Improvisation is a tricky business. In mediocre hands, it is interminable at best, masturbatory at worst. But with skilled practitioners, improvisation becomes the haute couture of the music world, each piece tailored on the spot to a particular confluence of musicians, audience, time and place.
This is the perfect vibe that organizers of Kobe's Festival Beyond Innocence would like to encourage. By mixing the workhorse of improvisation, the saxophone, with sounds borne of the latest technological innovations in sampling, or crossing the dynamism of a young performer with the resolute experience of an old hand, FBI is all about surprising juxtapositions.
"We try to come up with things that wouldn't happen anywhere else or that would be intriguing or surprising. We don't give a theme to each festival because we do not intend to present things that are already complete or predictable," says festival organizer Kae Uchihashi.