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It's a long time since Biggi Vinkeloe, flute and saxophone german player living in Sweden, joined the improvisers' europen scene collaborating with Barre Phillips, Georg Wolf, Peter Friis Nielsen, Peter Kowald e Peeter Uuskyla; in Italy she's been musical partner of Giancarlo Locatelli, Fabio Martini e Filippo Monico. She works with different kind of action painters and performers, but also the contemporary musicians Marie Wärme and Eva Bruun Hansen, or the heavy-metal bass-player Magnus Rosen... Maybe it's better to start to talk about your musical background. You started with classical studies (flute and alto sax) to move to improvvisation. How this happened? I have always liked to improvise, I like the challenge when you start up something without knowing what the outcome will be. I play music since I 'm 5 or 6 years old. Since then, I wanted to become a musician and I worked hard on getting there. I got my first lesson in classical flute at age 14, and at 15 years old I met 2 bassplayers in the school orchestra, they invited me to join them. We had different groups and performed quite soon. I also started to go out and see a lot of different concerts, everything between classical music, folk music, rock, heavy metal, jazz, improvised music, at least 2 or 3 shows every week. When I first played improvised music, it was with the flute. when I thought that I had too much trouble to hear myself, I decided to buy a saxophone and I spent hours and hours practicing. today, I play as much flute as saxophone and feel comfortable with both instruments. A lot of european improvvisers have models like, on first side the afroamerican free jazz players, on the other the classic contemporary music. Which one of these experiences is closer to yours... Oh, I like so many different music styles. I still listen very much to giants like Charlie Parker or John Coltrane of course, and Glenn Gould, Iigor Oistrach, Rostropovitch. I can't name everybody here, but what I can say is that I like to listen to any musician who plays with his/her heart and is honest within his/her art. You have met Cecil Taylor in Berlin, for the FMP clinic I suppose. How important for your style was this meeting? The first time I met Cecil Taylor, it was for the clinic. but I did one more project with him, in Kassel at the Documenta (a very big art show over the entire town, with contemporary artists from all over the world). We had one week of intense rehearsals for many hours per day and then a 3 hour performance for about 1000 (thousand!) people. I should do a third project, but it was when my son was born, so I could not be part of this project (the birth was also a wonderful experience, of course...). I wanted to do this clinic because I wanted to experience Cecil Taylor's work, his approach to music and to life and how to communicate your music to other people, the musicians in the band, but also the people in the audience. It was a great and intense experience! I got a lot of inspiration, it made me think about my own music, but I don't think I changed my way of thinking or doing. It made me want to continue to explore music and work on it. Once England, Holland and Germany were the three main countries for this kind of musical experiences. Since maybe ten or fifteen years improvvised music spreads around the world with different sensibility. How is the improvvised music scene in Sweden, the place where you live? I don't know if the so called free jazz only existed in the three countries you mention here, I have lived for a very long time in France and I found a vivid scene for improvised music there. Maybe the musicans from England, Germany and Holland were better at marketing and traveling than musicians from other countries.... Sweden: since some years, there is a growing interest for improvised music again. Not that it is easy to find concerts, or that you would get decently paid once you find a concert to do. But you can see a lot of young people listening and being really enthusiastic about this kind of music. I think that improvised music might be one of the biggest challengs in music, it gives you a big freedom and a big responsibility, and you can be creative and develop whatever comes to your mind (if you have the tools to process your ideas, of course, so it needs a lot of technique if you want to do a good job). The scenes in Sweden seem to be separated, there is one in Stockholm, another one in Gothenburg and a smaller one in Malmö, but the connections are not very strong in between, everybody seems to be afraid of sharing the cake (it's about money...). Unfortunately! It seems to be that way in many countries, and Sweden is no exception. Swedish musicians travel quite a lot. As the country only counts 9 millions inhabitants, the interest for improvised music is of course proportionally small. So Sweden is maybe quite well represented all over the world. Your trio with Uuskyla and Nielsen have a lot of connections with theatre groups, action painters and actors. When we met each other you, with Nino, Fabio, Filippo and Emiliano you were playing with a improvviser dancer. Don't you think that this (for example music and action painting) is a kind of old approach to sinergy between arts? Who can pretend to reinvent the world and to come up with something never seen, never heard? But it doesn't make this sinergy between arts less fascinating. By creating a meeting between different artistic expressions, you talk to different senses, you see, you hear, you feel, you almost taste what is happening on the stage. I also found that many people are afraid of improvised music, so they don't give this music any credit and don't even try to go and listen. To watch a painter work together with musicians could make it easier, you don't have to focus into the music all the time, but you can just follow the development of a picture, even if it is abstract, and you might get your own associations and pictures. Suddenly, improvised music makes sense and is not at all too difficult to listen too! That is one aspect. The other one is that movements and colours amplify the sounds and also show a different way to go. The musicians are also inspired by what they see, of course! I feel it gives another dimension to the music, and hopefully it gives another dimension to the painting and dancing too! We can't even imagine a dancer dancing without any music, can we? Improvvised music is still looking for a better attention from the media and from concerts institutions. Do you believe in the "FMP-model" to be totally indipendent, or maybe there is the chance to find a new place inside some institutions? It is true that improvised music is usually not well treated by the media, so it makes it difficult to promote this kind of music and to find an audience. When you listen to improvised music, you cannot do anything else, like eating or talking or finding someone to share an evening or more with. You have to focus a bit on the music. you divide food into fast food and slow food, fast food seems to give you fast satisfaction, but slow food gives you something to remember. Same with music, and improvised music is more like slow food, takes time to make it, and takes time to digest it, but it stays with you for a while. I don't know how indipendent FMP really is, as they can only survive with public money, when there is no money, there is no music and outside the circle of improvising musicians, only few people know what FMP stands for. FMP exists for many years, and it is a beautiful work, of course, and hopefully, it will continue for a long time! It would be great to get a foot into some other institutions, I think series with chamber music, classical and new music and improvised music and jazz, would be wonderful. It would need a lot of courage, and a real effort on marketing to make this happen. Probably, it would take some time before the audience gets used to listen to different artistic expressions and value all of them equally.
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