If you think you’ve seen it all, you’re wrong! Marginal Consort it’s an experience that everyone should see at least once in their lives. You’re probably wondering, what is it this whole Marginal Consort? I hasten to explain. 

Some time ago, I had a chance to volunteer at the experimental music festival in Cracow, Poland called Unsound. I was pretty amazed by most of the concerts, and felt that is something I’m into. As much as I understand this is not a thing for everyone, there was this one performance that completely blew my mind, and I believe it’d blow yours too. Completely unaware, something that awaited me was nothing else than Marginal Consort. Marginal Consort is a Japanese collective improvisation group. They were founded by Kauzo Imai in 1997, and since then they perform only once a year. That is already an unusual thing about them – if you miss their performance, you have to wait another year for it! Their origins date back to the times when they were students of the Fluxus legend: Takehisa Kosugi. As members of East Bionic Symphonia, in the 70s they attended Bigakko – a radical art school in Tokyo. Some sources claim that Kauzo Imai picked the rest of this free improvisation group’s members himself. Nevertheless, they released an album, and Marginal Consort has begun (as a continuation of their previous actions). Nowadays, this is a group of adorable old men from the outside, and personally I think geniuses of experimental music on the inside. Currently the group consist of: Kazuo Imai, Tomonao Koshikawa, Kei Shii i Masami Tada. But, you may ask what is so special about them? 

As mentioned before, they meet once a year, in Japan or occasionally in different countries accepting invitations, and without any preparation nor consultation they play at least for three hours! Actually, the duration of three hours is only a minimum, sometimes they can perform, for instance, for twelve hours without any breaks in the middle. Each performance differ from one another, they don’t even discuss the structure of an event. That is why their performances are more of an experience. 

This year it took place at the Museum of Engineering and Technology in Cracow, which played quite an essential role in the show. The limited tickets were all sold out, and the whole space of a museum felt really tiny when occupied by the audience. This time the show only took three hours but it’s unexplainable how I felt during it. I watched people who slept, were in a trans, chatted, or couldn’t stop staring at the performers. It was really energetically exhausting, in a good way! Every one and each of the visitors found themselves in a different outer space. 

The aim of a collective is to do everything apart from music that we know from a definition by using very different and sometimes strange sound-making devices such as rakes, paper bags, wood sticks, stones, marbles, handmade electronics, homemade acoustic instruments, water, and other natural elements or quotidian objects. Usually, they are spread out in the corners of a space that they play in, however, even though they are separate in their solos, yet they’re interconnected. I believe they have the power to bring people together. I felt that I experienced it on my own, and with the others at the same time. Even the start and the end are only fixed times. In this energetic communication, they find a way to calm down and finish the energy that arises from performance. 

All in all, Marginal Consort can really bring lots of characters together through their engaging, visual-sound expiriences, and let the audience create their own subjective performance. I believe there are no excuses to not go and see those more than-talented beasts! My advice is to search for their next year’s concert.