The Orckestra
The Orckestra were a 12-piece English avant-garde jazz and avant-rock ensemble formed in March 1977 with the merger of avant-rock group Henry Cow, the Mike Westbrook Brass Band and folk singer Frankie Armstrong. They gave two performances in London in March and June 1977, and then embarked on two tours of Europe between September 1977 and May 1978, where they performed in Italy, France and Sweden. History Henry Cow and the Mike Westbrook Brass Band crossed paths several times before they merged in 1977. Westbrook was one of the guests at Henry Cow's Rainbow Theatre concert with Faust in London in October 1973, and the Brass Band played for the audience in the foyer of the auditorium before the concert began. At the November 1975 Sigma Festival in Bordeaux, France, Henry Cow and the Brass Band performed in different parts of the same building, and at the end of Henry Cow's set, the Brass Band played a New Orleans funeral march from the audience while the members of Henry Cow danced together on stage. Then in October 1976, Henry Cow, the Mike Westbrook Brass Band and folk singer Frankie Armstrong performed different sets on the same bill at Goldsmith College in New Cross, London. When they appeared on the same bill again on 13 March 1977, this time at the Moving Left Revue at The Roundhouse in London, Henry Cow, the Brass Band and Armstrong decided to merge and gave their debut performance. The Moving Left Revue was a Communist Party benefit concert that the Brass Band's Paul Rutherford had helped to organise. Steve Lake of the British music newspaper, Melody Maker described the three-hour concert as "a great success", and said that this merger was the "most exciting" of Henry Cow's succession of projects. Their drummer, Chris Cutler said that they had always wanted the explore the potential of an orchestra, and their "ideological common ground" made a cooperative venture inevitable. On 26 June 1977 the Orckestra performed at the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park. Reviewing the event in The Guardian, Ronald Atkins wrote that he was impressed by how wide-ranging the ensemble's music was, which, he said, "could hardly be equalled by any other group". In September 1977 they embarked on a three-month tour of Europe where they played at Milan and Modena in Italy, and at Nancy and Paris in France. In March 1978 the Orckestra returned to Europe where they played in Stockholm, Norrköping and Gothenburg in Sweden, Oslo in Norway, and Paris, Nancy, Longlaville, Loos-en-Gohelle, Poitiers, Orléans and Bordeaux in France. While Henry Cow enjoyed playing in the Orckestra, the merger was not without its problems. The Brass Band had difficulty coming to terms with Henry Cow's irregular rhythms. Westbrook said, "In jazz, because of its origins in dance, we always have a pulse to relate to", but Henry Cow's approach "is totally alien to our way of writing and thinking about music." As a result, the ensemble's concerts tended to be dominated by