Q: What is Free Improvisation?
A: It is a way of making, performing or playing based on composing music in real time. How? Mainly by listening to the elements you interact with, including the place where you play. Imitation, contrast, punctuation, emphasis, autarchy... these are some concepts a player might use in a performance. The idea is to create a new composition from nothing here and now, in sight and sound, in a sort of spontaneous combustion.

Q: How does one reach free improvisation? Does one practice? Does it have something of Jazz in its soul?
A: You arrive by searching for new languages, new attitudes, for non-commercial and unconventional goals. The current model is followed by the untouchable authority of composers who treat the musician like a simple machine that practices (repeats) and finally manages to interpret something foreign to him/her until it becomes a supposed “virtuosity”. What happens if the musician is considered to be a musician-composer, or the actor, the playwright? It is something radical; the musician and the actor create their own spontaneous, invisible music with their technique and talent all in real time. This has to do with Jazz, which first began to experiment with this freedom; but free improvisation musicians come from modern music or  folk music, for example. Having said that, we can answer, ‘Yes’, one practices - not to perfect the mechanical learning, but rather to seek out the “muscle” behind the sound, learn to react, begin new searches, experiment other forms, et cetera...

Q: Is it true one doesn’t prepare a repertoire? Or is this what you aspire to?
A: After a certain learning period, one begins to leave it out. A sort of basic mechanism for composing music sets up inside you. We know each other so well that we are beginning to learn quite clearly how to distribute parts that are heavy and  those which are light; we can quickly tell if a colleague has come up with something and decide whether to give him/her support or if it is better to leave them alone; or if a trio or duo happens in the quartet and you find you don’t fit in. You begin to work on what outcome or link you are going to give to the piece when it peters out...et cetera.

Q: Who was Peter Kowald and why did he have such an influence on your music?
A: Peter was a great musician and artist. He was an important figure, a classic in his avant-garde style. We were lucky enough to know him through Barbara Meyer, who is from the same city, Wuppertal, in Germany.  Fonso and I (Víctor) went to great lengths to bring him to León in 2002 to work with him. We organised a festival and an orchestra that he directed. We spent part of that summer with him and he began to give us priceless advice for Sin Red. In September we received a call from New York and we found out he had passed away. Our meeting was a beautiful final farewell. His generosity was pure poetry; his commitment and solidarity, his vocation to create a framework, a network of improvisation musicians was pure political poetry and his music is a monument to freedom and beauty.

Q: The music festival organised by Derek Bailey, Company Weeks, lasted until 1994. Why did it end? Aren’t there other free improvisation festivals?
A: We don’t know why this festival came to an end, but it is not difficult to understand how hard it is to organise these kinds of events which tend not to be for short-sighted programmers who are more interested in head-counts and large audiences. The expenditure for the organisers is enormous, I can assure you (Víctor). Nevertheless, there are many other festivals, but it is difficult that they last long. We can proudly say that we belong to a collective, Musicalibre, which has organised the Hurta Cordel festival for over a decade in Madrid, supported by La Casa Encendida which has believed in the project and looked after it, valuing it precisely because its select public is not a mass-audience.

Q: Why the name Sin Red ('no safety net')?
A: It appears in a poem by Víctor: “Sin red. Esa es la consigna de los tiempos”. We thought it summed up the spirit we want to achieve: the search for risk, the need not to get comfortable, to demand this exploration but without falling into the circus act of doing something ever more difficult... To expand upon that which was mentioned further above, our music is a stage; being visible is part of its essence. This is why this album is a reference, an invitation, a still from something dynamic.

Q: When and how did you become a group?
A: We created the group in 2001 with the spirit mentioned above and as a result of other attempts: En crudo, Blanca Doble, etc... At first we were musicians, poets and dancers...this lasted very little precisely because it was difficult to get any deeper. In the first formation of the group, Barbara Meyer herself and Nilo Gallego were members...

Q: Who is Sin Red for? How can one learn to understand and appreciate this music without being a musician, in other words, a layperson but one who enjoys music?
A: We don’t have a particular target. We are aware of our quota of peculiarity for the market and for a conventional audience. This is our virtue, I believe, for those who know how to understand it. I believe that we sometimes put prejudices and what is considered ‘safe’ to the test. We run the risk of not being to the liking of some who prefer an easier art to enjoy; it is really about making you think and feeling what is ringing inside us and around us, in our thoughts and in the film of our dreams...

Q: What obstacles have you encountered along the way?
A: They are so many that we’ve forgotten about them.

Q: You have just brought out a new album, Aguacero, which is almost an hour long and which is accompanied by a booklet on the group with poems in Spanish (translated into English) and an almost half-hour documentary. Why make a documentary? Who is Barbara Meyer?
A: She is, as you will see in the documentary, a fabulous film-maker and an excellent musician, often too shy at times. Apart from this, she is also a very special friend for us. Her gentle nature, sensitivity and hearing lets her make a cello while editing a film in India and still being able to keep in touch with her friends. We mentioned above that our work has to do with her own vision: this more than justifies the documentary.

Q: What is the final aim of Sin Red?
A: We feel that Sin Red does not match ‘final’.

Q: Where and when is your next performance?
A: In León (it might seem normal, but we can assure you that we have played more in London than in Castilla & León), 15 July, as part of a programme: UN GOLPE DE DADOS.

Q: Future projects?
A: Keep on walking... “Caminante, no hay camino, se hace camino al andar”, wrote Antonio Machado. It’s a good motto.

YH: To all of Sin Red, thank-you for holding this interview

To purchase the album, Aguacero, click here.

Sin Red is:
Chefa Alonso, soprano saxophone, small percussion.
Víctor M. Díez, poems, objects
Cova Villegas, voice
Idelfonso Rodríguez, saxophones, clarinets, toys

New album by Sin Red, Aguacero includes:
• Aguacero CD, 52:42
• Sin Red, documentary by Barbara Meyer, 29:40
• Booklet (pages: 37) which accompanies the documentary with poems by Víctor M. Díez; translations by Cy Williams.