Subscribe on youtube to keep up to date on all the upcoming episodes, share, enjoy, and be free! Mopomoso was founded in 1991 by guitarist John Russell and pianist, trumpeter and composer Chris Burn with the purpose to promote freely improvised music in all its forms and where applicable collaborations with other related forms. From the outset the aim has been to present the music on a local, regional national and international basis and to involve relative newcomers as well as more established musicians.
In response to the global pandemic COVID-19 Mopomoso moved it’s concert series online and started Mopomoso TV initially with a series of monthly digital streams. The Mopomoso team recognised the importance of continuing this music as both an artistic and a community need.
Run by a team of volunteers we hold a passionate belief that improvised music, sometimes called free music or free improvisation offers many exciting opportunities both to players and listeners alike. We hope you enjoy some of the wonderful music to be found on this site and that you will be able to attend some of our live events.
WHAT IS FREELY IMPROVISED MUSIC?
You know what, we don’t really know either. Freely improvised music is what you make of it, it is spontaneous, wild, adventurous and deeply unique to everyone a part of its magic. John Russell describes it as:
It is also unique amongst all musics in that the listener discovers the music at the same time as the musicians. Free music is about family. It is about strong communities which work from the ground up. Here’s a little anecdote:
You know after it rains, mushrooms seem to pop up everywhere? What we see as mushrooms are only the flowering bodies of the great Mycelium network. The Mycelium is a wondrous complexity of byways and highways connecting fungal and plant species alike. Well, free Improvisers are likely to pop up anywhere too (it’s debatable whether this corresponds with weather) but they are an innate fabric to our artistic webs: sharing, traveling, and building unending experiment You know after it rains, mushrooms seem to pop up everywhere? What we see as mushrooms are only the flowering bodies of the great Mycelium network. The Mycelium is a wondrous complexity of byways and highways connecting fungal and plant species alike. Well, free Improvisers are likely to pop up anywhere too (it’s debatable whether this corresponds with weather) but they are an innate fabric to our artistic webs: sharing, traveling, and building unending experimentations in living fully present and in the moment with each other.
Or as John Russell also says:It was never free, we fought for it every step of the way!
-Mopomoso Team, 2020