Improvisation
music and improvisation
Most members of Tongues of Fire are experienced improvisers with backgrounds in free jazz and improvised music as well as jazz and folk music. Many of us are members of Oxford Improvisers
Our great models for playing are Sun Ra and Albert Ayler, who both created music where freedom, texture, adventure, grooves and melody work together. They also conceived a music of inspiration, musical worlds of modern myth and magic, like William Blake, creating spaces for 'angels and demons' to play.
Many in the Band have played with, or where deeply influenced, by the first great wave of British free jazz and improvised music - Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, Keith Tippett et al, and by the great South African musicians playing here from the sixties, including Lious Moholo, Chris McGregor and Dudu Pukwana
Tongues of Fire comes from a line of bands run by Tim Hill playing with improvisation, freedom, melody and rhythm, Pandaemonium, The Noise Eating Monsters, the Mayhem Quartet and Beating Time. Go to Bubble and Squeak Recordings for info on CDRs of these bands.
For more on the influence of Sun Ra download 'Lost in the Stars' - hitching a lift along Sun Ra's Strange Celestial Road
