INSUB META ORCHESTRA is a Swiss orchestra dedicated to experimental music. Based on a very large community of musicians, the group emphasizes attentive listening, hypersensitivity to sound and a questioning of improvisation and writing. Meet the two co-founders Cyril Bondi and d'incise (Laurent Peter).

You live in Geneva and, in 2010, you created an orchestra called INSUB META ORCHESTRA (IMO), made up of some fifty musicians from all walks of life. How did you come up with the idea 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 take part in an evening with the London Improvisers Orchestra, that we were seduced by the idea 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 back home. As it was obvious that Geneva wasn't a big enough city for an orchestra of this size, from the outset we opened it up to our networks of friends in Switzerland and abroad.
The challenge was as follows: how can we make improvisation and music with a very large number of musicians, not musicians chosen according to the model of the classical orchestra brought together by instrumental genre, but musicians from all over the place with all kinds of instruments?

How does IMO propose a different model of orchestra?
Cyril Bondi: Our job is to ensure that this mass of musicians - around 25 to 35 per concert - produces a unique sound, and that the sonorities created by each individual are not emphasized? We're looking for minimal music that's produced with very few elements.
d'incise: Of course, we've listened to classical orchestras that play contemporary music, but we're looking for something other than sounding like a Xenakis piece, which also requires a kind of savoir-faire outside our field of expertise. On the other hand, we didn't want to sound like an orchestra of improvisers...
Cyril Bondi : Over the last twelve years, we've gone through a number of different phases!
At the start, it was very open-ended, with anyone who wanted to and anyone who could, on the model of the London Improvisers Orchestra, which incorporates any visiting musician for a concert.
Then we asked some of those who played regularly in the orchestra if they wanted to continue the adventure, but on a permanent basis, and today there are around fifty of us.
There was a phase of complete improvisation in a large group, and then we embarked on a composition phase, which we're currently in. 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 and materials, and ask each other how best to exploit a simple idea. It all has to do with the nature of the orchestra: there are few rehearsals before the concert, and most of the time we play on the day. So a simple idea has to be formulated in such a way that it can be easily transmitted to a large number of people - these are what we call practical ideas - but they have to be rich enough to be developed throughout the duration of the concert, which is where the sound ideas come in. Composition is intimately linked to the playing process.

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

Does the IMO have a conductor or conductors?
Cyril Bondi: It depends on the piece. In general, I'm the conductor, but we also try to give this responsibility to other musicians in 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 has to be put together quickly before the concerts, and it has to "sound" whatever the number of musicians and the type of instruments. What's more, the musicians are not chosen for their personal qualities. The piece must be played by musicians of different levels and experience. These are strong constraints, but very positive ones, as they force us to propose original music.

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

And what kind of music do they play? Experimental, electroacoustic music? Do you improvise? How would you define this sonic experience?
Cyril Bondi: I'm no good at labels! Before we start working, we always listen to the silence. Then we go for pianissimos and fragile textures. Instruments are never used to their full potential; we like to look for where they start to lose their initial substance. Of course, we've done a lot of work on minimal music, in the Wandelweiser movement.
d'incise: We're clearly part of this movement. To get an orchestra to sound with all these differences, you have to erase typical playing practices, and there's a back-and-forth between constraints and the minimal aesthetic we love. When we look for sounds that everyone can play, in a very fine way, we end up with sounds that are less timbred.
Personally, I still like the word "experimental", not only because of its reference to the 1960s, but above all because we don't apply a model: we don't have a practical manual. 

So you don't select the musicians, who are co-opted for their willingness to take part in this experiment. Are you attentive to gender balance in the orchestra?
Cyril Bondi: Seven years ago, when we realized at a concert that we were 27 musicians and there was only one woman, we realized that this wasn't right!
With d'incise, we work in lots of different groups, but with the IMO, all of a sudden, we find ourselves with a different form of responsibility in my opinion, which is that of the institution. When we perform with the orchestra, we're more than a group; we represent a model of what experimental music is in Switzerland. It had become important to integrate more women, and without setting up any real recruitment process, we have integrated a third of women.
But, at present, we are reaching a plateau. We decided to create a full 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 up for grabs by women.
d'incise: Things are going rather well, and it's often women musicians who are co-opted by other musicians who come along, which creates a good dynamic.
Cyril Bondi: Over time, groups have emerged in the orchestra, some mixed and others made up entirely of women.

Getting back to the nature of the music you play, how much of it is composition and how much improvisation do you give the musicians?
d'incise: We've been nurtured by improvisation. I'd say our compositions are hybrid. We put our ideas down on paper, but our way of doing things leaves a lot of room for everyone's involvement.
Cyril Bondi: I'll paraphrase, adding that improvisation is our DNA and that of the orchestra. At the same time, we try to offer a framework, to give the rules of the game, but we always push the performing musicians towards the posture of the improviser. In terms of listening, in terms of sound position, in terms of deciding when and how, in terms of responsibility, as it were.
d'incise: There are many of them, so at first sight they're very diluted in a quasi-uniform sonority, but the underlying individual responsibility imperceptibly allows things to work out musically or not. 

It's almost the political charter of a micro-company. Do you think about this political aspect of your organization?
d'incise: It was very present at the beginning, less so today, or in a more subtle way. In any case, you have to experiment in music as in agriculture, construction and social relations. Why do we make music? On the one hand, we compose, we conduct, we're in charge, on the other, we don't attach any importance to hierarchy...
Cyril Bondi: It's political, above all in the way we include musicians in the orchestra, the way they choose themselves, the place we give each one. There are some 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 based on seniority or their role in the band.
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 major discussions on the quality of the sounds, how the orchestra could produce and reproduce the sounds we were proposing, and this stage was decisive. We created an original sound, a real signature sound.

Can you tell us about your current projects?
Cyril Bondi: We released a new album on November 2: Accelerationon our Insub.record label. Alongside IMO, we have an artist's label, a studio in Geneva, and we organize concerts.
We form a collective, Insub being insubordination, in fact!(smiles)
d'incise : On the label front, we have a couple of releases planned for the near future: an album of cabrettes(Auvergne bagpipes, ed. note) by Jacques Puech and a piece for microtonal organ byEd Williams.
Cyril Bondi: For the past year, we've also been running a completely experimental project linked to the world of agriculture: Polytopies
We started from the premise that traditional music and experimental music were often linked to sound produced by repetitive work.
We rented a farm field in the Geneva countryside and we make musical projects linked to farming gestures...

We created around twenty musical pieces based on the gestures of sowing, planting and harvesting, and on musical gestures such as repetition and score writing. We sow, we plant, sometimes it doesn't grow; we made wheat, corn, sunflowers, we tried to play 50 meters apart.
We had to relearn what it means to experiment when you're prepared to fail, and nothing grew!

Interview by Sandrine Maricot Despretz

Article photo © Mehdi Benkler