INSUB META ORCHESTRA, the sound community

Interviews 29.11.2022

INSUB META ORCHESTRA is a Swiss orchestra dedicated to experimental music. This formation, based on a very large community of musicians, puts forward an attentive listening, a hypersensitivity to the sound and a questioning on the improvisation and the writing. Meeting with the two co-founders Cyril Bondi and d'incise (Laurent Peter).

You live in Geneva and you created in 2010, this orchestra named INSUB META ORCHESTRA (IMO) composed of about fifty musicians coming from all horizons. How did this idea come about and why create an orchestra?
Cyril Bondi: At the time, we were touring a lot as a duo, and it was in England, where we were invited to participate in an evening with the London Improvisers Orchestra, that we were seduced by the fact of being included in a large community of improvisers, of being caught in the middle of this collective energy.
We wanted to import this idea and this form here. As it was obvious that Geneva was not a big enough city for an orchestra of this size, from the start, we opened it to our networks of friends in Switzerland and abroad.
The challenge was: how can we make improvisation and music with a very large number of musicians, without them being musicians chosen according to the model of the classical orchestra gathered by instrumental genre, but musicians coming from everywhere with all kinds of instruments?

How does the IMO propose a different model of orchestra?
Cyril Bondi: Our work consists in making sure that this mass of musicians, about 25 to 35 instrumentalists per concert, produces a unique sound, and that the sounds created by each musician are not emphasized? We are looking for a minimal music that is produced with very few elements.
d'incise: Of course, we listened to classical orchestras that play contemporary music, but we were looking for something else than sounding like a Xenakis piece, which also requires a kind of know-how outside our field of competence. On the other hand, we didn't want to be, and to sound, like an orchestra of improvisers...
Cyril Bondi: For twelve years we have gone through different phases!
At the beginning, it was very open, whoever could and whoever wanted to come, on the model of the London Improvisers Orchestra which incorporates any musician passing through for a concert.
Then, we asked some of the musicians who played regularly in the orchestra if they wanted to continue the adventure, but on a permanent basis, and today we are about fifty.
There was a phase of complete improvisation in a big group, then we started a phase of composition in which we are currently. D'incise and I are thinking of pieces dedicated to the orchestra.

So you compose in pairs?
Cyril Bondi: Yes, we compose with four hands...
d'incise: We share ideas on musical forms, materials, we ask ourselves how to best exploit a simple idea. Everything is linked to the nature of the orchestra: there are few rehearsals before the concert, most of the time, we play the same day. So a simple idea is a simple formulation so that it can be easily transmitted to a large number of people - these are what we call practical ideas - but they must be rich enough to be developed throughout the concert, and this is where the sound ideas come in. The composition is intimately linked to the playing process.

Indeed, you work over long periods of time. How do you transmit these ideas: through scores, models, drawings?
d'incise: The last piece we wrote was conceived on a time line. This is new and more complicated to set up. Before, we invented more mathematical forms: 30 people make a sound, if they make two, how many combinations does that produce? How many times must the musicians play this sound over a given duration? Each musician produces a sound or two and has to find a way to recombine them so that the ensemble functions quite autonomously at the time.

Does the IMO have a conductor or conductors to lead it?
Cyril Bondi: It depends on the piece. In general, it is me who conducts but we also try to give this responsibility to other musicians of the orchestra. We also work to ensure that the orchestra can manage itself by defining several groups that organize themselves from within: they choose a leader and get along with each other.
We are always faced with strong constraints: the piece must be assembled quickly before the concerts and it must "sound" whatever the number of musicians and the type of instruments. Moreover, we do not choose the musicians for their personal qualities. The piece must be played by musicians of different levels and experience. These are strong constraints but very positive because it forces us to propose an original music.

So how did this community of musicians come about?
Cyril Bondi: When I receive resumes, what interests me is to know their motivation, what they are looking for in the orchestra. What is important is that they come to live a sound experience. Some come from metal, punk, free jazz, contemporary, classical, baroque music. We don't ask them what they can do but how they will integrate this mass.

And what music do they play? Experimental music, electroacoustic music? You do improvisation? How would you define this sound experience?
Cyril Bondi: I'm bad with labels! Before starting to work, we always listen to the silence. Then we go and look for pianissimos, for the fragility of textures. The instruments are never used to their full potential, we like to look for where they start to lose their initial substance. Of course, we have worked a lot on minimal music, in the Wandelweiser movement.
d'incise: We are clearly in this movement. To make an orchestra sound with all these differences, it is necessary to erase the practices full typed play, there is a round trip between the constraints and this minimal aesthetic which we like. When we look for sounds that everyone can play, in a very fine way, we arrive at less timbred sounds.
Personally, I always like this word "experimental", not only because of its reference to the 1960s but especially because we don't apply a model: we don't have a practical manual. 

You do not select the musicians, who are co-opted for their desire to participate in this experience. Do you pay attention to parity in the orchestra?
Cyril Bondi: Seven years ago, when we noticed during a concert that we were 27 musicians and that there was only one woman, we realized that this was not right!
With d'incise, we work in many different groups, but with the IMO, all of a sudden, we find ourselves with a different kind of responsibility, in my opinion, that of the institution. When we perform with the orchestra, we are more than a group; we represent a model of what experimental music is in Switzerland. It became important to integrate more women, and without setting up a real recruitment process, we integrated one third of women.
But, at present, we have reached a ceiling. We decided to create an integral parity of 35 male and 35 female musicians and rather than lowering the number of men we chose to increase the number of women. So at the moment, there are about ten places to be taken by women.
d'incise: This is going rather well, it is often women musicians who are co-opted by other musicians who come and this creates a good dynamic.
Cyril Bondi: Over time, groups have been formed in the orchestra, mixed groups and others composed entirely of women.

To come back to the nature of the music you play, how much of it is composition and how much is improvisation that you give to the musicians?
d'incise: We have been nourished by improvisation. I would say that our compositions are hybrid. We put our ideas on paper but our way of doing things leaves a lot of room for the involvement of each one.
Cyril Bondi: I will paraphrase, adding that improvisation is our DNA and that of the orchestra. At the same time, we try to offer a framework, to give rules of play but we always push the performing musicians towards the posture of the improviser. In terms of listening, in terms of the position of the sound, in terms of deciding when and how, in terms of responsibility in a way.
d'incise: They are numerous, so at first sight very diluted in an almost uniform sound, but the individual responsibility, underlying, imperceptibly allows that it works musically or not. 

It's almost the political charter of a micro society, do you think about this political aspect of your organization?
d'incise: It was very present at the beginning, less today, or in a more subtle way. In any case, one must experiment in music as in agriculture, construction, social relations. Why do we make music? On the one hand we compose, we conduct, we are responsible, on the other hand we don't attach importance to hierarchy...
Cyril Bondi: It is political especially in the way we include the musicians in the orchestra, the way they choose themselves, the place we leave to each one. There are extremely experienced musicians (like Hans Koch, Christophe Schiller or Patricia Bosshard) and others who are taking their first steps. It's a micro-society where everyone has to find their place quickly without being crushed by a hierarchy due to seniority or their role in the group.
Indeed, the social dimension is strong.

How has your music evolved, both in form and content, over these twelve years?
Cyril Bondi: In the first period of improvisation, we worked on a common sound vocabulary and this opened up great discussions on the quality of the sounds, how the orchestra can produce and reproduce the sounds that we propose, and this stage was decisive. We created an original sound, a real sound signature.

Can you tell us about your current projects?
Cyril Bondi: We released a new record on November 2nd : Acceleration, on our label Insub.record. Besides IMO, we have an artist label, a studio in Geneva, we organize concerts.
We form a collective, Insub is insubordination, in fact!(smile)
d'incise : On the label side, we have a few releases planned soon: a disc of cabrettes(bagpipes from Auvergne, ed. note) by Jacques Puech and a piece for microtonal organ byEd Williams.
Cyril Bondi: On the other hand, we have been carrying out, for a year, a completely experimental project in connection with the agricultural world: Polytopies
We started from the postulate that traditional and experimental music were often linked to sound that was produced by repetitive work.
We rented an agricultural field in the Geneva countryside and we make musical projects in connection with the gestures of agriculture.

We created about twenty musical pieces around the gesture of sowing, planting, harvesting and gestures linked to music, such as repetition, writing a score. We sow, we plant, sometimes it doesn't grow; we made wheat, corn, sunflower, we tried to play at 50 meters from each other.
We had to relearn what experimentation is when we are ready to fail, and nothing grew!

Interview by Sandrine Maricot Despretz

Photo article © Mehdi Benkler

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