pat's incubation period, when he was first establishing a reputation on the free music circuit. He'd started taking lessons at age eight, playing in public by 12 and discovering free-form jazz as a 16-year-old. Thomas saw Oscar Peterson on television and was provided with a black role model, albeit of a more mainstream type when set beside subsequent influences.
This seemed like a significant leap from the familiar classical approach, leading Thomas to start attending jazz gigs. One of his first was with drummer Tony Oxley, who was then living in Oxford. "I'd see him nearly every week," says Thomas. "I was really fortunate, seeing Keith Tippett, Peter Brotzmann, on my doorstep. Because I'd only just got into jazz, I didn't really know what major league players they were. I just thought it was the local scene."
Other pianistic influences in those formative years included Cecil Taylor, Muhal Richard Abrams and Howard Riley. The Oxford Improvisers Co-Op was formed around a small group of enthusiasts, steadily building membership as the '80s progressed, but fading away by 1988. Thomas was a member of one of its key bands, Ghosts, featuring saxophonist Pete McPhail.
"That involved a lot of writing compositions," he remembers. "We were pretty tight, because we used to rehearse in each other's houses all the time. We didn't quite fit in, because we did a lot of improvising and a lot of notated stuff, sort of in-between."
The fiery Ghosts played at the old Gosta Green Arts Lab in the mid-1980s, but Pat's subsequent Birmingham gigs haven't exactly been numerous. He appeared as part of the Butch Morris London Skyscraper project in 1997, a massive band that was subject to the complex visual prompts of its leader's patented conduction process. This was a way of making one man's improvisatory instincts dictate a whole set of second-level playing decisions, but within Butch's perameters. This was a prime example of how many varying approaches are possible within the realms of improvised music.
"I'm interested in improvising," says Pat. "But I'm not worried about playing a tune either. I don't have a problem with that." On his recent solo acoustic piano disc, Nur [Emanem] (Arabic for "light"), Thomas was playing completely spontaneously, but still infiltrates two or three recognisable tunes along the way. Another melody-based improv project is a collaboration with Han Bennink (drums), Simon Fell (bass) and Steve Noble (turntables), interpreting the themes of Henry Mancini in a free form manner. This has been recorded for potential release.
The 1997 London Skyscraper experience led to the formation of at least two bands, both of them featuring Thomas. The London Improvisers Orchestra employs a version of the Morris conduction process, refined even further. They have an album due out next month on the Emanem label. Meanwhile, Pat is a member of the Lunge quartet, with trombonist Gail Brand, violinist Phil Durrant and percussionist Mark Sanders. The recent Strong Language album (also on Emanem) was their second release. "We were the ones who were always at the back of the bus, the troublemakers," says Thomas of Lunge.
More recent local appearances by Thomas have been with Orphy Robinson's Nubian Vibes Ensemble last September at the CBSO Centre, and with fellow keyboardist Fyfe Hutchins, at the Conservatoire. Thomas plays fairly regularly in London, but a lot of his work is on the more bountiful European circuit. Indeed, he'll be touring around Norway next week, with percussionist Paul Lovens and singer Phil Minton. Tomorrow's gig will find Thomas concentrating on the electronic side of his playing, using a synthesiser and sampler combination, along with minidisc and cassette players.
"I do a lot of programming. I'm taking it a bit further, I've been working on really extending the sound. That's why I use so-called defunct 80s keyboards. A lot of the new keyboards today seem to have left out programming your own sounds. They seem to be stuck with these set sounds. It's crucial for the way I approach things that I have a lot of stock sounds to improvise with, enough flexibility."
In earlier times, the response times of electronic set-ups was often judged to be too snail-like, and even now, with the increased use of laptop computers, the situtation hasn't necessarily changed that much. "Sometimes that's a problem with Powerbook. You're waiting for the other person to catch up. They're too busy looking at the screen. The hand is quicker than the eye. It may only be a fraction, but that can be quite critical."
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