Tom Chant

The London Musician's Collective is the original risk taking organisation. The LMC has been promoting excellence in improvised, experimental, noise, concrete, cross-genre, cross-cultural, dada, fluxus, scratch, etc, etc, music for over thirty years and continues to promote the very best and the most cutting edge of all these musics and more, now. The LMC present these challenging, rewarding musics through a variety of sources, not least Resonance FM, now world famous, broadcasting to London via the FM transmitter and to the world via the internet, programmes that cut a swathe through the rest of the UK's (if it exists at all) art radio community and competes, converses and co-habitates with the worlds most forward thinking radio broadcasters. The LMC has more than lived up to it's remit to present the most challenging music through it's annual festival. A much copied (it's hard to imagine the Meltdown, Ether, Freedom of the City, Huddersfield, Kill Your Timid Notion festivals, sometimes even as existing without the LMC Festival) creative haven for world renown musicians and artists that continues to push for the most interesting sounds in Europe and the world, let alone London.

My first contact with the LMC was their Twenty Five Years from Scratch event at the ICA celebrating the 25th anniversary of the creation of Cornelius Cardew's Scratch Orchestra. Both my parents were original members of the Scratch, and to experience the joy and the creative freedom of performing Scratch music was one of my first and biggest inspirations to take up improvised and experimental music. Thanks to the LMC I've been enriching my life (and hopefully the lives of others) through creative, experimental, improvised music making for nearly fifteen years. Without the LMC I'd just be making boring, commercial music for the enriching of only my own pocket exclusively, with no thought for culture and the practice of open creative thought presented to a huge and joyous LMC audience.

Tom Chant, saxophonist.